Imperial officials will be at the service of the Irish Government, and Irish officials at the service of the Imperial Government. For example, in the collection of taxes imposed by the Irish Parliament, the Irish Government will depend upon Imperial revenue officers to assess and collect them. The Imperial Government, on the other hand, will depend upon Irish Courts and Irish sheriffs to enforce their collection. Irish sheriffs will, in turn, depend upon an Imperial constabulary to assist them in levying execution. I shall return to some of these points in greater detail when I come to deal with the relations between the Executive and the Judiciary, and the maintenance of law and order. It is sufficient for me to remark here that the Irish Nationalist who wishes to defy the Imperial Government, and the Irish Unionist who wishes to defy the Irish Government, will each be hard put to define what he is pleased to regard as the limits of political obligation. He will find it difficult to distinguish where the authority of the Irish Government ends and that of the Imperial Government begins.
The Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.
In the new Bill the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is secured by express words. The words are not necessary. No Parliament can bind its successors, and what one Parliament has done another Parliament may undo. Even when one Parliament has been at pains, by declaring its legislation “perpetual” or “unalterable” to bind posterity—as in the case of certain clauses in the Irish and Scotch Acts of Union—its injunctions have been disregarded by its successors with no more formality than is necessary in the case of any other legislation. An Act setting up a new Constitution is no more irrevocable than an Act authorising the imposition of the income tax. If, therefore, the Imperial Parliament chooses to grant a Constitution to Ireland, there is nothing to prevent its revoking or amending that grant, even (we submit) though it should have been at pains to enact that the Constitution could only be surrendered or altered by the consent of the Legislature which that Constitution created. Some doubts did, indeed, arise as to this point in the case of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, which not only excluded the Irish members from Westminster, but made provision for the amendment of the new Constitution by stipulating that such amendment should be made, if at all, by the joint authority of the Irish and English Parliaments. Whether this would have had the effect of preventing the “Imperial” Parliament from amending such a Home Rule Act without calling in the assistance of the Irish Parliament was much discussed at the time.(15) Obviously, the question does not now arise, as the Irish members are to continue to sit at Westminster.(16)