opposition turns a deaf ear to the appeal of the bailiff. Application must then be made in some form or other to the English Ministry. The Imperial Cabinet will think more than once before horse, foot, and artillery are, against the wish of the Irish Government, put in movement to enforce the judgment of a British Court, and to obtain L1,000 for Lord Clanricarde. The matter will have become serious; the dignity of the Irish nation will be at stake; the complaints of the plaintiff will be drowned by the indignant clamours of eighty members at Westminster. The essential principle of the new constitution is that there shall be but one Executive in Ireland. The moment that the British Government intervenes to support the judgment of British Courts, we have in Ireland two hostile Executives. We tremble on the verge either of legal revolution or of civil war. An English Cabinet, I suspect, will hardly enforce the unpopular rights of a hated plaintiff by use of arms. Why, it will be said, assume that the Irish Government and the Irish people will not enforce the law? The assumption, I answer, is justified not only by the history of Ireland, but by general experience. In all federations, even the best ordered, difficulties constantly arise as to the sphere of the Federal Government and the State Governments, and as to the enforcement of judgments delivered by Federal Courts. The authority of the federal tribunals has not always been easily enforced even in the United States. Serious difficulties hamper the action of the Swiss federal authorities. Even in England enthusiasm or conviction occasionally triumphs over legality. English clergymen are at least as reasonable as excited politicians, yet Ritualists have not invariably submitted to the authority of the Privy Council. Why should Irishmen be more reasonable than other men? In Ireland we are trying an entirely novel and dangerous experiment; we are fostering the spirit of nationality under the forms of federation. The Privy Council, hide the matter as you will, represents British power. If Ireland is a nation, the Government of Great Britain is an alien Government; the judgments of the Privy Council are the judgments of an alien Court, and reason forbids us to expect more submission to the decisions of an alien tribunal than to the laws of an alien legislature. Suppose, however, that British judgments are enforced by the British army. Is this a result in which any Englishman or Irishman could rejoice? Can we say that the new constitution works well when its real and visible sanction is the use of British soldiers? The plain truth is that arrangements for legally restraining the Irish Parliament within the due limits of its powers must be ineffective and unreal and, if the principle of Home Rule be once admitted, the widest must be the wisest form of it. Colonial independence is better for Ireland and safer for England than sham federalism.[83]