 Smith’s account of justice is built upon his account of the spectator’s sympathetic response to the recipient of an agent’s act. If a spectator sympathises with a recipient’s resentment at the agent’s act then he judges the act demeritorious and the agent worthy of punishment. In the latter case the moral quality attributed to the act is injustice. An act of injustice “does a real and positive hurt to some particular persons, from motives which are naturally disapproved of” (Smith 1790, p. 79). Since a failure to act justly has a tendency to result in injury, while a failure to act charitably or generously does not, a distinction is drawn by Smith, in line with Humean thinking, between justice and the other social virtues, on the basis that it is so much more important to prevent injury than promote positive good that the proper response to injustice is punishment, whereas we do not feel it appropriate to punish someone who does not act charitably or gratefully. In a word, we have a stricter obligation to justice than to the other virtues.