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Page 33
_Pooh-Bah_. Oh, as your Solicitor, I should have no hesitation in
saying chance it.
_Ko-Ko_. Thank you _(shaking his head)_; I will.
_Pooh-Bah_. If it were not that, as Lord Chief Justice, I am bound
to see that the law isn't violated.
_Ko-Ko_. I see. Come over here where the Chief Justice can't hear
us. (_They cross the stage_.) Now, then, as First Lord of the
Treasury?
_Pooh-Bah_. Of course, as First Lord of the Treasury, I could
propose a special vote that would cover all expenses if it 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 r�le. 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 cannot be said that they go like wind.
While they are with us they are absolute, seen by nobody, felt by all
the world, the Manchu mandarins of the West. They have been attacked on
many foolish counts; let us in justice to them and ourselves be quite
clear as to what is wrong with them. Some people say that there are too
many Boards, but it is to be remembered that for every new function with
which we endow the State it must have a new organ. Others say that they
are over-staffed; but all government departments in the world are
over-staffed. Still others say that they are stupid and corrupt. As for
corruption, it certainly does exist under many discreet veils, but its
old glory is fading. Incompetent the great officials never were. A poet
tells us that there are only two people in the world who ever understand
a man--the woman who loves him, and the enemy who hates him best. In one
of these ways, if not in the other, Dublin Castle understands Ireland.
Did it not know what the people of Ireland want, it could not so
infallibly have maintained its tradition of giving them the opposite.
Other critics again find the deadly disease of the Boards to reside in
the fact that they are a bureaucracy. This diagnosis comes closer to the
truth, but it is not yet the truth. Bureaucracies of trained experts are
becoming more and not less necessary. What is really wrong with the
Castle is that it is a bureaucracy which has usurped the throne of the
nation. "In England," declared Mr Gladstone, "when the nation attends,
it can prevail." In Ireland, though it should attend seven days in the
week, it could never under present arrangements stamp the image of its
will on public policy. The real sin of the Castle regime is that it is a
sham, a rococo, a despotism painted to look like representative
government. To quote a radiant commonplace, the rich significance of
which few of us adequately grasp, it does not rest on the consent of the
governed.
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