a Colony in being a dependent State under a
Representative of the King--namely, the Lord-Lieutenant. This personage,
corresponding to the Colonial Governor, will also have to act in a dual
capacity. On the one hand he will be responsible to the King, or,
virtually, to the British Cabinet, and, on the other hand, he will be
bound by an unwritten law to nominate for the Government of Ireland
persons acceptable to the elected Legislature, and in Irish matters to
act by their advice in all normal circumstances.

Let us dispose first of the relation of the Ministers and of other
public officials to the Legislature. There will be no question,
presumably, of giving statutory power to this relation. It is an
unwritten custom--(1) that Ministers must be members of one branch of
the Legislature; (2) that they must hold the confidence of the elected
branch; (3) that, as a Cabinet, they stand or fall together; and,
lastly, (4) that all non-political officials are excluded from the
Legislature. The first and the last of these conventions have taken
legal form in some isolated cases;[167] the other two appear in no
statute that has yet been framed.[168]

Neither have the functions in practice exercised by the Ministry or
Cabinet, nor the relations which in practice exist between it and the
King's Representative, ever had statutory definition. Whatever form the
Home Rule Bill takes, it cannot give legal precision to these things.
The King's Representative always nominates an Executive Council--that
is, a Cabinet to "advise" him in the Government, and whether, as in the
Bill of 1893, that Council is called an Executive Committee of the Privy
Council of Ireland by analogy with the Dominion of Canada, where it is
the "King's Privy Council for Canada," or whether it is merely an
Executive Council is immaterial. That it is, nominally, the
constitutional duty of the King's Representative (like that of the King
himself) to perform executive acts on the advice of his Ministers is
never stated expressly. He is always, and generally in the text of the
Constitution, vested with the power of summoning, proroguing, and
dissolving the Legislature, and of giving or withholding the Royal
Assent to Bills. He also, by unwritten law, wields the prerogative of
Pardon, and appoints all public servants; and in all these cases, except
in the case of appointing non-political officials, he occasionally has
to act on his own personal responsibility.

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