 As an additional improvement in the manner in which Bentham conceived the utility principle, he might have included the “universal interest”, an idea initially stated in Plan of Parliamentary Reform where it appears as a more particular conception of the greatest happiness principle aimed at the “maximum … of comfort and security” for all (1838–43, III, 452). The universal interest relates to interests that are shared by everyone, and only when it is impossible for government to contrive policies to achieve this end is a distribution of happiness less than universal or less than equal justified (1983b, 136). However, the number of decisions made by governments that are genuinely of universal reach are relatively few and may be limited to national defence and the framework of individual rights (securities). Beyond that, redistributive policies invariably involve unequal sacrifices and benefits. This means that the legislator must employ a utilitarian calculation in which the pain experienced by the few is reduced to the minimum necessary to produce benefits for the many; only on this basis may pleasures be summed and pains subtracted in order to produce the rationale to justify the best policy.