after payment. If he withhold it, though he do wrong, yet he is not
said to be keeping any portion of the public property in his private
hands: he only fails to make some of his private property public,
which the law bids him abdicate and make over. If this be true of
money and goods, it is still more evidently true of honour and
services. In like manner, in the matter of _distributive justice_, the
emoluments which a subject has a claim to, the rewards which he has
merited of the State, does not become _his_ till he actually gets them
into his hands. It may be unfair and immoral that they are withheld
from him, and in that case, so long as the circumstances remain the
same, the obligation rest with and presses upon the State, and those
who represent it, to satisfy his claim: still the State is not keeping
the individual from that which is as yet his own. In the language of
the Roman lawyers, he has at best a _jus ad rem_, a right that the
thing be made his, but not a _jus in re_; that is, the thing is not
properly his before he actually gets it.

6. _Commutative justice_ alone is Justice strictly so called: for
therein alone the parties to the act are perfectly other and other,
and the matter that passes between them, if withheld by one of the
parties, would make a case of keeping the other out of that which he
could still properly call by right his own. _Commutative justice_ runs
between two individuals, or two independent States, or between the
State and an individual inasmuch as the latter is an independent
person, having rights of his own against the former. This justice is
called _commutative_, from being concerned with _exchanges_, or
contracts, _voluntary_ and _involuntary_. The idea of voluntary
contract, like that between buyer and seller, is familiar enough. But
the notion of an _involuntary contract_ is technical, and requires
explanation. Whoever, then, wrongfully takes that which belongs to