[1] James Bryce made this distinction in 1889 between the two kinds of offenders. Letter Introductory to “Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad,” Sigerson.
“Perhaps we may say that whenever the moral judgment of the community at large does not brand an offence as sordid and degrading, and does not feel the offence to be one which destroys its respect for the personal character of the prisoner, it may there be held that prison treatment ought to be different from that awarded to ordinary criminals.”
George Sigerson:[2]
[2] “Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad.”
“Men may differ, in thought and deed, on many questions without moral guilt. Forms of government and measures relating to the welfare and organization of society have been, in all ages and countries, questions on which men have entertained divergent convictions, and asserted their sincerity by conflicting action, often at grave personal sacrifice and the loss of life. On the other hand, all people are agreed in condemning certain acts, stigmatized as crimes, which offend against the well-being of the individual or the community.
“Hence, civilized states distinguish between actions concerning which good men may reasonably differ, and actions which all good men condemn. The latter, if permitted to prevail, would disintegrate and destroy the social life of mankind; the former, if successful, would simply reorganize it, on a different basis . . . . The objects may, in one generation, be branded as crimes, whilst in the next those who fail to make them triumph and suffered as malefactors are exalted as patriot martyrs, and their principles incorporated amongst the foundation principles of the country’s constitution.
“Attempts to effect changes by methods beyond the conventions which have the sanction of the majority of a community, may be rash and blameworthy sometimes, but they are not necessarily dishonorable, and may even occasionally be obligatory on conscience.”
As to the incumbency upon a government to differentiate in punishments inflicted upon these two classes of offenders, he further says: “When a Government exercises its punitive power, it should, in awarding sentence, distinguish between the two classes of offenders. To confound in a common degradation those who violate the moral law by acts which all men condemn, and those who offend against the established order of society by acts of which many men approve, and for objects which may sometime be accepted as integral parts of established order, is manifestly wrong in principle. It places a Government morally in the wrong in the eyes of masses of the population, a thing to be sedulously guarded against.”
George Clemenceau:[1]
[1] Clemenceau in a speech before the French Chamber of Deputies, May 16th, 1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871. From the Annals de la Chambre des Deputies, 1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.