Some of them, seemingly out of mere insolence,
and the spirit of rebellion against authority, just because it is
authority, go a step too far. To show that they are their own masters,
and intend to do what they like, they take the king's messengers, and
treat them spitefully, and kill them.
Then there arises in that king a noble indignation. We do not read that
the king sentimentalised over these rebels, and said,--"After all, their
evil, like all evil, is only a lower form of good. They had a fine
instinct of freedom and independence latent in them, only it was in this
case somewhat perverted. They are really only to be pitied for knowing
no better; but I trust, by careful education, to bring them to a clearer
sense of their own interests. I shall therefore send them to a
reformatory, where, in consideration of the depressing circumstances of
their imprisonment, they will be better looked after, and have lighter
work, than the average of my honest and peaceable subjects." If the king
had spoken thus, he would have won high applause in these days; at least
till the farms and the merchandise, the property and the profits of the
rest of his subjects, were endangered by these favoured objects of his
philanthropy; who, having found that rebellion and even murder was
pardonable in one case, would naturally try whether it was not pardonable
in other cases likewise.
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