Again, I think, we must distinguish between acts essentially private and acts essentially public. To steal or murder, to lie, or to commit personal immorality, for instance, as we said, cannot be a public act. Such acts cannot embody a general interest willed by the public will. A State agent who commits them in pursuit of information or to secure a diplomatic result cannot be justified on the ground that they are not his acts but the State’s; and they are as immoral in him as in anyone else. Ultimately, indeed, it may be true that there is no act which is incapable of justification, supposing some extreme alternative; and in this sense, but in this sense only, it might be that, treating the interest of a commonwealth like any other ethically imperative interest, such acts might be relatively capable of justification. But this justification would only mean that some supreme interest was subserved by them, and would have {326} no special relation to the supposed public character of the interest. It is then a case of the conflict of duties. And the commoner occurrence, which results in doubtful acts, probably is that an agent, charged with some public service, finds it easiest to promote it by some act of rascality, and acts on his idea. But over readiness to make capital out of an apparent conflict of duties is neither made worse nor better by the fact that one of the duties is the service of the State. [1] [1] Cruelty, it has been said, is a good deal owing to laziness. It is more comfortable to sit in the shade rubbing red pepper into a man’s eyes to make him confess than to run about in the sun collecting evidence. I quote from memory, from a lecture, I think, by Mr. Leslie Stephen.