unlimited.  Ten years ago three British subjects arrived at Melbourne and were about to land.  Popular sentiment, or in other words the will of the mob, had decreed that they should not enter the colony.  The Victorian Premier (Mr. Service) announced in Parliament that their landing should be hindered.  The police, acting under the orders of the Ministry, boarded the ship which brought the strangers, went near to assaulting the captain, and forcibly prevented the hated travellers from setting foot on shore.  By arrangement between the Melbourne Government, the captain, and the three men, who were by this time in terror of their lives, the victims of lawlessness were carried back to England.  That the law had been grossly violated no one can really dispute.  The violation was the more serious because it excited no notice.  No appeal was apparently made to the Courts.  The Governor—­the representative of Imperial power and Imperial justice—­knew presumably what was going on, yet he uttered not one word of remonstrance.  The Agent-General for Victoria, when at last a private person in England called attention to the outrage at Melbourne, pleaded in effect the plea of necessity, and described the act of tyranny, whereby British citizens were in a British colony turned into outlaws, as ‘an act of executive authority.’  The Imperial Government did I believe—­what was perhaps the wisest thing it could do—­nothing.  Imperial supremacy in the colonies was, as regards the protection of unpopular individuals, admitted to be a farce.  What, however, rendered the three travellers unpopular?  They were Irish informers who had aided, unless I am mistaken, in the conviction of the Phoenix Park murderers.  Let us now in imagination conceive our new constitution to have come into being, and transfer the transactions at Melbourne in 1883 to Dublin in 1894.  Will the Imperial supremacy which is supposed to be so effective in the colonies be of any more worth in Ireland than in Victoria?[121]

Were it true, then, which it certainly is not, that the conditions exist in Ireland which conduce to the maintenance of federal power in the State of a well-arranged federation, and to the maintenance of Imperial power in a self-governing British colony, this would not be enough to support the argument in favour of the new constitution.  For the Imperial Government needs that the law should be maintained, and the rights of individuals be protected, in Ireland with greater stringency than the law is enforced or the rights of individuals are protected either under a federal government or in a British colony.  Miserable indeed would be the position of England were she forced in Ireland to wink at lawlessness such as but the other day disgraced New Orleans, or at mob law countenanced by the ‘Executive,’ such as in 1883 ruled supreme at Melbourne.  Foreign powers at any rate would rightly decline to let the defects of our constitution excuse the neglect of international duties.  If England cannot shuffle off her responsibilities, England is bound in prudence to maintain her power.