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 w