Then follow professional complaints that throw a curious light on the relations between police and population. The unhappy constables are boycotted personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them. It is next to impossible for them to procure the first necessaries of life. Government has to distribute rations to them as to soldiers on a campaign. If they want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment of the public force where their presence is wanted, nobody—even among the principal interested—will give means of transport either for gold or silver. The Government have had to give the constabulary special traps that are constantly to be met on the roads, and that one recognizes by their blood-red colour.
That police corps, the Irish Constabulary Force, is very numerous, and entails great expense—more than one million and a half sterling per year. The cost would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were on the same footing as the English force; that fact alone can give an adequate idea of the real state of things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called Emergency men, are always ready to give their help to the regular corps.
Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps nearly 50,000 armed men in Ireland. The male adult and able population of the island being under 500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed to the agrarian and autonomist movement, one can assume that there is on an average one armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed Irishmen.
On the dusty road before us are slowly walking five cows in rather an emaciated condition. Those beasts strike me by an odd appearance which I am unable to make out at first. When I am close to them I see what it is: they have no tails. The absence of that ornament gives the poor animals the awkwardest and most absurd look.
I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.
“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.
“Well?”
“The cows have no tails, and the man has no ears....”
It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured to hide his head, as round as a cheese, under the brim of his battered old hat; he did not succeed in hiding his deformity.