civil rights, and pass illegal sentences and inflict
illegal punishments. Under the reign of Liberal
Governments the writ of these courts runs where the
King’s writ cannot run, and the law of the League
has been allowed in great measure to supersede the
law of the land. We have also an increasing force
in Irish Nationalism which seeks to paralyse the government
of Ireland by means of the general or sympathetic strike.
This organisation seeks to establish courts in Ireland
in opposition to the ordinary law courts, and to enforce
their decrees by means of illegal intimidation and
outrage. The people of Ireland have therefore
been familiarised with the idea of courts competing
in authority with those of the King’s Government.
Supposing under Home Rule the Judiciary proved less
pliable than was expected or desired, the development
of such competing authorities would be facilitated
by a complaisant Cabinet in Dublin. But of all
attempts to over-ride the authority of law this conspiracy
to exempt ecclesiastical persons from its scope is
the most insidious and dangerous. The existence
of a class of men answerable for their actions, not
to any domestic tribunal, but to a foreign ecclesiastical
court, cannot now be tolerated by any self-respecting
Government. Yet it is not easy to see how an Irish
Cabinet could refuse to make, by executive if not
by legislative action, what is now the law of the
Church eventually the law of Ireland. Against
this danger no safeguards can be devised. If
the Administration refuses to put the law into effective
operation against a certain class of offender or abuses
the prerogative of mercy in his favour, there is no
power in the constitution to coerce it. A few
years ago we saw in Ireland the extraordinary spectacle
of persons being prosecuted for cattle-driving and
similar offences, while those who openly incited them
to crime escaped with impunity. We saw judges
from the Bench complaining in vain that the real offenders
were not brought before them, and criticising openly
the negligence and partiality of the Crown. If
the Nationalists, whose influence then paralysed the
aims of the Government, ever get supreme control of
the Executive, we are certain to see these abuses
revived on a still more shocking scale. The operation
of the new decree places the Roman Catholic minister
or law officer who is called upon to administer justice
under the terms of his oath in a position of cruel
embarrassment. As a law officer it might be his
duty to order the prosecution of some clerical offender;
as a Roman Catholic compliance with his duty to the
State must entail the awful consequences of excommunication.
It needs no elaboration to show that what may be a
grave embarrassment under the rule of impartial British
Ministers, must under a local Irish Government develop
into a danger to the State. A case recently tried
at the Waterford Assizes establishes a precedent which
may prove most mischievous. Recent illustrations
in Ireland of the working of the Temere decree
have secured for it a sort of quasi-legality and provided
a great argument to those devout Churchmen who, under
Home Rule, would naturally desire to carry the process
a further step.