Page:Moraltheology.djvu/265



i. THE wide term injustice may be used to designate any violation of justice, whether it be legal, distributive, or commutative. Sins against legal justice are committed by doing anything against the common good of the society to which one belongs, or by neglecting to do what the common good requires to be performed. Such sins may be committed by rulers and by subjects, more frequently, however, by the former, inasmuch as the common good is specially entrusted to their care and guardianship. As the separate members of a society constitute that society, it is obvious that there is not a perfect and adequate distinction between a society and its members. In legal justice, therefore, which regulates the relations which ought to subsist between men and the society to which they belong, there is something wanting to the complete distinction of persons required in order that the obligations of strict justice may subsist between them. A violation, then, of legal justice is not a sin against justice in the strict and full sense.

Distributive justice prescribes that the ruler divide common burdens and emoluments among his subjects according to their capacity and merits. Before they are assigned to each one, no one has a strict right to any determinate share of them, and so a distribution of burdens and favours which is not according to merit is not against strict justice. A ruler who in his distribution of offices and burdens shows undue favour to some to the detriment of others' sins indeed against strict justice if he thereby cause damage to the community, for strict justice and the implicit agreement which he made on assuming his office forbid him to do that. If, however, no special injury accrues to the community through his showing undue preference for some of his subjects, he commits a sin which is called acceptation of persons, but he does not sin against strict justice. On the other hand, one who violates