truth, but it is not yet the truth. Bureaucracies of trained experts are
becoming more and not less necessary. What is really wrong with the
Castle is that it is a bureaucracy which has usurped the throne of the
nation. "In England," declared Mr Gladstone, "when the nation attends,
it can prevail." In Ireland, though it should attend seven days in the
week, it could never under present arrangements stamp the image of its
will on public policy. The real sin of the Castle regime is that it is a
sham, a rococo, a despotism painted to look like representative
government. To quote a radiant commonplace, the rich significance of
which few of us adequately grasp, it does not rest on the consent of the
governed.

"From whatever point of view we envisage the English Government in
Ireland," writes Mr Paul-Dubois, "we are confronted with the same
appearance of constitutional forms masking a state of things which
is a compound of autocracy, oppression, and corruption."

Such a system does not possess within itself the seed of continuance.
Disraeli announced, somewhat prematurely, the advent of an age in which
institutions that could not bear discussion would have to go. Matthew
Arnold yearned for a time in which the manifestly absurd would be
abandoned. In the flame of either dictum the present "government" of
Ireland shrivels to ashes, and affairs are ripe for the application of
both. Here, as in the Colonies, the people must enter into its heritage.
The days are for ever dead in which a nation could be ruled in daily
disregard of its history, its ideals, its definite programme.

On the minutiae of administration I do not mean to touch. When the whole
spirit, atmosphere, and ethos are anti-moral it is idle to chronicle any
chance rectitude of detail. If a man is a murderer it is not much to his