Now, each of these men, in conspiring to break the law, did probably what he conscientiously thought to be right under the circumstances. That we can believe. But it is very difficult to believe that the Government (when, with the connivance of Parliament, it punished the same offence so differently) thought that it was doing right--the equal and the just thing in each case. It was only doing the convenient thing to cover its own blunders. And the question is, therefore, whether--morally--the Government was not the real criminal. But if we ask whether it is going to be punished for it, the answer is--probably not. It is not my point to urge that the Government should be punished, but only to show how--as administered to-day--punishment is an arbitrary and artificial device, partially applied or not, according to the prosecutor’s political convenience. The consequence--the logical consequence of this corrupt inequality of State-prosecution, is that a Government which does such things is misliked and distrusted by men of honest character--and so weakens its hold on the more judicious minds of the community--and eventually, one may hope, its power over the country’s policy. One might point further to another instance. The Society of Friends, by its official committee, recently published, without submitting it to the Censor, a pamphlet called _A Challenge to Militarism_. For that corporate act of a committee of twenty--all equally guilty--the Government (to avoid too great a scandal) selected two members for prosecution, and got them sent to prison for six and for three months. About a fortnight later another challenge to militarism, a pamphlet entitled _A League of Nations_, was published, without being submitted to the Censor, by Lord Grey of Falloden; and he has not been sent to prison for it. Now if we believed in punishment, we should want the Government punished for these acts of corrupt favouritism in State-prosecution. But if we believe in natural consequences--those which I have already indicated--we shall confidently anticipate that in the end (the real end) divine justice will be done; and that these ephemeral misdoings will eventually help the spirit of man to a better and larger understanding of the follies which are committed when men substitute the Will to Power for the Will to Love. And if we can--as we are going to--if we can leave injustice when done in conspicuous high places to the natural and logical consequences, without applying the penal code, why cannot we trust natural consequences a very great deal more, where smaller and more humble misdemeanours are concerned, and give to those natural consequences a greater unity of effect by irradiating them with the true spirit of man--love, joy, gentleness, peace, against which there is no law?