[56] It is styled in the Home Rule Bill ’an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland.’

[57] If there were reason to expect (which there is not) that the Home Rule Bill would pass into law, it would be worth while to consider carefully a question which has not yet engaged the attention of English statesmen:  Is it desirable that under a system of Home Rule the Irish Executive should be a Parliamentry Ministry?  The answer to this question is by no means clear.  Both in the United States, and in every State of the Union, the executive power is lodged in the hands of an official who is neither appointed nor removable by the Legislature.  The same remark applies to the Executive of the German Empire.  In Switzerland the Ministry, or Council of State, is indeed appointed, but is not removable by the Federal Assembly or Parliament.  Arguments certainly might be suggested in favour of creating for Ireland an Executive whose tenure of office might be independent of the will of the Irish Parliament.  Ireland, in short, like many other countries, might gain by the possession of a non-parliamentary Executive.  See as to the distinction between a parliamentary and a non-parliamentary Executive, Law of the Constitution (7th ed.), App. p. 480.

[58] See Bill, clause 14.

[59] This would apparently approve itself to Dr. Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath.  Of Mr. Justice Andrews he seems to have written that ‘this Judge is a Unitarian,’ and that it appears to the Bishop that ’the man who denies the divinity of our Lord is as incompetent to form clear, correct, and reliable conceptions of the feelings, the instincts, the opinions, and the religious convictions of an intensely Irish population as if they were inhabitants of another planet.’  See The Times, April 3, 1893, p. 8, where a correspondent from Ireland purports to give the effect of a pamphlet by Dr. Nulty.  The Bishop wrote, I suppose, with a view to Mr. Justice Andrews’ opinions as to priestly influence at elections, but the Bishop’s words suggest the inference that the government of a Catholic country ought to appoint Catholic Judges.  Why should we be surprised at this?  Religious toleration is not a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

[60] See Home Rule Bill, 1893, clause 35, p. 214, post.

[61] ’I am not suggesting for a moment that we are going to set up in Ireland two independent and separate Executives.  I think the granting of Home Rule in any intelligible sense would be entirely incomplete if it were not supplemented by the granting of executive power, and in my judgment the Executive in Ireland is intended to be and must be dependent upon and responsible to the Irish Legislature in Irish affairs.  But that does not in the least prevent the retention in the Crown of the executive government of the United Kingdom, as it provided in this Bill such executive authority as is necessary for the execution of the Imperial laws’ (sic).  Mr. Asquith, April 14, 1893, Times Parliamentary Debates, p. 440.  Compare Hansard, vol. xi. same date, p. 348.