We must remember that the men who would have the control of the new Irish Government would be those who have spent the greater part of their lives in violent conflict with the attempts of the Irish Courts to secure respect for the elementary rights of property and of personal freedom in Ireland. Power which has been won by the open violation of every principle of English law, is not likely either to assert the authority it has lived by defying to maintaining the independence of the courts and institutions which have been its deadliest opponents. The corruption of judicial authority and prestige in Ireland will be accomplished by entrenching the Executive behind large and shadowy discretionary powers, and also by manipulating the personnel and jurisdiction of the judges and magistracy throughout the country. The most deplorable movement in modern Nationalism is the attempt to introduce into Irish politics the worst methods of American political corruption. There have recently sprung into prominence in Ireland two societies which are in some respects the most sinister, the most immoral, and the most destructive of those which have corrupted and infected public life in the country. These two--the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood--have in common the secrecy of their operations and the destructiveness of their aims. Their influence is marked not only by despotic and tyrannical government, but, what may be even more mischievous from the point of view of the community, by the deliberate persecution and suppression of all independent thought. Those who have watched the proceedings of the Dublin Corporation have felt the increasing strength of an influence proceeding from Belfast--an influence which is threatening to control the whole course of Nationalist politics in Dublin and the south. The forces of influence, combination, and intimidation which forced the Budget on a reluctant Ireland and routed the Roman Catholic Hierarchy over the Insurance Bill will not be disbanded under Home Rule. On the contrary, they are now being exercised so as to enable the Board of Erin to absorb the older organisations and to place in the hands of its leaders--or rather in those of a single man--the nomination of most, if not all, the representatives of the Nationalist party in Ireland. Mr. Joseph Devlin, who seeks to build this vast power, is a politician of American ideals and sympathies, and under the guidance of his organisation politics in Ireland would be shaped after the model of Tammany Hall rather than that of St. Stephen's. The party which appoints the municipal officers of Dublin in secret caucus, meeting for reasons which are never avowed and after debates which are never published, is only waiting to extend its operations. Even now it is notorious that the magistrates' bench in Ireland is regularly and systematically "packed" whenever licensing or agrarian cases are under discussion. The