whom he pleases into his
service, and assign to him whatever position therein he pleases, without
affording any cause for reasonable complaint to those more capable
members of his establishment whom he places under one less capable. In
short, except in those rare cases in which impartiality means rendering
what is due, in which cases it is but another name for justice, there is
nothing unjust in disregarding it.

As for equality, although its 'idea,' as Mr. Mill says, 'often enters as
a component part both into the conception and into the practice of
justice, and in the eyes of many persons constitutes its essence,'[11] I
can think of no single case in which, unless by reason of some special
agreement, it can possibly be due, or in which, consequently, there can
be any right to it. Even that equal protection for whatever is
indisputably one's own, the claim of all to which is commonly admitted
almost as a matter of course, is really due from those only by whom the
obligation to afford it has been tacitly or formally accepted. On this
ground it is due from the public at large, and from those individuals to
whom the public has delegated certain of its tutelary functions, but
from no other individuals whatever. No one else is bound to take, for
the protection of all other people, whatever pains or trouble he takes
for his own security--to watch, for instance, as vigilantly that his
neighbour's house as that his own is not broken into. And while the one
solitary claim of any plausibility to universal equality of treatment
requires to be largely qualified before it can be conceded, there is no
other claim of the kind which does not carry with it its own refutation;
there is no other which does not partake of the absurdity patent in the
communistic notion that all the members of a society are entitled to
share equally in the aggregate produce of the society's labour. How is
it possible that an equal share can be everybody's due, if different
persons may have different deserts, and everyone's deserts be likewise
his due?

We have now gone completely through the list of artificially created
rights, without finding one that does not derive all its validity from
connection with some pre-existing right. We have seen that among
so-called rights none whatever are genuine by reason merely of any
extrinsic sanction they may have received, but that all real rights
either are such intrinsically, or are based upon, or embody within them