The proceedings before Pilate, we have reason to believe, were conducted, in a general way, with due regard to forms of law. But the result was judicial murder, because the judge, after having acquitted Jesus, delivered Him to be crucified. "I find in him no fault at all" was the verdict of Pilate. But this just and righteous sentence was destroyed and obliterated by the following: "And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required."[118] A horrible travesty on justice, this! "_Absolvo_" and "_Ibis ad crucem_," in the same breath, were the final utterances of a Roman judge administering Roman law in the most memorable judicial transaction known to men. The treatment of this great theme would be incomplete and unsatisfactory unless reference were made to the peculiar views of some who believe that political rather than legal considerations should govern in determining the justice or the injustice of the proceedings against Jesus before Pilate. A certain class of critics insist on regarding the Roman governor in the light of an administrator rather than a judge, and contend that the justice of his conduct and the righteousness of his motives should be tested by principles of public policy rather than by strict legal rules. It is insisted by such persons that various considerations support this contention. It is pointed out that Pilate exercised the unlimited jurisdiction of the military _imperium_, and was not, therefore, strictly bound by legal rules; that Jesus was not a Roman citizen, and, for this reason, was not entitled to the strict observance of forms of law; and that the stubborn, rebellious and turbulent temper of the Jewish people required the strong hand of a military governor, enforcing political obedience by drastic measures, rather than the action of a judge punctiliously applying rules of law. These peculiar views subject the conduct of Pilate to the pressure of public necessity rather than to the test of private right, and insist that sympathy rather than censure should hold the scales in which his deeds are weighed.