t had ever been. Under conditions as they were then, or
as they are now, no Chief Secretary can hope to fundamentally alter
the power of the Castle. "Imagine," writes M. Paul Dubois in
_Contemporary Ireland_: "the situation of a Chief Secretary newly
appointed to his most difficult office. He comes to Ireland full of
prejudices and preconceptions, and, like most Englishmen, excessively
ignorant of Irish conditions.... It does not take him long to discover
that he is completely in the hands of his functionaries. His
Parliamentary duties keep him in London for six or eight months of the
year, and he is forced to accept his information on current affairs in
Ireland from the permanent officials of the Castle, without having
even an opportunity of verifying it, and to rely on their
recommendations in making appointments. The representative of Ireland
in England and of England in Ireland he is 'an embarrassed phantom'
doomed to be swept away by the first gust of political change. The
last twenty years, indeed, have seen thirteen chief secretaries come
and go! With or against his will he is a close prisoner of the
irresponsible coterie which forms the inner circle of Irish
administration. Even a change of Government in England is not a change
of Government in Ireland. The Chief Secretary goes, but the permanent
officials remain. The case of the clock is changed, but the mechanism
continues as before.... The Irish oligarchy has retained its supremacy
in the Castle. Dislodged elsewhere it still holds the central fortress
of Irish administration and will continue to hold it until the
concession of autonomy to Ireland enables the country to re-mould its
administrative system on national and democratic lines."

When it came to Gladstone surrendering the sceptre he had so long and
brilliantly wielded, I do not remember that the event excited any
overpowering interest in Ireland. Outside the ranks of the politicians
the people had almost ceased to speculate on these matters. A period
of utter stagnation had supervened and it came as no surprise or shock
to Nationalist sentiment when Home Rule was formally abandoned by
Gladstone's successor, Lord Rosebery. "Home Rule is as dead as Queen
Anne," declared Mr Chamberlain. These are the kind of declarations
usually made in the exuberance of a personal or political triumph, but
the passing of the years has a curious knack of giving them emphatic
refutation.

Divided as they were and torn