Westmeath, where an unnecessary gaol at Mullingar, having been for some
time closed, is now used for the executive meetings of the local branch
of the United Irish League. All these, it should be noted, are to be
found in districts which are inhabited not by "loyal and law-abiding"
Unionists, but by a strongly Nationalist population.

Enough insistence has not been laid on one important fact in the
administration of the criminal law in Ireland. In England anyone who
alleges that he has been wronged can institute a criminal process, and
this is a frequent mode of effecting prosecutions. In Ireland the social
conditions in the past have brought it about that the investigation and
prosecution of crime is left to the police, who, as a result, have
attained something of the protection which _droit administratif_ throws
over police and magistrates in France and other Continental countries,
by which State officials are to a large extent protected from the
ordinary law of the land, are exempted from the jurisdiction of the
ordinary tribunals, and are subject instead to official law administered
by official bodies.

The principles on which it is based in countries where it forms an
actual doctrine of the constitution are the privilege of the State over
and above those of the private citizen, and, secondly, the _separation
des pouvoirs_ by which, while ordinary judges ought to be irremovable
and independent of the Executive, Government officials ought, _qua_
officials, to be independent to a great extent of the jurisdiction of
the ordinary courts, and their _actes administratifs_ ought not to be
amenable to the ordinary tribunals and judges. The absorption by the
constabulary of the conduct of prosecutions has tended towards such a
state of things as this; but a far more potent factor in the same
direction has been the confusion of administrative and judicial