made to understand that to attack the existing state of society is equivalent to risking their own lives. Under our own rule, no matter what statesmen like Gladstone and John Morley have in past years urged in favour of the mitigation of penalties for political offences, such offences are, as a matter of fact, punished with special severity; unless, of course, the culprit is intimately connected with great riches, like Dr. Jameson, who was imprisoned as a first-class misdemeanant for the incalculable crime of making private war upon another State; or unless the culprit is intimately connected with votes, like Mr. Ginnell, the Irish cattle-driver, who was treated with similar politeness. Otherwise, until quite lately, even in this country we executed a political criminal with unusual pain. In India we recently kept political suspects imprisoned without charge or trial. And in England we have lately sentenced women to terms of imprisonment that certainly would never have been imposed for their offences on any but political offenders.

This exceptional severity springs from a primitive and natural conception of the State—- a conception most logically expressed by Hobbes of Malmesbury under the similitude of a "mortal God" or Leviathan, the almost omnipotent and unlimited source of authority.

Hobbes considered the object of this Covenant to be peace and common defence. "Without a State," he said, "the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The preservation of the State was to him of transcendent importance.

Under such a system, it follows that rebellion is the worst of crimes. Hobbes calls it a war renewed—a renouncing of the Covenant. He was so terrified of it that he dwelt upon the danger of reading Greek and Roman history (probably having Plutarch and his praise of rebels most in mind)—"which venom," he says, "I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad dog." In all leaders of rebellion he found only three conditions—to be discontented with their own lot, to be eloquent speakers, and to be men of mean judgment and capacity (De Corpore Politico, II.). And as to punishment:

We may take Hobbes as the philosopher of the extreme idea of the State and the consequent iniquity of rebellion. His is the ideal of the Hive, in which the virgin workers devote their whole lives without complaint to the service of the Queen and her State-supported grubs, while the drones are mercilessly slaughtered as soon as one of them has fulfilled his rapturous but suicidal functions for the future swarm. This ideal found its highest human example in the Spartan State, which trained its men to have no private existence at all, and even to visit their own wives by stealth. But we find the ideal present in some degree among Central Africans when they bury valuable slaves and women alive with their chief; and among the Japanese when mothers kill themselves if their sons are prevented from dying for their country; and among the Germans when the drill-sergeant shouts his word of command.

In fact, all races and countries are disciples of Hobbes when they address the Head of the State as "Your Majesty" or "Your Excellence," when they decorate him with fur and feathers, and put a gold hat on his head and a gold walking-stick in his hand, and gird him with a sword that he never uses, and play him the same tune wherever he goes, and spread his platform with crimson though it is clean, and bow before him though he is dishonourable, and call him gracious though he is nasty-tempered, and august though he may be a fool. In the first instance, we go through all this make-believe because the Leviathan of the State is necessary for peace and self-defence, and without it our life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But we further endow the State with a personality we can almost see and handle, and we regard it as something that is able not only to protect our peace but to shed a reflected splendour on ourselves, giving us an importance not our own—just as schoolboys glory in their school, or Churchmen in their Church, or cricketers in their county, or fox-hunters in their pack of hounds.

It is this conception that makes rebellion so rare and so dangerous. In hives it seems never to occur. In rookeries, the rebels are pecked to death and their homes torn in pieces. In human communities we have seen how they are treated. Rebellion is the one crime for which there is no forgiveness—the one crime for which hanging is too good.

Why is it, then, that all the world loves a rebel? Provided he is distant enough in time and space, all the world loves a rebel. Who are the figures in history round whom the people's imagination has woven the fondest dreams? Are they not such rebels as Deborah and Judith[4] and Joan of Arc; as Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the Gracchi and Brutus, William Tell, William Wallace, Simon de Montfort, Rienzi, Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, Shan O'Neill, William the Silent, John Hampden and Pym, the Highlanders of the Forty-five, Robert Emmet and Wolf Tone and Parnell, Bolivar, John Brown of Harper's Ferry, Kossuth, Mazzini and Garibaldi, Danton, Victor Hugo, and the Russian revolutionists? These are haphazard figures of various magnitude, but all have the quality of rebellion in common, and all have been honoured with affectionate glory, romance, and even a mythology of worship.

So, too, the most attractive periods in history have been times of rebellion—the Reformation in Germany, the Revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, the Civil Wars in England, the War of Independence in America, the prolonged revolution in Russia. Within the last hundred years alone, how numerous the rebellions have been, as a rule how successful, and in every case how much applauded, except by the dominant authority attacked! We need only recall the French revolutions of 1832, 1848, and 1870 to 1871, including the Commune; the Greek War of Independence up to 1829; the Polish insurrections of 1830, 1863, and 1905; the liberation of the Danubian Principalities, 1858; of Bulgaria and Thessaly, 1878; of Crete, 1898; the revolution in Hungary, 1848; the restoration of Italy, 1849 to 1860; the revolution in Spain, 1868; the independence of the South American States, 1821 to 1825; the revolution in Russia, Finland, the Caucasus and Baltic Provinces, 1905; the revolution in Persia, 1907 to 1909; and the revolution of the Young Turks, 1908 to 1909. Among these we must also count the Nationalist movements in Ireland, Egypt, and India, as well as the present movement of women against the Government in our own country.

Under these various instances