As the policeman is a symbol, as organised society depends far less on the executive officers of the law than on respect for the law, nothing but chaos can be expected of any successful resistance to law. When the law-breaker goes not only unpunished but rewarded and honoured, can it be expected that others will not follow in the footsteps of those who have risen by anarchy to be lord chancellor, lord of appeal, chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the Ulster party? The privy councillor who preaches and prepares armed resistance to law, the suffragette who breaks a window, the employer or the workman who breaks a contract, the conscientious objector who repudiates any liability that the soveran government may impose upon him is a danger, by contact and example, to the whole state, a mad dog whose extirpation is the first duty of all who value the stability of the state. Here, as everywhere, popular judgement is warped by social and intellectual snobbishness: the "passive resister," whose "nonconformist conscience" forbade his paying rates for the support of Church of England teaching was an object of impatient scorn; the lady of rank who declined to lick insurance-stamps at the bidding of a little Welsh attorney was a woman of pride and independence; the officers who threatened mutiny and the civilians who took up arms against home rule were regarded as heroes; but the men who preferred prisons and obloquy to the necessity of trying to take the life of their country's enemies were branded as traitors and cowards. There can only be one equitable rule: so long as a man remains a member of any community--nation, church, profession or club--he must submit scrupulously to its rules and only seek to change them by constitutional means.