England is the stronghold of British conservatism, and an arrangement which leaves the fate of England in the hands of Englishmen may be favourable to reform, but is fatal to revolution.  Has this fact arrested the attention of Gladstonians?  I know not.  It is an unfortunate coincidence that the least defensible portion of an indefensible policy should, while it threatens ruin to England, offer temporary salvation to the party who rally round Mr. Gladstone.[55]

C. The Powers of the Irish Government

I. The Irish Executive.  At the head of the Irish Executive will nominally stand the Lord Lieutenant; he will however in reality occupy the position of a colonial Governor, and be, for most purposes, little more than the ornamental figure-head of the Irish Administration.  The real executive government of Ireland[56] must be a parliamentary Ministry or Cabinet[57] chosen in effect, though not in name, by the Irish Parliament, or rather by the Irish Legislative Assembly, or House of Commons, just as the English Cabinet is appointed in effect by the English House of Commons.  Allowing then for the occasional intervention of the Lord Lieutenant as the representative of the Imperial Parliament to protect either the interests of the Empire or the special rights of the United Kingdom,[58] the Irish Ministry is to occupy in Ireland the position which the New Zealand Ministry occupies in New Zealand, and will for most purposes as truly govern Ireland as the New Zealand Ministry governs New Zealand, or as Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry governs England.  The Irish Ministry will be the true Government of Ireland.

This is a fact to which the attention of the English public ought to be sedulously directed.  The creation of an independent Irish Parliament strikes the imagination; it is seen to be an innovation of primary importance.  The creation of an independent Irish Cabinet or Ministry is taken as a matter of course, and neither Unionists nor Gladstonians see its full import.  Yet in Ireland, as elsewhere, the character of the Executive is of more practical consequence than the character of the Legislature.  A country may dispense, for a long time, with legislation; no country can dispense with good government.

This principle holds good even in an orderly country such as England, where the sphere of the administration is far less extended than it is in most States.  We might get on for a good while prosperously enough without a Parliament, or without new laws, but if anything deprived us even for a week of an Executive, or if, for any reason, the whole spirit of the public administration were changed, every Englishman would feel this portentous revolution in every concern of his daily life.  The protection of the Government, of the army, of the police, of the law courts, are with us so much matters of course, that we never realise how much the comfort and prosperity of our existence hang upon