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THE Seventh Commandment is, "Thou shalt not steal," and therefore directly and explicitly it forbids theft, but implicitly it commands us to observe justice in our dealings with others. The Tenth Commandment is, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods," and so it forbids internal sins against justice. The subject-matter, then, of these commandments is the virtue of justice, of which we have now to treat.

i. THE word "justice " is used in a variety of senses, but here it is used in its strict meaning to designate the moral virtue which inclines its possessor to give to everyone his due or his right.

The habit of giving to everyone his due from principle because it is right and proper is obviously a virtue, and it is a moral, not a theological, virtue, for its immediate motive is not God, but the natural honesty and uprightness of so acting. Justice is a moral virtue which resides in and perfects the will, not the intellect, like prudence; it inclines the will to wish and to execute what is right. Justice inclines the just man to give his due to everyone irrespective of who he may be. It does not consider the relation in which that other stands to God, or to one's self, as charity does; nor precisely what it is becoming in the just man to do, so that his actions may be worthy of himself, as does temperance, for example; it only considers what is owing to another, what is his due; and