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CLEMENT C. J. WEBB, ESQ., M.A., ON 



them by a majority in a free assembly. But although the 

 defenders of " passive resistance " were often sadly to seek in 

 their logic, it is plain that their position was quite otherwise 

 defensible than tliat of our conscientious objectors to military 

 service. Though they had no definite constitutional guarantee 

 or fundamental law to which they could appeal, they were 

 undoubtedly in fact appealing to a recognized principle of the 

 British commonwealth, that of the equality of religions before 

 the law, which they conceived, rightly or wrongly, to have been 

 violated. They were appealing to a common understanding 

 among the citizens of this country, not to an authority altogether 

 beyond the State, in obedience to which they would be prepared 

 to sacrifice city and citizens alike. Once more, I am not for a 

 moment denying that such an authority there may be, or that 

 such a sacrifice may not be sometimes demanded. What I am 

 denying is that the State can justly be called upon to recognize 

 a claim to transcend its jurisdiction altogether on the ground 

 that the claim is conscientiously " or sincerely made. 



I pass from this particular subject of the relations of the 

 State to the individual conscience, so-called (let us remember) 

 by a natural courtesy, since in its strictest sense one cannot be 

 said to have conscience or consciousness except of what is really 

 right, whereas no one doubts that many statements of 

 " conscientious " conviction express mere opinions and often 

 erroneous opinions. Eecent controversies have brought this 

 subject much before our minds ; but there is a question of the 

 relation of the individual conscience to the social conscience or 

 consciousness of right and wrong, which goes deeper than that 

 of its relation to the demands of the particular form of society 

 which we call the State. For my own part I have no hesitation 

 in denying the claim of the State to be the supreme and all- 

 embracing society in the sense that, as a German publicist is 

 quoted by the late Henry Sidgwick as saying, " the maintenance 

 of the State justifies every sacrifice, and is superior to every 

 moral rule." I consider that in nothing did the Christian 

 religion make a more notable ethical advance upon the ethical 

 teaching of classical antiquity than in its clear recognition of a 

 duty transcending that of the citizen. The distinction between 

 Church and State — a distinction in which the late Lord Acton 

 saw the historical guarantee of political liberty, as Auguste Comte 

 had seen in it the historical guarantee of intellectual liberty, is 

 characteristic of Christendom, because it is a consequence of this 

 feature of Christian morality. No doubt the Church in putting 

 forward a claim for itself to be the supreme authority in morals 



