for a habeas corpus.  The application ultimately came before Chief Justice Marshall, and the writ was granted.  The traditional comment of President Jackson is noteworthy:  “John Marshall has given his judgment, let him enforce it if he can.”  The Executive would not assist the Court, and the Supreme Court was powerless.  Switzerland, again, has a Federal tribunal:  it is a Court, as would be the Privy Council, which cannot command officials of its own to execute its process; it depends for aid on the Cantonal authorities.  This state of things, I am told on good authority, produces its natural result.  The judgments of the Federal tribunal can be rendered almost ineffective by the opposition of a Canton.

At this moment the statutes of the Imperial Parliament bind every man throughout the United Kingdom.  The Courts in Ireland are bound to give effect to every statute, and the Irish Courts are supported by the Sheriff and his officers, and in the last resort by the power of the United Kingdom.  Yet the very difficulty of the day is enforcing judgments which run against Irish popular opinion.  Is it common sense to imagine that opposition which defies, often with success, the authority of the Irish Queen’s Bench Division, or ultimately of the House of Lords, would not easily nullify the judgments of the Privy Council when not only unpopular in Ireland, but in contradiction to a law devised by the Irish Executive, passed by the Irish Parliament, supported by the Irish Judges?  The truth must be spoken:  the Gladstonian Constitution will, as regards the restrictions placed under it on the powers of the Irish Parliament, inevitably turn out a mere paper Constitution.  The methods for compelling the observance of these limitations have neither of them any real efficacity.  The veto can with difficulty and but rarely be used; the judgments or opinions of the Privy Council may have a speculative interest, but will possess no coercive power.

If this be so the guarantees afforded by the Constitution for just legislation are nugatory; they are worth neither more nor less than the pompous securities for every kind of inalienable right which have adorned the most splendid and the most transitory among the Constitutions which have during a century been in turn created and destroyed in France—­that is, they are worth nothing; nor is it unfair to conjecture that on this point my opinion agrees with the opinion of many English Home Rulers.  They think the limitations on the independence of the Irish Parliament useless and destined to disappear; for their avowed belief is that legislation by an Irish Parliament will in the main be just, and that the laws of the Irish Parliament, because they represent the wishes of the Irish people, will obtain easy obedience in Ireland.  If this conviction be sound—­and it is the almost necessary basis for a policy of Home Rule—­let us act upon it, and not impose restrictions which, if needless, must certainly be noxious.  Meanwhile in any case let us dismiss the delusion that restrictions which cannot be enforced are any guarantee for justice.  The Gladstonian Constitution admits on the face of it that guarantees are wanted.  Most Englishmen agree in the opinion implied in this admission.  But if I am right in asserting that the guarantees for justice are illusory, then the Gladstonian Constitution does not secure justice, and is therefore not just.