In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to deprive any one
of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongs
to him by law. Here, therefore, is one instance of the application of
the terms just and unjust in a perfectly definite sense, namely, that it
is just to respect, unjust to violate, the _legal rights_ of any one.
But this judgment admits of several exceptions, arising from the other
forms in which the notions of justice and injustice present themselves.
For example, the person who suffers the deprivation may (as the phrase
is) have _forfeited_ the rights which he is so deprived of: a case to
which we shall return presently. But also,

Secondly; the legal rights of which he is deprived, may be rights which
_ought_ not to have belonged to him; in other words, the law which
confers on him these rights, may be a bad law. When it is so, or when
(which is the same thing for our purpose) it is supposed to be so,
opinions will differ as to the justice or injustice of infringing it.
Some maintain that no law, however bad, ought to be disobeyed by an
individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should
only be shown in endeavouring to get it altered by competent authority.
This opinion (which condemns many of the most illustrious benefactors of
mankind, and would often protect pernicious institutions against the
only weapons which, in the state of things existing at the time, have
any chance of succeeding against them) is defended, by those who hold
it, on grounds of expediency; principally on that of the importance, to
the common interest of mankind, of maintaining inviolate the sentiment
of submission to law. Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary
opinion, that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed,
even though it be not judged to be unjust, but only inexpedient; while
others would confine the licence of disobedience to the case of unjust