Part 5 (2/2)

_Ko-Ko_. Pooh-Bah, it seems that the festivities in connection with my approaching marriage must last a week. I should like to do it handsomely, and I want to consult you as to the amount I ought to spend upon them.

_Pooh-Bah_. Certainly. In which of my capacities? As First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse, or Private Secretary?

_Ko-Ko_. Suppose we say as Private Secretary.

_Pooh-Bah_. Speaking as your Private Secretary, I should say that as the city will have to pay for it, don't stint yourself; do it well.

_Ko-Ko_. Exactly--as the city will have to pay for it. That is your advice?

_Pooh-Bah_. As Private Secretary. Of course you will understand that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am bound to see that due economy is observed.

_Ko-Ko_. Oh, but you said just now, 'Don't stint yourself; do it well.'

_Pooh-Bah_. As Private Secretary.

_Ko-Ko_. And now you say that due economy must be observed.

_Pooh-Bah_. As Chancellor of the Exchequer.

_Ko-Ko_. I see. Come over here where the Chancellor can't hear us.

_(They cross stage.)_ Now, as my Solicitor, how do you advise me to deal with this difficulty?

_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 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 fas.h.i.+on a statue of fair-play. Having, with great labour, left his personal impress on two or three handfuls, the weary t.i.tan abandons his impossible task. He falls back in good order on the House of Commons, where his party majority enables him to pa.s.s 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 n.o.body, 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.

”From whatever point of view we envisage the English Government in Ireland,” writes Mr Paul-Dubois, ”we are confronted with the same appearance of const.i.tutional forms masking a state of things which is a compound of autocracy, oppression, and corruption.”

Such a system does not possess within itself the seed of continuance.

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