them until the reign of George III.[1] These were the words that Judge Jeffreys and Scroggs, for instance, used to roll out with enjoyable eloquence upon the dazed agricultural labourer before them:

"Why all this cookery?" once asked a Scottish rebel, quoted by Swift. But the sentence, with its confiding appeal to a higher Court than England's, was literally carried out upon rebels in this country for at least four and a half centuries. Every detail of it (and one still more disgusting) is recorded in the execution of Sir William Wallace, the national hero of Scotland, more generally known to the English of the time as "the man of Belial," who was executed at Tyburn in 1305.[2] The rebels of 1745 were, apparently, the last upon whom the full ritual was performed, and Elizabeth Gaunt, burnt alive at Tyburn in 1685 for sheltering a conspirator in the Rye House Plot, was the last woman up to now intentionally put to death in this country for a purely political offence. The long continuance of so savage a sentence is proof of the abhorrence in which the crime of rebellion has been held. And in many minds the abhorrence still subsists. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, for instance, one of our greatest authorities on criminal law, wrote in 1880:

Among ourselves the opinion of this high authority has slowly declined. No one supposed that Doctor Lynch, for instance, would be executed as a rebel for commanding the Irish Brigade that fought for the Boers during the South African War, though he was condemned to death by the highest Court in the kingdom. No Irish rebel has been executed for about a century, unless his offence involved some one's death. On the other hand, during the Boer War, the devastation of the country and the destruction of the farms were frequently defended on the ground that, after the Queen's proclamations annexing the two Republics, all the inhabitants were rebels; and some of the extreme newspapers even urged that for that reason no Boer with arms in his hand should be given quarter. On the strength of a passage in Scripture, Mr. Kipling, at the time, wrote a pamphlet identifying rebellion with witchcraft. A few Cape Boers who took up arms for the assistance of their race were shot without benefit of prisoners of war. And in India during 1907 and 1908 men of unblemished private character were spirited away to jail without charge or trial and kept there for months—a fate that could not have befallen any but political prisoners.

Outside our own Empire, I have myself witnessed the suppression of rebellions in Crete and Macedonia by the destruction of villages, the massacre of men, women, and children, and the violation of women and girls, many of whom disappeared into Turkish harems. And I have witnessed similar suppressions of rebellion by Russia in Moscow, in the Baltic Provinces, and the Caucasus, by the burning of villages, the slaughter of prisoners, and the violation of women. All this has happened within the last sixteen years, the worst part within nine and a half. Indeed, in Russia the punishments of exile, torture, and hanging have not ceased since 1905, though the death penalty has been long abolished there except for political offences. In the summer of 1909 I was also present during the suppression of the outbreak in Barcelona, which culminated in the execution of Señor Ferrer under a military Court.

From these recent events it is evident that Sir James Stephen's attitude towards rebellion is shared by many civilised governments. Belligerents—that is to say, subjects of one State engaged in war with another State—have now nominally secured certain rights under International Law. The first Hague Conference (1899) framed a "Convention with respect to the Laws and Customs of Wars on Land" which forbade the torture or cruel treatment of prisoners, the refusal of quarter, the destruction of private property, unless such destruction were imperatively demanded by the necessities of war, the pillage of towns taken by assault, disrespect to religion and family honour (including, I suppose, the honour of women and girls), and the infliction of penalties on the population owing to the acts of individuals for which it could not be regarded as collectively responsible.

In actual war this Convention is not invariably observed, as was seen at Tripoli in 1911, but in the case of rebellion there is no such Convention at all. I have known all those regulations broken with impunity, and in most cases without protest from the other Powers. Just as, under the old law of England, the rebel was executed with circumstances of special atrocity, so at the present time, under the name of crushing rebellion, men are tortured and flogged, no quarter is given, they are executed without trial, their private property is pillaged, their towns and villages are destroyed, their women violated, their children killed, penalties are imposed on districts owing to acts for which the population is not collectively responsible—and nothing said. That each Power is allowed to deal with its own subjects in its own way is becoming an accepted rule of international amenity. It was not the rule of Cromwell, nor of Canning, nor of Gladstone, but it has now been consecrated by the Liberal Government which came into power in 1906.

In the summer of 1909, it is true, the rule was broken. Mulai Hafid, Sultan of Morocco, was reported to be torturing his rebel prisoners according to ancestral custom, and rumours came that he had followed a French king's example in keeping the rebel leader, El Roghi, in a cage like a tame eagle, or had thrown him to the lions to be torn in pieces before the eyes of the royal concubines. Then the European Powers combined to protest in the name of humanity. It was something gained. But no great courage was required to rebuke the Sultan of Morocco, if England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Spain combined to do it; and his country was so desirable for its minerals, barley, and dates that a little courage in dealing with him might even prove lucrative in the end. When Russia treated her rebellious subjects with tortures and executions more horrible than anything reported from Morocco, the case was very different. Then alliances and understandings were confirmed, substantial loans were arranged in France and England, Kings and Emperors visited the Tsar, and the cannon of our fleet welcomed him to our waters amid the applause of our newspapers and the congratulations of a Liberal Government.

It is evident, then, that, in Sir James Stephen's words, subjects are in most countries still