The fact is that in Ireland, where the salaries of judges are higher than the incomes earned by even the most successful barristers, the judiciary has become to an extent far greater than in England a place of political recompense for Unionist Members of Parliament, who, unlike their English brethren, carry their political prejudices with them on appointment to the Bench.  As recently as 1890 Mr. Justice Harrison, at Galway Assizes, asked why the garrison did not have recourse to Lynch law, and until his death Judge O’Connor Morris, unchecked by either party when in power, month by month contributed articles to the reviews, in which he denounced in unmeasured terms the provisions of Acts of Parliament which, in his capacity of Judge of a Civil Bill or County Court, he was called upon to apply.

The jury system is discredited in Ireland by every possible means.  Many crimes, which in England are classed as felonies, have been statutorily reduced to misdemeanours in Ireland so as to limit the right of challenge possessed by the accused from twenty jurors to six, and at the same time, after Lord O’Hagan’s Act had withdrawn from the sheriff the power of preparing jury lists, which he used for political purposes; by resuscitating a common law right of the Crown which has not been used in England for fifty years, arbitrarily to order jurors to “stand aside,” the provisions of O’Hagan’s Act have been evaded, and a panel hostile to the accused is most frequently secured.

The natural protection by which the balance is artificially redressed when the application of the laws has not the sympathy of those who are subject to them is a common symptom in every country and every age.  When all felonies were capital offences in England, the wit of juries, by what Blackstone called “a kind of pious perjury,” was engaged in devising means by which those who were legally guilty could escape from the penalty; and if it be true that an unpacked jury would possibly in many instances of political offences in Ireland have a prejudice in favour of the accused, the inference is not consequently to be drawn that the ends of justice can only be secured by substituting, as is done, a jury which has a prejudice against him.  It is not by methods like these that are inspired sentiments, such as those which prompted Victor Hugo eloquently to describe a tribunal:—­“Ou dans l’obscurite, la laideur, et la tristesse, se degageait une impression austere et auguste.  Car on y sentait cette grande chose humaine qu’on appelle la loi, et cette grande chose divine qu’on appelle la justice.”

CHAPTER II

THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

“It will not do to deny the obligation.  The case (of Ireland’s alleged over-taxation) has been heard before a competent tribunal, established and set up by England.  The verdict has been delivered; it is against England and in favour of Ireland’s contention.  Until this verdict is set aside by a higher court, and a more competent tribunal, the obligation of England to Ireland stands proved.”

     —­T.W.  RUSSELL, Ireland and the Empire.