constabulary stand by inactive, or the army may disperse a meeting which
the Irish Ministry hold to be a lawful assembly.

II. _The Irish Parliament._ The authority of the Irish Parliament,
whilst acting within the limits of the constitution, is extremely
wide.[64]

The Parliament appoints the Irish Government of the day; it will
determine whether Mr. M'Carthy or Mr. Redmond, Mr. Healy or Mr. Davitt,
directs the Irish Administration. In this matter the British Government
will have no voice. The English Ministry are under the new constitution
expected in many ways to co-operate with the Irish Ministry, yet it is
quite conceivable that the Ministers of the Crown at Dublin may be men
whose whole ideas of expediency, of policy, of political morality, may
be opposed to the ideas of the Ministers of the Crown at Westminster.

The Irish Parliament, again, even if every Restriction on its powers
inserted in the Home Rule Bill should pass into law, will be found to
have ample scope for legislative action.[65]

It can repeal[66] any Act affecting Ireland which was enacted before the
passing of the Home Rule Bill. Thus it can do away with the right to the
writ of _habeas corpus_; it can abolish the whole system of trial by
jury; it can by wide rules as to the change of venue expose any
inhabitant of Belfast, charged with any offence against the Irish
Government, to the certainty of being tried in Dublin or in Cork. If an
Irish law cannot touch the law of treason or of treason-felony, the
leaders of the Irish Parliament may easily invent new offences not
called by these names, and the Parliament may impose severe penalties on
any one who attempts by act or by speech to bring the Irish Government