Executive finds it hard enough to hold a perfectly even and level
course, and the whole state of the country depends upon the spirit in
which the law is enforced. One of the very gravest defects of our
present system is that in Ireland a change of government means, to a
certain extent, a change in the administration of the law. Yet both Mr.
Balfour and Mr. Morley have enforced the law, and have meant, according
to their lights, to act towards all citizens with equitable
impartiality. And Mr. Balfour, Mr. Morley, or any statesman appointed by
the Imperial Parliament, is likely to act with more fairness than at the
present moment would any Executive chosen by any Irish Parliament. One
thing, at any rate, is certain. An independent Irish Executive will
possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or
inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any Restriction
to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution.
Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish Cabinet
might do if it chose. It might confine all political, administrative, or
judicial appointments to Nationalists, and thus exclude Loyalists from
all positions of public trust. It might place the Bench,[59] the
magistracy, the police wholly in the hands of Catholics; it might, by
encouragement of athletic clubs where the Catholic population were
trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of
every Protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing
resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of
Catholic and the disarming of Protestant Ireland, and, at the same time,
raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army.
But the mere inaction of the Executive might in many spheres produce
greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for
the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country.
And the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. Irish
Ministers might in practice draw a distinction between 'good' landlords