dog in the manger in a manger of his own, or makes an exclusively
selfish use of his wealth or other advantages, refusing to do good to
his neighbour at however little sacrifice on his own part it might be
done, is not thereby infringing anybody else's rights, or thereby
wronging any one else. He is only exercising his own undoubted rights.
Still he is exercising them in a manner deserving of severe reprobation,
and which witnesses of his conduct may justly punish by testifying to
him the scorn, disgust, or indignation he has excited. It is no more
than just that he should have his deserts and receive the punishment
which has become his due. But justice, although permitting him to be
punished for acting ungenerously, does not sanction his being compelled
to make a show of acting generously. If his conduct had been unjust
instead of simply ungenerous, no punishment would be adequate that did
not force him to repair the evil he had done, or to do the good he had
left undone. But the most flagrant breach of generosity, neither keeping
nor taking away anything to which any one has a right, does nothing for
which reparation can be due. It consists simply in a man's making an
exclusively selfish use of what is exclusively his, and to make such use
is one of the rights of property. Whoever exercises that odious right is
justly punished by being shown how hateful we think him, but we must
not, on pretence of justice, commit the injustice of depriving him of a
right which is confessedly his.

It is not, then, by being rightfully liable to punishment that unjust
differs from ungenerous conduct. The latter also ofttimes deserves and
incurs punishment. But since there can be no merit in doing that the not
doing of which would merit punishment, it may seem that, as in justice
so likewise in generosity there cannot be anything positively
meritorious. Neither in truth would there be if conduct were entitled to
be styled generous simply as being the reverse of ungenerous. Generosity
would then, like justice, be a virtue in no higher sense than that of
not being a vice--a negative virtue if a virtue at all. But an action
does not really deserve to be called generous unless what justice
requires be exceeded by it in a degree more than sufficient to prevent
the agent from deserving the imputation of meanness, nor even then
unless the excess have been done from a purer motive than that of the
hope of praise or other reward. An action is g