rish Bills
were settled in the English Privy Council, and could not be altered in a
Dublin Parliament? Orators declaim about our lost legislature, but they
take good care not to say what it was. In the penultimate decade of the
eighteenth century the trammels were taken off, and a Union was soon
found necessary. During the short interval of Independence there were
two French invasions and a bloody rebellion. Protestant ascendency,
though used as a catchword, is a thing long past. Roman Catholic
ascendency would be a very real thing under Home Rule. The supremacy of
the Imperial Parliament alone makes both the one and the other
impossible.

If a legislature is established it must be given the means of enforcing
its laws. We do not know what the present Government propose to do with
the Irish police, but whatever the law says in practice, they will be
under the local executive. Unpopular people will not be protected, and
many of them will be driven out of the country. Parliamentary Home
Rulers draw rosy pictures of the future Arcadia; but they will not be
able to fulfil their own prophecies. Apart from the agrarian question,
there is the party of revolutionists in Ireland whose headquarters are
in America. They have furnished the means for agitation, and will look
for their reward. The Fenian party has less power in the United States
than it used to have, but there will be congenial work to do in Ireland.
A violent faction can be kept in order where there is a strong
government, but in a Home Rule Ireland it would not be strong for any
such purpose. Appeals to cupidity and envy would find hearers, and there
could be no effective resistance. The French Jacobins were a minority
but they swept all before them. In the end better counsels might
prevail, but the mischief done would be great, and much of it
irreparable.

The justice dealt out by the superior courts in Ireland is as good as it
is anywhere. A judge in the last resort has the whole force of the State
behind him, and no one dreams of resistance. With an Irish Parliament
and an Irish Executive this would hardly be the case. The judges would
still be lawyers, but their power would be greatly impaired. In Ireland
popular feeling is always against creditors, and it would be very hard
indeed either to execute a writ of ejectment or a seizure of goods. If
the sanction of the law is weakened, public respect for it is lessened,
and the result will be a general relaxation