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 Latin Civitas.  This is the generation of that great Leviathan, that mortal God, to whom we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence.”

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.

“Loss of liberty,” he wrote, “is really no inconvenience, for it is the only means by which we have any possibility of preserving ourselves.  For if every man were allowed the liberty of following his own conscience, in such differences of consciences, they would not live together in peace an hour.”

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: