ity payment in respect of rent, and the instalments
which an Irish farmer pays to buy his land will, to him at any rate,
appear rent or tribute payable to Great Britain. The rent or tribute
will be collected under the new constitution by the Irish
Government.[89] No Irish Ministry will relish the position of collector.
It would have been difficult for a landlord to collect rent after his
agent had publicly announced that it was excessive and unjust. Yet a
landlord could dismiss his agent; the English Cabinet cannot dismiss the
Irish Government. It is certain too that the Irish Ministry will not
find the collection of rent easy. Should the Irish Government state that
the rent is iniquitously high, and refuse to collect it, what will be
the position of the British Ministry? It must either set the
constitution aside or undertake for itself the collection of rent in
opposition to, or, at any rate, unaided by, the Irish Executive and the
Irish Parliament. No more odious task was ever undertaken by a
government. Suppose, however, that things do not come to the worst, the
financial arrangements of the Bill ensure that Ireland will soon demand
modifications of its provisions. Opposition is a probability, discontent
is a certainty.

Ireland is provided under the new constitution with the readiest means
of nullifying the Restrictions. The Irish Cabinet and its servants can
at any moment reduce an unpopular law to a nullity. Even in England a
resolution of the House of Commons may be enough to turn a law into a
dead letter. The Imperial Cabinet at this moment could go very near
making the Vaccination Acts of no effect, and by declining to have
troops sent to Hull could, as I have already pointed out, give victory
to the Trades Unionists. Nor is it necessary that the Cabinet should
decline sending forces to Hull for the support of the law. An intimation
that persons accused of intimidation would either not be prosecuted at
all, or if prosecuted and convicted, would be pardoned, would be
sufficient of itself to make the strike successful. In no country could
the Executive do more to render laws ineffectual than in Ireland. The
Irish Cabinet might by mere inaction render the collection of rent
impossible; they might, as I have already pointed out, give tacit
encouragement to smuggling. If the people regarded a coastguard as an
enemy, if he and his family were left severely alone, if he were often
maltreated and occasionally shot, his