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

"The Covenant of the State," says Hobbes, "is made in such
a manner as if every man should say to every man: 'I authorise
and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to
this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy
right to him and authorise all his actions in like manner.' This
done, the multitude so united is called a Commonwealth, in