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 John Rawls
Debating the Major Questions
Edited by
J O N M A N D L E A N D S A R A H R O B E RT S - C
​ A DY

1
 3
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Names: Mandle, Jon, 1966– editor. | Roberts-Cady, Sarah, editor.
Title: John Rawls : debating the major questions / edited by Jon Mandle and
Sarah Roberts-Cady.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Subjects: LCSH: Rawls, John, 1921–2002. | Political science—Philosophy. |
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 Acknowledgments

Sarah Roberts-​Cady is grateful to her colleagues in the Department of Philosophy

at Fort Lewis College, Justin McBrayer and Dugald Owen, for their guidance,
feedback, and encouragement throughout this project. It was Justin’s great sug-
gestion to structure this book as a dialogue between philosophers with different
views. Both Justin and Dugald read multiple drafts of the book proposal and the
chapter on animals, offering thoughtful and challenging feedback that improved
the work. Sarah is also thankful to her husband, Tony, and her children, Elsie,
Adelaide, Irie, and Brooklyn, for their support and patience all those weekends
when she missed family bike rides and didn’t fold the laundry because she was
working on this book.
Jon Mandle thanks his colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at the
University at Albany, and especially Kristen Hessler, for creating such a posi-
tive and supportive philosophical home. He also thanks David Reidy for sharing
years of conversation and reflection about Rawls’s work. And he is grateful for
the loving care of his family, Karen Schupack and Anna Schupack, who contrib-
uted the cover portrait of Rawls.
 Contributors

Matthew Adams is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in
Society at Stanford University. He specializes in political philosophy with a focus on non-
ideal theory and topics at the intersection of justice and applied ethics. His work has been
published in journals such as the Australasian Journal of Philosophy and The Monist. He is
the editor of Methods in Bioethics: The Way We Reason Now (Oxford, 2017).

Amy R. Baehr is Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University, where she teaches political
philosophy, philosophy of law, and women’s studies. Her work on feminism and liber-
alism has appeared in journals including Law and Philosophy, Ethics, Feminist Philosophy
Quarterly, and Hypatia; and in anthologies including The Philosophy of Rawls: A Collection
of Essays (Garland, 1999), Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls (Penn State, 2013) and
The Original Position (Cambridge, 2016). She is editor of Varieties of Feminist Liberalism
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s
entry on liberal feminism. She is currently working on an edited volume, Caring for
Liberalism: Dependency and Political Theory, with Asha Bhandary (Routledge).

Michael Blake is a Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy, and Governance at the

University of Washington, where he is jointly appointed to the Department of Philosophy
and to the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. He is the author of three books: Justice
and Foreign Policy (Oxford, 2013); Debating Brain Drain: May Governments Prevent
Emigration? with Gillian Brock (Oxford, 2015); and Justice, Migration, and Mercy (Oxford,
2020). His current research focuses on the ethics of migration policy, and the liberal rights
of the dead.

James Boettcher is a Professor of Philosophy at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

His research is focused on public reason. His work has been published in Journal of
Political Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and
Public Affairs Quarterly.

Gillian Brock is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

She has published widely on political and social philosophy, including more than
two hundred peer-​reviewed publications. Her books include Justice for People on the
Move (Cambridge, 2020), Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford, 2009),
Cosmopolitanism versus Non-​cosmopolitanism (Oxford, 2013), Debating Brain Drain, with
Michael Blake (Oxford, 2015), and Global Health and Global Health Ethics, with Solomon
Benatar (Cambridge, 2011).

M. Victoria Costa is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at William and Mary. She has
numerous peer-​reviewed publications on social and political philosophy, particularly on
xii Contributors

John Rawls’s liberalism and Philip Pettit’s neorepublicanism. Her papers have appeared
in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, Hypatia, the Journal of Social Philosophy, and
Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, among others. She is the author of Rawls,
Citizenship and Education (Routledge, 2011).

Colin Farrelly is Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in the Department of Political
Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. His books include Justice, Democracy
and Reasonable Agreement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Virtue Jurisprudence, coedited
with Lawrence Solum (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Biologically Modified Justice
(Cambridge, 2016), and Genetic Ethics: An Introduction (Polity, 2018).

Tony Fitzpatrick is a Reader in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University
of Nottingham. His recent books include International Handbook on Social Policy and the
Environment (Edward Elgar, 2014), Climate Change and Poverty (Policy Press, 2014), A
Green History of the Welfare State (Routledge, 2017), and How to Live Well: Epicurus as a
Guide to Contemporary Social Reform (Edward Elgar, 2018).

Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at Goethe-​University in

Frankfurt. He specializes in the foundations of morality and the basic concepts of norma-
tive political theory. In 2012, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize by the German Research
Foundation. His books include Contexts of Justice (University of California Press, 2002),
Toleration in Conflict (Cambridge, 2013), The Right to Justification (Columbia, 2012),
Justification and Critique (Polity, 2014), and Normativity and Power (Oxford, 2017).

Christie Hartley is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University.

She has published articles on political philosophy and feminist theory in Social Theory
and Practice, Law and Philosophy, Philosophy Compass, Journal of Ethics and Social
Philosophy, the Journal of Social Philosophy, and Philosophical Studies. With Lori Watson,
she is the author of Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism
(Oxford, 2018).

Eva Feder Kittay is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University.

She has published widely in feminist philosophy, political theory, and disability studies.
Her books include Learning From My Daughter: The Value and Care of Disabled Minds
(Oxford 2019), Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency (Routledge, 2009,
Revised 2nd Edition 2019), Cognitive Disability and the Challenge to Moral Philosophy
(Wiley-​Blackwell, 2010), The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy (Blackwell, 2007),
and Theoretical Perspectives on Dependency and Women (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

Kasper Lippert-​Rasmussen is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at

Aarhus University in Denmark and a Professor II in the Department of Philosophy at
UiT—​The Arctic University of Norway. He has published extensively on issues of ethics
and justice. Recent books include Luck Egalitarianism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015),
Relational Egalitarianism (Cambridge, 2018), and Making Sense of Affirmative Action
(Oxford, 2018). Presently, he is working on a book manuscript on being in a position
to blame.
 Contributors xiii

Christopher Lowry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the

University of Waterloo. His research interests include political philosophical method-
ology, justice and disability, and the intersection of egalitarianism and bioethics. His work
has been featured in the Journal of Social Philosophy and in the collection From Disability
Theory to Practice, edited by Christopher A. Riddle (Lexington Books, 2018).

Jon Mandle is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Albany. His scholarly work focuses on
political philosophy and ethics, with a special emphasis on John Rawls. He is the coed-
itor of The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, with David Reidy (Cambridge, 2015), and A
Companion to Rawls, with David Reidy (Blackwell, 2014). He is also the author of three
monographs: Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice”: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2009), Global
Justice (Polity Press, 2006), and What’s Left of Liberalism? An Interpretation and Defense of
Justice as Fairness (Lexington Books, 2000).

Rekha Nath is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama. Her re-
search in ethics and political philosophy has been published in journals such as Bioethics,
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, The Monist, and Social Theory and Practice. She is
currently working on a book on the injustice of weight stigma.

Jeppe von Platz is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Richmond. He is

the winner of the American Philosophical Association Fred Berger Memorial Prize 2008,
which he shares with David Reidy. His research on political philosophy can be found in
the book Theories of Distributive Justice: Who Gets What and Why? (Routledge, 2020) and
in articles published by Ethics, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, the Journal of Value
Inquiry, Public Affairs Quarterly, and the Journal of Social Philosophy.

David A. Reidy is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee–​Knoxville.

He works in political and legal philosophy with a special focus on John Rawls. In addi-
tion to publishing many articles, he coedited A Companion to Rawls, with Jon Mandle
(Blackwell, 2014), The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, with Jon Mandle (Cambridge, 2015),
Rawls (Ashgate, 2008), and Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia? with Rex Martin
(Wiley-​Blackwell, 2006).

Sarah Roberts-​Cady is a Professor of Philosophy at Fort Lewis College. Her work on

ethics and political philosophy has been published in journals such as the Journal of Social
Philosophy; Ethics, Policy & Environment; International Journal of Applied Philosophy; and
Politics and the Life Sciences.

Patrick Taylor Smith is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Twente,

where he focuses on global and intergenerational justice as they relate to technology
and the environment. His work has been published in The Monist, Journal of Applied
Philosophy, Ethics, Policy, and the Environment, Philosophy and Public Issues, Critical
Review of International and Social Philosophy, and Transnational Legal Theory.

Alan Thomas is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of York in the UK. He has
published extensively in ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of mind. His
xiv Contributors

books include Value and Context (Oxford, 2006), Thomas Nagel (Acumen Press and
McGill/​Queen’s University Press, 2009/​2015), Bernard Williams (as editor and contrib-
utor) (Cambridge, 2007), and Republic of Equals: Pre-​distribution and Property-​Owning
Democracy (Oxford, 2017). He is currently completing a book titled Ethics in the First
Person.

Lori Watson is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of San Diego, and
affiliate faculty in the School of Law. She has recently published two books with Oxford
University Press, Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism,
with Christie Hartley (2018), and Debating Pornography, with Andrew Altman (2019).
Her third book, Debating Sex Work, with Jessica Flannigan, is forthcoming. She has also
published numerous articles on topics in political philosophy and feminism.
 An Introduction to Rawls on Justice
Jon Mandle and Sarah Roberts-​Cady

For almost fifty years, the work of John Rawls (1921–​2002) has played a central
and guiding role in the development of Anglo-​American political philosophy.
This is certainly not to say that his views have been uncritically accepted. On the
contrary, an enormous literature has been generated criticizing and explaining
where Rawls goes wrong. But each of Rawls’s three major books, A Theory
of Justice, first published in 1971 (revised edition 1999), Political Liberalism,
first published in 1993 (expanded edition 2005), and The Law of Peoples, first
published in 1999, set the agenda for many other philosophers’ major research
projects.1 In this introduction, we provide only the barest overview of the key
ideas of his first two majors volumes, with discussions of The Law of Peoples
found in the introductions to Parts IX and X.
Rawls’s aim in his first major book, A Theory of Justice, is to identify prin-
ciples of justice for guiding the basic terms of cooperation within a society. In
particular, he wants to offer an alternative to utilitarianism, which he argues
cannot “provide a satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of free and
equal persons.”2 Rawls was immensely successful in establishing “justice as fair-
ness” as at least a credible alternative to utilitarianism. In addition to defending
nonutilitarian principles for evaluating social justice, he also developed a dis-
tinctive method of justifying them, an account of moral psychology and devel-
opment, and much else. But there were important limitations and simplifying
assumptions that Rawls explicitly noted. For example, he was narrow in his focus
on principles of justice for evaluating the “basic structure of society”—​the system
formed by a society’s basic social institutions—​rather than other possible objects
of evaluation, such as the justice of particular laws and policies. And he put aside
(until The Law of Peoples) questions about the justice of relations among different

1 His other books, which we will here treat largely as supplemental, are Collected Papers, ed.

Samuel Freeman (Harvard University Press, 1999); Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed.
Samuel Freeman (Harvard University Press, 2007); Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy,
ed. Samuel Freeman (Harvard University Press, 2007); his undergraduate thesis, A Brief Inquiry
into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, ed. Thomas Nagel (Harvard University Press, 2009); and Justice as
Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Harvard University Press, 2001).
2 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Harvard University Press 1999), xii.

Jon Mandle and Sarah Roberts-Cady, An Introduction to Rawls on Justice In: John Rawls. Edited by: Jon Mandle and
Sarah Roberts-Cady, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190859213.003.0001.
2 John Rawls

societies. He also said little about the transition from an existing society with its
injustices of various kinds and degrees to a more just arrangement. He believed
that the distinctive contribution that philosophers could make was to develop
and defend principles to be used in evaluation, but that the application of these
principles to actual societies and the consideration of the implications of var-
ious alternative arrangements depend on the kinds of expertise that political
scientists, economists, sociologists, historians, and others could provide. Social
critique is an interdisciplinary endeavor, with philosophers having an important
but limited role.
Rawls’s approach to justifying principles of justice is antifoundational. He
rejects the attempt to reduce moral principles (including principles of justice) to
a nonmoral foundation. “A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self-​
evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter
of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into
one coherent view.”3 Fortunately, there is no special urgency to provide nonmoral
foundations since we do not come to the project of justification in complete moral
ignorance. On the contrary, there are certain “considered convictions” about
which we are quite confident. Indeed, he writes, “Some judgments we view as
fixed points: ones we never expect to withdraw, as when Lincoln says: ‘If slavery
is not wrong, nothing is wrong.’ ”4 In A Theory of Justice, he gives the examples
of the injustice of “religious intolerance and racial discrimination.”5 However, at
the same time, there are many questions of justice where we are unsure or disa-
gree with one another. Rawls mentions “the correct distribution of wealth and
authority” and notes that in such cases, “we may be looking for a way to remove
our doubts.”6 The idea, then, is to develop a theory that provides a unified per-
spective on the questions where we are relatively confident as well as the areas
where we are unsure, thus helping to illuminate the latter. Presumably, there will
be tensions and conflicts among our considered convictions and proposed prin-
ciples. The ideal in which we achieve coherence at all levels, as well as the process
of working toward this ideal, is called “reflective equilibrium.”
Rawls does not simply tell us to go off and try to reach reflective equilibrium.
He develops a tool to help us do so. Putting himself in the tradition of Locke,
Rousseau, and Kant, he has us consider the principles of justice as the product of
a social contract that would be made in an imaginary but fair initial choice situa-
tion. Rawls calls his choice situation “the original position,” and its most striking
feature is that the parties there are to agree to principles of justice from behind a

3 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 19.

4 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 29.
5 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 17.
6 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 18.
 An Introduction to Rawls on Justice 3

“veil of ignorance.” That is, they are to agree to the principles to be used in eval-
uating the basic structure without knowing any specific features of themselves
or their situation. The veil prevents them from knowing, among other things,
their gender, race, ethnicity, level of wealth, social position, religion, or partic-
ular conception of the good (what specific ends and activities they find valuable
and worth pursuing). Therefore, it forces them to consider the principles from
everyone’s point of view because they must make a choice knowing that when the
veil is lifted, so to speak, they might turn out to be anyone.
There is an apparent problem, however, with this brief overview of the orig-
inal position as so far described. If the parties making the social contract do not
know anything about themselves or their specific system of values (their con-
ception of the good), on what basis do they make any choice at all? Rawls’s an-
swer is that they do know, among other things, that they would prefer a larger to
a smaller share of “social primary goods.” These can be understood as broadly
based resources that are not tied to or dependent on any particular conception
of the good. When Rawls initially introduces them, he includes “rights, liberties,
and opportunities, and income and wealth.”7 He later adds “the social basis of
self-​respect,” which he identifies as “perhaps the most important.”8 (A somewhat
more specific list and changes to their justification is given in Political Liberalism,
181. See our introduction to Part V.)
Having specified the motivation of the parties in the original position as well
as the constraints of the situation that they find themselves in, Rawls can con-
sider which principles it would be rational for them to choose. He argues that the
nature of the choice would force the parties to compare alternative sets of prin-
ciples with special attention to the least advantaged social position that each set
of principles might generate. In A Theory of Justice, the details of this argument
are somewhat obscure and are spread over many sections, but it is presented in
a much more straightforward way in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, part III.
Although we will not reproduce this argument here, the conclusion of the argu-
ment from the original position is that the parties would choose the following
two principles:

First principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total
system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberties
for all.

Second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that

they are both:

7 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 54.

8 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 348.
4 John Rawls

(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged . . . and

(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity.9

The first principle is sometimes called the “liberty principle,” and it takes priority
over the second principle in the sense that no violation of the first principle can be
justified by better satisfying the second principle. The liberty principle holds that
there is a basic and extensive set of political and civil liberties to which all citizens
have an equal right. The second principle concerns the distribution of economic
and social (primary) goods. It has two parts called (a) the “difference principle”
and (b) “fair equality of opportunity.” The difference principle holds that inequal-
ities among social positions in social and economic goods are acceptable only if
the inequalities work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged position. That
is, in order for a structural inequality to be just, that inequality must result in the
least advantaged position doing better than it would without that inequality, that
is, in a condition of equal distribution. In short, those who are better off cannot
justify their advantaged position if it comes at the expense of others. The prin-
ciple of fair equality of opportunity requires that society must be arranged so that
all have an equal opportunity to develop their talents and abilities, such that all
can compete fairly for the various social positions, and in particular, for those
positions associated with greater wealth or power.
Rawls holds that “the social system is not an unchangeable order beyond
human control but a pattern of human action.”10 Therefore, the achievement of a
just basic structure and the stability of such a structure once achieved depend on
the development of a sense of justice among citizens. This sense of justice must
be adequate to overcome conflicting sources of motivation, for example, those
grounded in one’s particular conception of the good. The issue of stability is in-
frequently addressed by political philosophers, but Rawls extensively discusses
the issue in the final third of A Theory of Justice. As he conceives it, the problem
of stability has two parts. The first is to describe the acquisition of a normally ef-
fective sense of justice as a child matures into a citizen. The second is what Rawls
calls “congruence,” and it concerns the consistency or “fit” between a citizen’s
sense of justice and her conception of the good.
In comparison to the massive secondary literature on the other elements
of the theory, the material in this third part has been relatively neglected, de-
spite Rawls’s comment in 1993, “The part of the book I always liked best was
the third, on moral psychology.”11 Yet, in the years following the publication of

9 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 266.

10 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 88.
11 Quoted in Samuel Freeman, Rawls (Routledge, 2007), 6.
 An Introduction to Rawls on Justice 5

A Theory of Justice, Rawls himself came to doubt the success of the congruence
argument. In the introduction to Political Liberalism, Rawls refers to “a serious
problem internal to justice as fairness, namely . . . that the account of stability
in Part III of Theory is not consistent with the view as a whole.” He continues: “I
believe all differences [between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism] are
consequences of removing that inconsistency. Otherwise these lectures take
the structure and content of Theory to remain substantially the same.”12 As con-
ceived in A Theory of Justice, principles of justice aimed to ensure that the shared
institutions of the basic structure were fair to individuals who, while they shared
a sense of justice, differed from one another in their conception of the good. Fair
treatment required: (1) an equal scheme of liberties entitling each to a formal
right to form and to pursue her (permissible) ends; (2) a fair share of resources
with which to pursue her ends.
But Rawls came to believe that the pluralism that will inevitably characterize
a free and just society is not limited to the different ends that individuals will
pursue (their conceptions of the good).13 Rather, the pluralism is deep, in that
each individual will typically have a (fully or partially) comprehensive religious,
philosophical, or moral doctrine within which she will embed and seek to jus-
tify her conception of the good and her sense of justice. This pluralism is (or
may be) reasonable, since it is not (necessarily) the result of failures of reasoning.
On the contrary, we should see this reasonable pluralism “as the inevitable long-​
run result of the powers of human reason at work within the background of en-
during free institutions.”14 Since there is not a shared comprehensive doctrine,
there cannot be a single argument based on such a doctrine that would establish
congruence for all citizens between the principles of justice and their other com-
prehensive values. Indeed, there cannot be a single comprehensive argument to
establish the content of the principles of justice. Fortunately, the argument from
the original position does not need to be understood as a comprehensive argu-
ment, based on some particular comprehensive doctrine. Instead, as Rawls came
to recognize, it could be presented as establishing a political conception of justice.
Political Liberalism aims to develop the ideas and arguments necessary to un-
derstand justice as fairness, and a family of other liberal conceptions of justice,
as forms of a political conception of justice. “While such a [political] conception
is, of course, a moral conception, it is a moral conception worked out for a spe-
cific kind of subject, namely, for political, social, and economic institutions.”15

12 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded ed. (Columbia University Press, 2005), xvi.
13 For a thorough accounting of the difficulties Rawls found in the congruence argument and
how Political Liberalism responded to them, see Paul Weithman, Why Political Liberalism? (Oxford
University Press, 2010).
14 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 4.
15 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 11.
6 John Rawls

A political conception of justice aims to be compatible with a wide range of rea-

sonable comprehensive theories. As such, it does not depend on any particular
comprehensive doctrine. Instead, “Its content is expressed in terms of certain
fundamental ideas seen as implicit in the public political culture of a constitu-
tional regime.”16 These public, political ideas are assumed to be shared by the
diverse, reasonable, comprehensive doctrines in the society.
While a political conception is presented as not being dependent on any com-
prehensive doctrine, each reasonable comprehensive doctrine, from its own
point of view, can go beyond the political conception and embed it within its
own values and worldview. Thus, “The political conception is a module, an es-
sential constituent part, that fits into and can be supported by various reasonable
comprehensive doctrines that endure in the society regulated by it.”17 When dif-
ferent reasonable comprehensive doctrines each affirm the same political con-
ception of justice, each for its own comprehensive reasons, a society has achieved
an “overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines.” This idea fills the conceptual
gap left by the unrealistic aspirations of the congruence argument from A Theory
of Justice. A society characterized by an overlapping consensus will be “stable for
the right reasons.”18 Rawls notes that “the idea of an overlapping consensus is
easily misunderstood given the idea of consensus used in everyday political.”19
It might be thought, for example, that the idea is to “look to the comprehensive
doctrines that in fact exist and then draw up a political conception that strikes
some kind of balance of forces between them.” But: “This is not how justice as
fairness proceeds; to do so would make it political in the wrong way.”20 A polit-
ical conception of justice is developed as a free-​standing “normative and moral
idea.”21 It is crucial to note that the overlapping consensus is among reasonable
comprehensive doctrines. Any actual society will undoubtedly have some unrea-
sonable persons and doctrines. There is no principled reason (although of course
there may be practical reasons) to compromise in order to accommodate them.
Indeed, Rawls notes, “In their case the problem is to contain them so that they do
not undermine the unity and justice of society.”22
A just society, for Rawls, is a democratic society in a particularly deep sense,
with its own ideal of democratic citizenship. The political relationship among
members of such a society is one of “free and equal citizens who exercise ulti-
mate political power as a collective body.”23 This raises the question of how

16 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13.

17 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 12.
18 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxxvii.
19 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 39.
20 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 39–​40.
21 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxxvi.
22 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xvii.
23 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xliii.
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Title: Saved by love

A story of London streets

Author: Emma Leslie

Release date: March 21, 2024 [eBook #73224]

Language: English

Original publication: London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1913

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAVED BY

LOVE ***
 Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is
as printed.

"What is it? Haven't you got anything to eat?"

she asked.
 SAVED BY LOVE
A Story of London Streets.

By

EMMA LESLIE.

London:

T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.

EDINBURGH; DUBLIN; AND NEW YORK.

1913
 Contents.

CHAPTER

I. ALL ALONE IN LONDON

II. GETTING A LIVING

III. OUR FATHER

IV. ELFIE'S SIXPENCE

V. SAVED BY LOVE

VI. WILL SHE CONQUER?

VII. CONCLUSION

SAVED BY LOVE.

CHAPTER I.
ALL ALONE IN LONDON.
 THERE are some places in London where King Dirt holds
a carnival all the year round—narrow back streets, where
the tall houses, almost meeting at the top, shut out every
gleam of sunlight, except during the longest and hottest
days of summer; and then only a narrow rift of golden glory
lights up a strip in the centre, and makes the shady corners
look more dark and desolate than ever.

In one of the shadowed nooks of such a street sat a

little girl, her head leaning against the brick wall for a
pillow; and you might have thought her fast asleep, but for
an occasional sob. She had cried so long that her eyes were
swollen and heavy; and even the faint light of Fisher's Lane
made them ache so much that she was glad to close them.

No one noticed her for some time, but at length a girl

about her own age stopped and looked at her, and at last
spoke.

"What's the matter?" she said, touching her shoulder.

With a sob and a start the girl opened her eyes.

"O Elfie, is it you?" she said; and then her tears broke
out afresh.

"What is it? Haven't you got anything to eat?" she

asked.

"I shall never want to eat anything again," sobbed the

other. "O Elfie, mother's dead!"

"Dead, is she?" said Elfie, but looking as though she

could not understand why that should cause any one to cry.
 "I shall never be happy again, Elfie. O mother, mother,
why didn't you take me with you?" wailed the poor little
orphan.

"Just because she didn't want you, I guess," said Elfie,

but at the same time sitting down to soothe the grief she
could not understand. "There, don't cry," she went on in a
matter-of-fact tone. "My mother's gone away, but I don't
cry after her; not a bit of it; I know better than that, Susie
Sanders."

Susie shrank from her companion's touch as she said

this, and thought of what her mother had said about
making companions of the children in the street, and half
regretted having spoken to Elfie. There was a great
difference in the two girls, any one could see, though both
might be equally poor. Elfie was unmistakably a street child,
ragged, dirty, sharp-looking, with bright cunning eyes
shining out of a good-tempered-looking face; while Susie, in
her patched black frock and tidy pinafore, and timid,
shrinking ways, showed unmistakably that, poor as she
might be, there had been some one to love and take care of
her. Alas for her, poor child! Her only friend in the wide
world had died that morning, leaving her alone in the
streets of London.

It was the old, old story: a widow striving to work for

herself and her only child, and sinking at last beneath the
stroke of disease, after giving up one by one every article of
furniture, and moving from place to place, until at last she
was glad to find a refuge in the garret of one of these gaunt
houses, where she had not lived many weeks before God
called her to the mansion he had prepared for her.

She had talked to Susie of this, and tried to prepare the

child's mind for the coming of the sad trial; but the little girl
had hoped that her mother would get better "by-and-by."
And so, when at last she woke up that morning and leaned
over her mother, and found that she could not speak, nor
even return the caresses lavished on her cold lips and brow,
she grew frightened at the unwonted stillness, but yet could
not think her mother was dead, until some of the
neighbours came in and told her so.

Mrs. Sanders had not made friends with her neighbours,

and they had thought her proud, because she did not talk to
them of her affairs. And so, beyond telling Susie to go to
the overseer of the parish, and ask him to send some one
to bury her mother, they did not trouble themselves.

Susie had just been on this errand, and had wandered

out again into the street to cry there, when Elfie saw her.
They had spoken to each other before, but there had not
been much acquaintance, for Mrs. Sanders kept her little
girl in-doors as much as possible. But Elfie had taken a
fancy to Susie, and resolved to befriend her now; so instead
of moving away when she was repulsed, she put her bare
grimy arms round Susie's neck, and said—

"Tell us all about it, Susie; the boys shan't hit you while
I'm here."

To tell "all about it" was just what Susie wanted. No one
else had asked about her mother, except the few hard
questions put by the overseer, and so she gladly nestled
close up to Elfie, and told of her waking that morning to find
her mother cold and dead.

A grief like Susie's was quite beyond Elfie's

comprehension. Her mother had left her six months before
—gone off no one knew where, and no one cared—at least
Elfie did not. No one beat her now, she said; and if she was
hungry sometimes, it was better to be hungry than bruised,
and no one dared to do that now, so that she was rather
glad to be left free to do as she pleased. But Susie shook
her head very sadly when told she ought to be glad.

"I can't," she said, "though mother told me that God

would take care of me when she was gone. I wanted to go
with her; and be happy in heaven now."

"And why didn't she take you?" said Elfie, whose ideas
about heaven were not at all clear.

"She said I must stay here a bit longer, and do the work
God meant me to do."

"What work's that?" asked Elfie.

Susie shook her head. "I don't know, unless it's sewing
shirts like mother did," she said.

"Sewing shirts!" repeated Elfie; "People starve at that,

and have to sit still too. I'd rather go about and see places,
and starve that way than the other," she added, shrugging
her shoulders.

"You don't like sewing, then," said Susie. "What do you

do, Elfie, to earn money?"

Elfie laughed. "Oh, it ain't much money I earns; but I

manage to get something to eat somehow, and that's what
you've got to do now, I suppose."

Again the tears came into Susie's eyes. "I don't know
what I'm going to do," she said. "Mother told me to read
last night about the ravens taking food to Elijah, and she
said God would send his angels here to take care of me."
 "Then that shows she knew nothing about this place,"
said Elfie in her hard, matter-of-fact tone. "Angels don't
come down Fisher's Lane—at least I never see 'em, and I'm
out pretty near all hours, night and day too."

Susie sighed. "I don't think it was quite an angel with

white wings mother meant, but somebody who would be
kind and take care of me—a lady or gentleman perhaps,"
she said.

Elfie laughed. "Catch a lady or gentleman coming down

here!" she said.

And the idea of such a thing seemed so ridiculous that

she burst into a second peal of laughter, until Susie looked
offended.

And then she said more gravely, "It's all a mistake,

Susie, about the angels or anybody else caring for you. I
know all about it, for I've lived in Fisher's Lane ever since I
was born, and people have got to take care of themselves, I
can tell you."

"But how shall I take care of myself?" asked Susie. "I

know there's some money to pay the rent next week, but
when that's gone what am I to do?"

"Get some more," said Elfie shortly. "I'll help you," she
added.

"Thank you. Will you come home with me and stay to-
night? I'm dull by myself," said Susie with a deep sigh.

Her companion joyfully assented, and went off to the

market in search of some stale fruit to share with Susie at
once. Then they went back together to Susie's home, and,
going up the stairs, overheard two of the women talking to
the man who had come to see about the funeral.

Susie was too much overcome with grief to pay any

attention to what was said; but Elfie had had all her wits
sharpened, and she laid her hand on Susie's arm and made
her sit down on the stairs, while she listened to the
conversation going on just above them.

When they reached the garret, and Elfie had shut the
door and glanced round the room, she said, "Look here,
Susie, which will you like best;—to stop here and work for
yourself, and go out when you like; or have somebody come
and shut you up in a horrible place, with high walls like a
prison, and make you work there?"

Susie shivered. "Nobody would do that to me," she said,

looking across at the bed where her mother lay covered
with the sheet, and thinking what she had said of God
caring for her.

"But they will, though, if you don't look sharp, for I

heard the woman say you'd better go to the work-house,"
replied Elfie.

She had heard the work-house spoken of very often,

but did not know what it was like, or that the life of children
there was far less hard than hers. She only knew they were
not allowed to run about the streets; and the idea of being
shut up in any place was dreadful to Elfie, and must be to
everybody else, she thought.

She succeeded in making Susie dread being taken

there.

"But what shall I do to pay the rent here?" she asked.

 "Well, it would be nice to stop here," said Elfie; "but I
manage without paying rent anywhere and that's a saving
of money."

"But where do you go to bed?" asked Susie.

"Well, I ain't been to bed in that sort of bed for nearly

six months," she said, pointing towards the corner. "I sleep
under a cart, or on a heap of straw, or anywhere I can find
a nice place; it don't matter much when you're asleep
where you are, so long as you're out of the way of the rats."

Susie shook her head. "I shouldn't like that," she said.

"Well, no, I suppose you wouldn't," said Elfie, again

looking round the room. "People that's always been used to
tables and chairs, and them sort of things, like you've got
here, wouldn't like to sleep out under a waggon, I guess."

"How can people do without tables and chairs?" said

Susie. "How can they live?"

"Oh, pretty well! Lots of us have to do without them,

and other things besides," said Elfie carelessly; "but you
couldn't, I suppose, and so we must try to keep these."

"How shall we do it?" asked Susie.

"Well, you can sew shirts, and I can get a job now and
then at the market, and sometimes I clean steps for people,
and that all brings money. How much do you pay for this
little room?" she asked.

"A shilling a week," answered Susie. "Mother's put the

shilling away for next week, and she paid the landlord
yesterday."
 "All right. Have you got any shirts to sew?" asked Elfie.

Susie opened her mother's bundle of work, and took out

two that were unfinished.

"I'll finish them and take them home, and ask them to
give me some," she said.

Elfie took one and examined it. "Well, I shouldn't know

how to put all them bits in the right places," she said.

This was a difficulty that had never struck Susie. She

had helped her mother to make these coarse blue shirts—
sewing, hemming, and stitching in turn; but she had never
put one together entirely by herself. She looked up in a little
dismay.

"I don't think I know how to do it either," she said in a

tone of perplexity.

But Elfie turned and turned the shirt about, and at last
she said, "Look here, Susie; you'll have to keep one of
these back when you take the others home, and then we'll
find out how they're to be done between us."

Susie began to think Elfie almost as wise as her mother.

She seemed to know how to manage everything, and before
evening came she began to look up to her as a friend as
well as a companion.

Elfie hardly liked sleeping in the room with that long

stretch of whiteness at the farther end. She had never seen
Susie's mother while living, and would not have raised the
sheet now to look at the still, calm face for anything. She
would rather have gone out to sleep in one of the holes or
corners of the Adelphi arches, even risking an encounter
with the rats, than sleep there; but for Susie's sake she
determined to stay.

The next morning she persuaded Susie to sit down to

her sewing, while she went out to look for something to eat.
Meals taken in the ordinary way Elfie had no idea of; she
was used to look about the streets for any scraps of food
she could pick up, in the same way that a homeless, hungry
dog might do, and so it was no hardship for her to go
without her breakfast. Susie had often had to wait for it
lately—wait all day, feeling faint and hungry, but obliged to
sew and stitch on still, that her mother might get the work
home in time. She had to do this to-day, and then could not
finish all. But she tied up her bundle, leaving the unfinished
one out for a pattern; and then put on her bonnet to go
forth to tell the sad story to another—that her mother was
dead, and would never sew shirts any more.

As the man counted the shirts over, she said, "Please,

sir, I've left one at home, it ain't quite finished; but mother
—"

"There, there, child, I can't listen to tales about your

mother," interrupted the man; "she's always been honest,
and I won't grumble about the shirt this time; but it must
not occur again. I can't give you so many either this time,
trade is getting dull now."

And pushing Susie's bundle towards her, he turned to

another workwoman, and Susie went out wishing she had
had the courage to say her mother was dead; for she felt as
though she was deceiving him, taking this work to do by
herself.

As she went back, Elfie met her. "I've got a nice lot of
cold potatoes at home," she said, "and a big handful of
cherries that I picked up in the market; and I've seen the
work-house man, and told him you ain't going with him."

"What did you say?" asked Susie.

"I told him somebody was coming to live here and take
care of you. It's just what I mean to do, Susie," she added;
"for I like you, and it'll be fair, you see, if I comes to sleep
here when it's cold and wet; for it ain't nice out-of-doors
then, I can tell you."

So the compact was formed between these two, and

they agreed to help each other and live together, if only the
neighbours and work-house people would leave them alone.

They need not have troubled themselves very much

about this. The neighbours thought they had done enough
when they told the man he had better take Susie to the
work-house; while he evidently thought the parish need not
be troubled, if she had some one to come and live with and
take care of her.

And so, after the coffin was taken out and carried to its
lowly resting-place, no one troubled himself to visit the little
garret, or look after the lonely orphan. Elfie did not stay in-
doors much; but whenever she found anything extra nice,
she always ran home to share it with Susie, and faithfully
brought in every penny she earned, to put into the tin box
where the rent money was kept. Susie succeeded in her
shirt-making better than she expected; but life was very
hard, and she sorely missed her mother, and shed many
bitter tears when she thought of her.
 CHAPTER II.
GETTING A LIVING.

AFTER Mrs. Sanders was buried, people seemed to

forget all about Susie. The landlord called for his rent, and
Susie paid him; which was all he wanted, so he did not
trouble himself to inquire whether she was living alone or
had any one to take care of her; and Elfie had told her not
to say anything about it unless she was asked.

Elfie was rather proud of her new mode of living—

having a roof to shelter her at night, a little spot she could
call home—and she honestly believed Susie could not get on
without her; and the feeling that she had some one to take
care of, made her more careful of the things which were
placed under her charge in the market.

But in spite of her care, and the extra employment it

often brought her, the rent money could only be made up
sometimes by Susie going without food the day before, for
she could not eat the rubbish and refuse Elfie seemed to
enjoy. A breakfast or dinner of raw pea-shells Susie could
not eat above once or twice; and the stale fruit that Elfie
brought home for her often made her ill, so that if she could
not afford to buy a loaf, she often preferred being hungry to
the chance of being ill and unable to work.

But the greatest trouble of all to Susie was the different

way in which she spent Sunday. She missed her mother
more on that day than any other; for poor as Mrs. Sanders
had been, she had always contrived to go to church and
take Susie with her, until she came to Fisher's Lane, and
was unable to go out on account of illness. Elfie, however,
had no other idea of Sunday than of a day to play more and
eat less; for as there were no steps to clean nor baskets to
mind, and very little refuse to be found about the market,
she generally lay down to sleep, feeling very hungry on
Sunday night.

Susie always folded up her work and put it away early

on Saturday, that she might have time to clean the room,
just as her mother had done. And so Elfie, finding her
companion was not going to do any needlework on Sunday,
persuaded her to come out to play; and for the sake of
pleasing her Susie went. But the rough, noisy games of
Elfie's companions, Susie could not enjoy, and she was glad
to sit down in a quiet corner and think of her mother and
the bright home she had gone to. Then she thought of their
walks to church, and what she heard there, and how
grieved her mother would be if she could see her now
playing with these children, until she felt strongly inclined to
run off to church now if only she knew her way.

She resolved not to go out to play again on Sunday;

and when the next came round, she said, "Do you know
your way to church, Elfie?"

"To church!" repeated Elfie. "They won't let us play

there."

"No, I don't want to play," said Susie, looking down at

her shabby frock, and wondering whether that was fit to go
to church in. "I want to do as mother did, and she always
went to church on Sundays."

Elfie looked puzzled. "Church ain't for poor people like

us," she said.

"Oh yes, it is. Mother used to say she could never bear
the trouble at all, if she could not go to church and get
some help from God for it on Sundays."

"Eh? It's all along of the tables and chairs, and sleeping
in beds, I suppose," said Elfie, a little disdainfully.

"Church has nothing to do with tables and chairs," said

Susie. "We go there to hear about God and the Lord Jesus
Christ."

"Well, there ain't no God for poor people that don't have
tables and chairs," said Elfie.

"O Elfie, don't say that; God loves you, and wants you
to know and love him."

"What! Wants me to go to church?" asked Elfie.

Susie nodded. "Come with me, will you?" she said

eagerly.

Elfie laughed. "Catch me trying it, won't you; and

there's a policeman walking up and down in front all the
time."

"But the policeman is not there to keep people from

going in," said Susie.

"What does he walk up and down there for, then?"

asked Elfie quickly.

Susie could not answer this question, but she said,

"Well, I know he don't keep people out."

"Not fine people that's got tables and chairs at home.

God wants them in there perhaps, and so he gives the
police orders to let 'em in. I know all about it, you see," she
added triumphantly.