EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY.

In all parts of the Empire, power emanates from the Sovereign, and is wielded locally in his name.

Section 9 of the British North America Act of 1867 runs as follows:  “The Executive Government and authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen.”  Similar words are used in the South Africa Act of 1909, and in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900.  Curiously enough, these were Acts to legalize the Federation, or Union, of separate Colonies, and were passed at a time when the principle embodied needed no affirmation.  In earlier Acts for granting Colonial Constitutions, the principle was taken for granted, and implied in numerous provisions, but not stated explicitly.  The most recent unitary Constitution, that of the Transvaal (Section 47), was even more reticent, though the principle was none the less clear.  The point is unimportant, and the words used in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 (Clauses 5 and 7 respectively), modified to meet a change of Sovereign, will serve very well:  “The Executive power in Ireland (or the Executive Government of Ireland) shall continue vested in His Majesty....”

Thereon follow the provisions for delegation of the Royal authority, first to the Sovereign’s personal Representative in Ireland, and then through him to the members of the Irish Executive.  The simpler these provisions are, the better.  What we know as responsible government has never been defined in any Act of Parliament.  The phrase “responsible government” has only once appeared in any Constitution—­namely, in the preamble of the Transvaal Constitution granted in 1906, and even then no attempt was made at definition, though certain sections, like certain sections in the Australian Constitutions of 1855 and in the later Federal Acts, inferentially suggested features of responsible government.

The system is two-sided.  Ministers are responsible on the one hand to the King direct, as in Great Britain, or to the King’s Representative, as in the Colonies, and, on the other hand, to the elected Legislature.  Ireland will resemble a Colony in being a dependent State under a Representative of the King—­namely, the Lord-Lieutenant.  This personage, corresponding to the Colonial Governor, will also have to act in a dual capacity.  On the one hand he will be responsible to the King, or, virtually, to the British Cabinet, and, on the other hand, he will be bound by an unwritten law to nominate for the Government of Ireland persons acceptable to the elected Legislature, and in Irish matters to act by their advice in all normal circumstances.

Let us dispose first of the relation of the Ministers and of other public officials to the Legislature.  There will be no question, presumably, of giving statutory power to this relation.  It is an unwritten custom—­(1) that Ministers must be members of one branch of the Legislature; (2) that they must hold the confidence of the elected branch; (3) that, as a Cabinet, they stand or fall together; and, lastly, (4) that all non-political officials are excluded from the Legislature.  The first and the last of these conventions have taken legal form in some isolated cases;[167] the other two appear in no statute that has yet been framed.[168]