Here, then, are two theories of justice arrayed against each other in order of battle: theories differing in their first principles, markedly opposed in their conclusions, and both of them doctrines a priori, claiming to command assent by their own light -- to be evident by simple intuition: a pretension which, as the two are perfectly inconsistent, must, in the case of one or other of them, be unfounded, and may be so in the case of both. Such conflicts in the domain of ethics are highly instructive, but their value is chiefly negative; the principal use of each of the contrary theories is to destroy the other. Those who cherish any one of the numerous a priori systems of moral duty, may learn from such controversies how plausible a case may be made for other a priori systems repugnant to their own; and the adepts of each may discover, that while the maxims or axioms from which they severally set out are all of them good, each in its proper place, yet what that proper place is, can only be decided, not by mental intuition, but by the thoroughly practical consideration of consequences; in other words, by the general interest of society and mankind, mental and bodily, intellectual, emotional, and physical, taken together. Mr. Thornton seems to admit the general happiness as the criterion of social virtue, but not of positive duty -- not of justice and injustice in the strict sense: and he imagines that it is in making a distinction between these two ideas that his doctrine differs from that of utilitarian moralists. But this is not the case. Utilitarian morality fully recognises the distinction between the province of positive duty and that of virtue, but maintains that the standard and rule of both is the general interest. From the utilitarian point of view, the distinction between them is the following: -- There are many acts, and a still greater number of forbearances, the perpetual practice of which by all is so necessary to the general well-being, that people must be held to it compulsorily, either by law, or by social pressure.
These acts and forbearances constitute duty. Outside these bounds there is the innumerable variety of modes in which the acts of human beings are either a cause, or a hindrance, of good to their fellow-creatures, but in regard to which it is, on the whole, for the general interest that they should be left free; being merely encouraged, by praise and honour, to the performance of such beneficial actions as are not sufficiently stimulated by benefits flowing from them to the agent himself. This larger sphere is that of Merit or Virtue.
The anxiety of moralists for some more definite standard of judgment than the happiness of mankind appears to them to be, or for some first principle which shall have a greater hold on the feeling of obligation than education has yet given to the idea of the good of our fellow-creatures, makes them eager to erect into an axiom of morals any one of the familiar corollaries from the principle of general utility, which, from the impressiveness of the cases to which it is applicable, has taken a deep root in the popular mind, and gathered round itself a considerable amount of human feeling. When they have made choice of any such maxim, they follow it out as if there were no others of equal authority by which its application ought to be limited; or with only as much regard to those limitations, as the amount of common sense possessed by the particular thinker peremptorily enforces upon him as a practical being. The two opposite theories of social justice set forth by Mr. Thornton -- the Rousseau or Proudhon theory, and his own -- are cases of this description. The former of these, according to which all private appropriation of any of the instruments of production was a wrong from the beginning, and an injury to the rest of mankind, there is neither room, nor is it necessary, here to discuss.
