were not
that, as leader of the Opposition, it would be my duty to resist
it, tooth and nail. Or, as Paymaster-General, I could so cook the
accounts that, as Lord High Auditor, I should never discover the
fraud. But then, as Archbishop of Jitipu, it would be my duty to
denounce my dishonesty, and give myself into my own custody as
Commissioner of Police."

Under such arrangements as these the inevitable happens. The Chief
Secretary accepts his role. He is, no doubt, consoled to discover that
in one sphere, namely in that of patronage, his supremacy is effective.
He discovers further that he can hamstring certain obnoxious Acts, as Mr
Walter Long hamstrung the Land Act, by the issue of Regulations. The
rest of his official career depends on his politics. If a Tory, he
learns that the Irish Civil Service is a whispering gallery along which
his lightest word is carried to approving ears, and loyally acted upon.
Further "Ulster" expects law and order to be vindicated by the
occasional proclamation of Nationalist meetings, and batoning of
Nationalist skulls. And he absolutely must say from time to time in
public that the Irish Question in essence is not political but economic.
This is the whole duty of a Tory Chief Secretary. A Liberal Chief
Secretary functions on somewhat different lines. Administration presents
itself to him as a colossal heap of recalcitrant, wet sand out of which
he has to fashion a statue of fair-play. Having, with great labour, left
his personal impress on two or three handfuls, the weary Titan abandons
his impossible task. He falls back in good order on the House of
Commons, where his party majority enables him to pass an Irish Bill from
time to time. His spare time he divides between commending Dublin Castle
to the seven devils that made it, and praying for the advent of Home
Rule.

In either case the sovereignty of Ireland relapses into the hands of the
permanent officials, that camarilla of Olympians. To the official lives
of these gentlemen, regarded as works of art, I raise my hat in
respectful envy. They have realised the vision of Lucretius. From the
secure remoteness of their ivory towers they look down unmoved on the
stormy and drifting tides below, and they enjoy the privilege, so rare
in Ireland, of knowing the causes of things. To the ordinary man their
political origins are shrouded in twilight. They seem to him to have
come like water, but unhappily it can