The Irish Cabinet might by mere inaction render the collection of rent impossible; they might, as I have already pointed out, give tacit encouragement to smuggling.

If the people regarded a coastguard as an enemy, if he and his family were left severely alone, if he were often maltreated and occasionally shot, his position might be a difficult one, even if supported by the whole force of the state.

But if smuggling were regarded as no crime, if the smuggler were looked upon as the patriot who deprived an alien power of a revenue to which England had no right, it is clear that nothing but the energetic support of all the central and local authorities in the country could give a revenue officer the remotest chance of victory in his contest with smugglers.

But suppose the national government were apathetic, suppose that the Irish Ministry looked with favourable eye on the diminution of English revenue; suppose that no Irish official gave any aid to a custom-house officer; suppose that, if a British coastguardsman were murdered, Irish detectives made no effort to discover the wrong-doer; and that when the culprit was discovered the Irish law officers hesitated to prosecute; suppose that when a prosecution took place the Attorney-General showed that his heart was not in the matter, and that the jury acquitted a ruffian clearly guilty of murder, is it not as clear as day that smuggling would flourish and no customs be collected?
In the same way the Irish Ministry might by mere apathy, by the very easy process of doing nothing, nullify the effect of judgments delivered by the Exchequer judges, and the Irish Ministry would show very little ingenuity if they could not without any open breach of the law impede the carrying out of executions against the goods of persons whom popular feeling treated as patriots.
The Irish Executive might, as already pointed out,[90] easily raise an Irish army.

Drilling countenanced or winked at by the Irish Ministry could never be stopped by the British Government.