iarised 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 t