Question Three: On Justice and Injustice in Distributing Burdens

623. Burdens pertain indirectly to distributive justice, insofar as immunity from burdens is a certain good to be distributed proportionately among citizens. Hence the equal or unequal distribution of burdens is reduced to the equal or unequal partition of goods.

Now burdens are understood as any useful prestations, estimable by a price, imposed by the community itself upon its members; and these can be various: labors and contributions of works, goods to be handed over (wheat, fruits, beasts), monies to be paid, penalties to be undergone for offenses. In these, per se, not only distributive justice can be injured, but also commutative justice; the latter indeed does not regard the proportions by which burdens must be compared: distributive justice does this; but, the proportions having been supposed, it forbids that more be exacted from this or that person, lest there be taken from him what is his without title for exacting it. And similarly it must be said of justice insofar as it is vindicative through penalties: the proportion of penalty with offense being supposed, which distributive justice regards, commutative justice forbids imposing a greater one, lest someone be injured in life, members, or goods without just cause.

Today the principal burdens are taxes and tolls to be paid, and military service to be undergone.