Passive resistance, then, is rebellion; but, as has already been admitted, it is not on that account necessarily unjustifiable. An established government may be so hopelessly iniquitous that it ought to be overthrown; an organized society may be so irremediably corrupt that it merits disruption; duly enacted laws may, when judged by moral standards, be so flagrantly unjust as to demand the resistance of all good men. There is no need to labour the point: actual examples crowd upon the mind. Who would condemn the revolt of the Greeks against Turkish rule? Who would contend that the degenerate society of the later Bourbon monarchy did not deserve dissolution? Who would maintain that John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell had no moral warrant for their resistance to Charles I, or their successors to James II. We may freely allow that in these cases, and in many similar ones, there existed on ethical grounds a right, or more strictly a communal duty, to rebel. Few would now proclaim with Filmer the divine right of any government to exact obedience quite irrespective of the wishes or the interests of its subjects. Still fewer would agree with Hobbes that an original contract precludes for ever all opposition to sovereign political authority. The ground on which political obligation is asserted has been shifted. The State is recognized as "an institution for the promotion of the common good," and it is admitted that if it ceases to promote the common good the obligation to obey it is transformed into an obligation to reform it, or even to Shatter it to bits--and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire.