imself to obey absolutely chiefs who have no natural
authority over him, has been much condemned, but even here special
circumstances must be taken into account. Few persons I suppose would
seriously blame the Irish Catholics of the eighteenth century who filled
the armies of France, Austria, Spain and Naples at a time when
disqualifying laws excluded them, on account of their religion, from the
British army and from almost every path of ambition at home. There is
also perhaps some distinction between the position of a soldier who is
obliged to serve, and a soldier in a country where enlisting is
voluntary, and also between the position of an officer who can throw up
his commission without infringing the law, and a private who cannot
abandon his flag without committing a grave legal offence. At the
beginning of the war of the American Revolution some English officers
left the army rather than serve in a cause which they believed to be
unrighteous. It was in their full power to do so, but probably none of
them would have desired that private soldiers who had no legal choice in
the matter should have followed their example and become deserters from
the ranks.

There are, however, extreme cases in which the violation of the military
oath and disobedience to military discipline are justified. More than
once in French history an usurper or his agent has ordered soldiers to
coerce or fire upon the representatives of the nation. In such cases it
has been said 'the conscience of the soldier is the liberty of the
people,' and the refusal of private soldiers to obey a plainly illegal
order will be generally though not universally applauded. In all such
cases, however, there is much obscurity and inconsistency of judgment.
The rule that the moral responsibility falls exclusively on the person
who gives the order, and that the private has no voice or
responsibility, will even here be maintained by some. Ought a private
soldier to have refused to take part in such an execution as that of the
Duc d'Enghien, or in the _Coup d'Etat_ of Napoleon III.? Ought he to
refuse to fire on a mob if he doubts the legality of the order of his
superior officer? In such cases there is sometimes a direct conflict
between the civil and the military law, and there have been instances in
which a soldier might be punishable before the first for acts which were
absolutely enforced by the second.[30]

Perhaps the strongest case of justifiable disobedience