• ON JUSTICE. i 95 



ratio between the one and the other. As I have elsewhere shown,* 

 during the thirty — or rather forty — years' peace, and consequent 

 weakening of the militant organization, the idea of justice became 

 clearer : coercive regulations were relaxed and each man left more 

 free to make the best of himself. But, since then, the redevelop- 

 ment of militancy has caused reversal of these changes ; and, 

 along with nominal increases of freedom, actual diminutions of 

 freedom have resulted from multiplied regulations and exactions. 

 The spirit of regimentation proper to the militant type has been 

 spreading throughout the administration of civil life. An army 

 of workers with appointed tasks and apportioned • shares of prod- 

 ucts, which socialism, knowingly or unknowingly, aims at, shows 

 in civil life the same characters as an army of soldiers with pre- 

 scribed duties and fixed rations shows in military life ; and every 

 further act of Parliament which takes from the individual money 

 for public purposes and gives him public benefits, tends more and 

 more to assimilate the two. Germany best shows this kinship. 

 There, where militancy is most pronounced, and where the regu- 

 lation of citizens is most elaborate, socialism is most highly devel- 

 oped ; and from the head of the German military system has now 

 come the proposal of regimental regulations for the working 

 classes throughout Europe*. 



Sympathy which, a generation ago, was taking the shape of 

 justice, is relapsing into the shape of generosity ; and the gener- 

 osity is exercised by inflicting injustice. Daily legislation betrays 

 little anxiety that each shall have that which belongs to him, but 

 great anxiety that he shall have that which belongs to somebody 

 else For Wliile no energy is expended in so reforming our judi- 

 cial administration that every one may obtain and enjoy all he has 

 earned, great energy is shown in providing for him and others 

 benefits which they have not earned. Along with that miserable 

 laissez-faire which calmly looks on while men ruin themselves 

 in trying to enforce by law their equitable claims, there goes 

 activity in supplying them, at other men's cost, with gratis novel- 

 reading ! 



Evidently, then, amid this chaos of opinions the true idea of 

 justice can be but very partially recognized. The workman who, 

 in pursuance of it, insists on his right of making his own contract 

 with an employer, will continue to be called " a black-leg " ; and 

 the writer who opposes the practice of forcibly taking A's prop- 

 erty for B's benefit will be classed as an "a priori bigot/' — Nine- 

 teenth Century. 



* Principles of Sociology, §§ 266, 26V ; Political Institutions, §§ 573, 574 and 559. 



