The first step is to get a clear idea of the nature of State action. It must be confined, one would think, to what is done in the name of the State, and by something approaching to an act of will on its part as a State. We only pass moral judgment on individuals in respect of their acts of will, and we ought to extend the same justice to a State. The question is complicated by the fact that a State has, as its accredited agents, individuals whose acts it must normally avow. But it can hardly be saddled with moral responsibility for their personal misdoings, except under circumstances which are barely conceivable. [1] The State, as such, can have no ends but public ends; and in practice it has none but what its organs conceive to be public ends. If an agent, even under the order of his executive superior, commits a breach of morality, _bona fide_ in order to what he conceives to be a public end desired by the State, he and his superior are certainly {323} blamable, but the immorality can hardly be laid at the door of the public will. [1] _i.e._ That it should actually order a theft, murder, or the like. Indeed, a strict definition of State action might raise a difficulty like that of defining the General Will--if the act was immoral, can the State, _as such_, really have willed it? And waiving this as a mere refinement, it still seems clear that the selfishness or sensuality, which has at least a good deal to do with the immorality of private actions, can hardly be present in an act of the public will, in the same sense as in a private volition. The State, as such, certainly cannot be guilty of personal immorality, and it is hard to see how it can commit theft or murder in the sense in which these are moral offences. To speak of the question as if it concerned the conduct of statesmen and their agents, instead of the volition of a State as such, seems to introduce confusion. We are discussing the parallel between public and private acts, and we are asked to begin by treating the public acts as private.