But what are good laws
has not yet been clearly explained; the old difficulty remains. The
goodness or badness, justice or injustice, of laws varies of necessity
with the constitutions of states. This, however, is clear, that the
laws must be adapted to the constitutions. But if so, true forms of
government will of necessity have just laws, and perverted forms of
government will have unjust laws.
XII
In all sciences and arts the end is a good, and the greatest good
and in the highest degree a good in the most authoritative of all-
this is the political science of which the good is justice, in other
words, the common interest. All men think justice to be a sort of
equality; and to a certain extent they agree in the philosophical
distinctions which have been laid down by us about Ethics. For they
admit that justice is a thing and has a relation to persons, and
that equals ought to have equality. But there still remains a
question: equality or inequality of what? Here is a difficulty which
calls for political speculation. For very likely some persons will say
that offices of state ought to be unequally distributed according to
superior excellence, in whatever respect, of the citizen, although
there is no other difference between him and the rest of the
community; for that those who differ in any one respect have different
rights and claims.
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