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Chapter XXIThe Drive towards Legislative andSocial Centralisation and UniformityTHE GATHERING of the essential powers of administrationinto the hands of the sovereign is completed whenthere is unity and uniformity of judicial administration,— especially of the criminal side; for this is intimately connectedwith the maintenance of order and internal peace. And it is,besides, necessary for the ruler to have the criminal judicialauthority in his hands so that he may use it to crush all rebellionagainst himself as treason and even, so far as may be possible,to stifle criticism and opposition and penalise that free thoughtand free speech which, by their continual seeking for a moreperfect social principle and their subtle or direct encouragementto progress, are so dangerous to established powers and institutions,so subversive of the dominant thing in being by theirdrive towards a better thing in becoming. Unity of jurisdiction,the power to constitute tribunals, to appoint, salary and removejudges and the right to determine offences and their punishmentscomprise on the criminal side the whole judicial power of thesovereign. A similar unity of jurisdiction, power to constitutetribunals administering the civil law and the right to modifythe laws relating to property, marriage and other social matterswhich concern the public order of society, comprise its civil side.But the unity and uniformity of the civil law is of less pressingand immediate importance to the State when it is substitutingitself for the natural organic society; it is not so directly essentialas an instrument. Therefore it is the criminal jurisdiction whichis first absorbed in a greater or less entirety.Originally, all these powers belonged to the organic societyand were put into force mainly by various natural devices ofa loose and entirely customary character, such as the Indian