Literature Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for scholars and enthusiasts of literature. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is from Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, Chapter 16:
As often as he began to consider how to increase this inheritance, or to lay it by, so often his misgiving that there was some one with an unsatisfied claim upon his justice, returned;
What does "unsatisfied claim upon his justice" mean in the above passage?
Arthur Clennam knows that there is a mystery in his background. He cannot help feeling that perhaps someone else is the rightful inheritor of his father's money. Such a person would have a claim upon his justice, i.e., could appeal to Arthur's sense of fairness / right and wrong. Until Arthur shares or relinquishes his inheritance, that person's claim would be unsatisfied.
