Concerning JusticeEmery, Lucilius A. (Lucilius Alonzo)
Philosophy
Concerning Justice
Emery, Lucilius A. (Lucilius Alonzo)
Courts -- United States; Justice; Justice, Administration of
This order and harmony, however, are not easily secured. Not only are
there honest differences of opinion as to what restraints are
necessary and how and on whom they should be imposed, but society is
divided into groups or classes with interests conflicting, or thought
to be conflicting, and each seeking to impose restraints on others
while retaining freedom for themselves. While professing to demand
more liberty and equality, they are often really insisting on greater
restraint and inequality. The successful insistence of the
trades-unions of England in securing from Parliament a statute
exempting their funds from answering in damages for injuries caused by
them is a conspicuous instance. Another and equally glaring example is
the effort in this country to exempt from the law against combinations
in restraint of trade, combinations to increase the cost of living by
increasing the prices of agricultural products and the prices to be
paid for labor. The effort seems to be to compel men to compete in the
use of their savings no matter how wasteful the competition, and to
forbid men competing in the use of their labor, no matter what the
idleness thereby caused. I think it a truism that whoever seeks to be
exempted from the restrictions or liabilities he would impose on
others, seeks not justice, but to do injustice.
Another hindrance arises out of the very virtues of pity and sympathy.
These impel many to endeavor, not to persuade, but to compel the more
efficient and prudent who have by their farsightedness, courage,
industry and thrift made good provision for themselves and their
offspring, to provide also for the inefficient and the improvident. To
be asked to give to these does not offend any sense of right, but if
one be told he must give he feels resentful at once. He feels he has a
right to decide for himself to whom and to what extent he shall give
of his savings. Society did not come into existence nor does it now
exist to correct the inequalities of nature, the inequalities of
natural powers, nor to prevent the efficient and prudent receiving and
enjoying the results of their efficiency and prudence. Nature itself
makes no such effort. It rather tends to eliminate the less efficient
and preserve the more efficient. Even if society may strive to
preserve the inefficient and improvident, should it do so by hampering
and restraining those wiser and more capable? We must expect nature to
deal with society, with states and nations, as it does with
individuals. If a state by its laws discourages the exercise to its
full extent of the efficiency of the few and renders less severe the
penalties for the inefficiency and imprudence of the many, it cannot
long maintain any advantageous position among other nations. Whatever
the precepts of religion, of philanthropy, or of other virtues may
require, the precepts of justice do not require society to support men
in idleness nor even to furnish them with employment. Neither do the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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