Was Pilate right?

Since you neglected to react to my Humanities question, I will provoke you in other ways.

This week I am teaching James Fitzjames Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, one of my favorite texts of political and social commentary, in my Modern European Intellectual History class. Since this is Easter Week, what do you think of Stephens' shocking remark contra John Stuart Mill's On Liberty:

"Was Pilate right in crucifying Jesus? I reply, Pilate's paramount duty was to preserve the peace in Palestine, to form the best judgment he could as to the means required for that purpose, and to act upon it when it was formed. Therefore, if and in so far as he believed, in good faith and on reasonable grounds, that what he did was necessary for the preservation of the peace of Palestine, he was right ... Pilate's duty was to maintain peace and order in Judea and to uphold Roman power. It is surely impossible to contend seriously that it was his duty, or that it could be the duty of anyone in his position, to recognize in the person brought to his judgement seat, I do not say God Incarnate, but the teacher and preacher of a higher form of morals and a more enduring form of social order than that of which he was himself the representative. To a man in Pilate's position the morals and social order which he represents are for all practical purposes final and absolute standards. If, in order to evade the obvious inference from this, it is said that Pilate ought to have respected the principle of religious liberty as propounded by Mr. Mill, the answer is that if he had done so he would have run the risk of setting the whole province in a blaze."

He further states in a footnote that the rightness or wrongness of the persecution depends upon "the comparative merits of the religion which is persecuted and the social order which persecutes. Whether Pilate was right in thinking that what took place in Judea threatened social order directly or indirectly we cannot tell, but it was his business by all means to protect social order."

So there you are. Reminds me of that scene in "Life of Brian" when the People's Front of Judea (or is it the Popular People's Front?) recite a long list of productive things that imperial rule has given the province, and then ask, "What have the Romans ever done for us?" "The aqueduct?" "Shut up!"