[14]are still maintained with scarcely any diminution. The force, when established just seventy years ago, at a time when the population of the country was nearly eight millions, numbered only 7,400 men; the population of the island is to-day only half what it was then, but there are now on the force of the constabulary 12,000 men, and 8,000 pensioners are maintained out of the taxes. In addition to this, there is a separate body of Dublin Metropolitan Police, and smaller bodies in Belfast and Derry are also maintained. The Dublin police force costs nearly six times as much per head of population as does that of London. It comprises 1,200 men, and there has been a remarkable increase in cost in the last twenty years, rising to its present charge of £160,950, with no apparent corresponding increase in numbers or in pay. The total cost of the police system of Ireland is one and a half million pounds per annum; that of Scotland, with an almost equal population, is half a million sterling. To appreciate the point of this it must be realised that the indictable offences committed in Ireland in a year are in the proportion of 18 as compared with 26 committed in Scotland, while criminal convicts are in the ratio of 13 in Ireland to 22 in Scotland.
Such a state of things as this, by which the cost of police per head of population is no less than 7s., has only been maintained by the busy efforts, which Lord Dunraven denounced a couple of years ago, of those who paint a grossly exaggerated picture of Ireland, so as "to suggest to Englishmen that the country is in a state of extreme unrest and seething with crime." The columns of the English Unionist Press show the manner in which these impressions are disseminated, and there is in London a bureau for the supply of details of examples of violence in Ireland for the consumption of English readers. The Chief Secretary, in the House of Commons last session, spoke of the fact that he received large numbers of letters of complaint,
[15]purporting to come from different sufferers from violence and intimidation in Ireland, but which, on close examination, turned out to be signed by one man. The recent disgraceful attempt to beat up prejudice on the part of the Daily Graphic, which reproduced what purported to be not the photograph of an actual moonlighting scene, but a photograph of "the real moonlighters, who obligingly re-enacted their drama for the benefit of our photographer," incurred the disgust which it deserved; but it was only one instance of an organised campaign of bruiting abroad invented stories of lawlessness in Ireland which constitutes the deliberate policy of the "carrion crows," whose action Mr. Birrell so justly reprobated, and of which the most flagrant instances were the purely fictitious plots to blow up the Exhibition in Dublin; an outrage at Drumdoe, which on investigation proved to be the work of residents in the house which was supposed to be attacked, and the allegation of a dynamite outrage at Clonroe, in County Cork, which the police reported had never occurred. One would have thought that the experience which the Times and the Loyal Irish and Patriotic Union gained at the hands of Richard Pigott would at least have made people chary of this form of propaganda. The comparison of the criminal statistics of Ireland with those of Scotland which I have made shows how much truth there is in the imputations of widespread lawlessness, as does also the number of times on which in each year the Judges of Assize comment favourably on the presentment of the Grand Jury; and, moreover, the closing of unnecessary prisons which is going on throughout the country is a further proof, if any be needed, of the falsity of the charges which are so industriously spread abroad. The only gaol in the County of Wexford was closed a few years ago; that at Lifford, the only one in the County of Donegal, has since been closed as superfluous. Of the two which
[16]existed till recently in County Tipperary, that at Nenagh is now occupied as a convent, in which the Sisters give classes in technical instruction to the girls of the neighbourhood; but perhaps the most piquant instance is to be found in Westmeath, where an unnecessary gaol at Mullingar, having been for some time closed, is now used for the executive meetings of the local branch of the United Irish League. All these, it should be noted, are to be found in districts which are inhabited not by "loyal and law-abiding" Unionists, but by a strongly Nationalist population.
Enough insistence has not been laid on one important fact in the administration of the criminal law in Ireland. In England anyone who alleges that he has been wronged can institute a criminal process, and this is a frequent mode of effecting prosecutions. In Ireland the social conditions in the past have brought it about that the investigation and prosecution of crime is left to the police, who, as a result, have attained something of the protection which droit administratif throws over police and magistrates in France and other Continental countries, by which State officials are to a large extent protected from the ordinary law of the land, are exempted from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals, and are subject instead to official law administered by official bodies.
The principles on which it is based in countries where it forms an actual doctrine of the constitution are the privilege of the State over and above those of the private citizen, and, secondly, the separation des pouvoirs by which, while ordinary judges ought to be irremovable and independent of the Executive, Government officials ought, qua officials, to be independent to a great extent of the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and their actes administratifs ought not to be amenable to the ordinary tribunals and judges. The absorption by the constabulary of the conduct of prosecutions has tended towards such a
[17]state of things as this; but a far more potent factor in the same direction has been the confusion of administrative and judicial functions which the relations of the resident magistrates to the police have engendered, and to an even greater degree has this tendency been accentuated in the case of the special "removable" magistrates appointed in proclaimed districts under the Coercion Acts, for they are officials in whom the judicial and the constabulary functions are inextricably confounded. That this suspicion of officialism detracts from the authority of the police force in popular esteem is undoubted. Their complete dissociation from popular control, the fact that they receive extra pay for any work performed for local bodies, in addition to rewards received from the Inland Revenue for the detection of illicit stills, and the fact the only connection of police administration with local bodies occurs when any county is called upon to pay for the additional force drafted into it on account of local disturbance, all exert their influence in the same direction.
That the same curse of extravagance extends to the judiciary in Ireland one would expect from the fact that the number of the High Court Judges is greater than in Scotland, though, as we have seen, the population is smaller and the crime is less. According to a statement made by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury a few months ago the salaries of the judges of the Superior Courts charged on the Consolidated Fund amount to 1s. 1d. per head of population in England and Wales, to 2s. 8d. per head in Scotland, to no less a sum than 3s. 3d. per head in Ireland. And this discrepancy in cost occurs at a time when the complaint in England is that there are not enough judges of the King's Bench, while in Ireland their numbers are excessive.
The difference between the attitude of the judiciary in England and in Ireland is to be seen from the fact that M. Paul-Dubois, after quoting with approval the
[18]Comte de Franqueville's tribute to the fact that the summing up of a judge in England is a model of impartiality, goes on to say that in Ireland, "c'est trop souvent un acte d'accusation."