As for equality, although its 'idea,' as Mr. Mill says, 'often enters as a component part both into the conception and into the practice of justice, and in the eyes of many persons constitutes its essence,'[11] I can think of no single case in which, unless by reason of some special agreement, it can possibly be due, or in which, consequently, there can be any right to it. Even that equal protection for whatever is indisputably one's own, the claim of all to which is commonly admitted almost as a matter of course, is really due from those only by whom the obligation to afford it has been tacitly or formally accepted. On this ground it is due from the public at large, and from those individuals to whom the public has delegated certain of its tutelary functions, but from no other individuals whatever. No one else is bound to take, for the protection of all other people, whatever pains or trouble he takes for his own security--to watch, for instance, as vigilantly that his neighbour's house as that his own is not broken into. And while the one solitary claim of any plausibility to universal equality of treatment requires to be largely qualified before it can be conceded, there is no other claim of the kind which does not carry with it its own refutation; there is no other which does not partake of the absurdity patent in the communistic notion that all the members of a society are entitled to share equally in the aggregate produce of the society's labour. How is it possible that an equal share can be everybody's due, if different persons may have different deserts, and everyone's deserts be likewise his due?