a country where the sphere of the administration is large, and where it will probably be increased. Ireland is divided by hostile factions not too much prone to respect the law. Even as things stand, the Irish 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 and 'bad' landlords, and might grant the aid of the police for the collection of reasonable, though refusing it for the collection of excessive rents, and might at last magnanimously recognise the virtues of Mr. Smith-Barry, whilst passing a practical sentence of outlawry on Lord Clanricarde. Is there anything absurd or unreasonable in the supposition that a Ministry of Land Leaguers chosen by a Parliament of Nationalists should attempt to enforce the unwritten law of the Land League? A Gladstonian who answers this question in the affirmative entertains a far lower opinion than can any candid Unionist of Mr. Gladstone's Irish allies. It would be the grossest unfairness to suggest