attempts, as some have done, to make out that mankind generally, though
not any given individual, have a right to all the good we can do them,
he at once, by that thesis, includes generosity and beneficence within
the category of justice. He is obliged to say, that our utmost exertions
are due to our fellow creatures, thus assimilating them to a debt; or
that nothing less can be a sufficient _return_ for what society does for
us, thus classing the case as one of gratitude; both of which are
acknowledged cases of justice. Wherever there is a right, the case is
one of justice, and not of the virtue of beneficence: and whoever does
not place the distinction between justice and morality in general where
we have now placed it, will be found to make no distinction between them
at all, but to merge all morality in justice.

Having thus endeavoured to determine the distinctive elements which
enter into the composition of the idea of justice, we are ready to enter
on the inquiry, whether the feeling, which accompanies the idea, is
attached to it by a special dispensation of nature, or whether it could
have grown up, by any known laws, out of the idea itself; and in
particular, whether it can have originated in considerations of general
expediency.

I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise from anything which
would commonly, or correctly, be termed an idea of expediency; but that,
though the sentiment does not, whatever is moral in it does.

We have seen that the two essential ingredients in the sentiment of
justice are, the desire to punish a person who has done harm, and the
knowledge or belief that there is some definite individual or
individuals to whom harm has been done.