charge is, of course, debited to Ireland, and the burden falls on the shoulders of the Irish tax-payer. The local bodies which, in Great Britain, exercise the control and bear the cost of the police,2 are charged with neither of these functions in Ireland. This does not, however, prevent the Castle from punishing a "disturbed district " by first making it liable for half the cost of the extra police sent there, and then striking a levy on it for all non-accidental injuries to persons or property. This is done under the law of Compensation for Criminal Injuries, and is the source of great abuse.3 Under imperial control the Irish police force has increased steadily, both in numbers and in cost, since its foundation by Sir Robert Peel4 in 1836. Ireland has one constable for every 362 inhabitants, England has one for every 541, Scotland one for every 885. If we leave out of count the two capitals, London and Dublin, we find that while the cost of the English police is 2s. 3d. per head of the population, the figure for Ireland is 6s. 7d. The police in Scotland cost £400,000, in Ireland £1,300,000.5 Does this mean that there is a greater degree of criminality in Ireland? The case is quite the contrary; and nothing could be falser than the prejudice which paints Ireland as a pandemonium

2 In England the police area county service under the control of a joint committee of Justices of the Peace and County Councillors. (De Franqueville, I., 570).

3 Compensation is awarded at the expense of the ratepayers in all such cases of injuries in which there is malice or presumption of malice. Claims are heard before the County Court Judge, sitting without a jury, with an appeal only to the Assize Judge. Judicial interpretation of the vague term, "criminal injuries," has been pressed to an extravagant point. If a few Dublin gamins amuse themselves breaking windows the city has to pay compensation to the owner of the windows. In England the principle of public indemnification is conceded only in regard to damage resulting from riot or unlawful assembly. The police in Ireland are awarded large sums by way of compensation for personal injuries. In 1901 the account was £14,000, in 1902 £8,000, in 1903 £6,125. Cf. Grand Jury Act (1836); Malicious Injuries (Ireland) Acts (1848 and 1853); Merchant Shipping Act (1894), sec. 515; Local Government (Ireland) Act (1898), sec. 5.

4 The Irish police are popularly called peelers. In 1841, with a population of more than 8 millions there were 7,400 police; in 1901, with a population of 44 millions, there were 12,000 police (including the 1,000 men of the Dublin Metropolitan Police).

5 Thom, 1903; Hansard, July 10th, 1902.

of brigands and assassins. There is no professional criminal class in Ireland. There may have been a considerable volume of crime during the agrarian war, but I do not know a country in Europe in which the figures are lower in normal times. In 1901, for instance, an average year, there were in England 38 convictions for every 100,000 inhabitants, in Scotland 41, and in Ireland only 27. Every year sees the closing of some unused prison, and at the Assizes, as often as not, the Judge receives from the Sheriff the traditional pair of white gloves which indicate that his white hands will not have to be raised in passing sentence on any one.

The chief business of the Irish police is to uphold landlordism. As soon as a case of agrarian warfare is reported, the police occupy the district with their net-work of espionage and inquisition. It is their function to attend popular demonstrations, and take shorthand notes of the speeches, and, when the meeting is arbitrarily proclaimed, to disperse it, batoning the recalcitrant crowd, and, by preference, Members of Parliament, if any are present.6 The police also "protect" persons boycotted or intimidated, landlords, agents, grabbers or landthieves, and the like. These latter constitute quite a special class in the countryside. Sometimes the protection is intermittent by means of rounds and patrols, sometimes permanent by means of police-huts close to the house of the "patient," the latter being forbidden to go anywhere without his escort. Some hundreds of persons are protected" in this way every year; the number has sometimes exceeded a thousand, and there is an instance of one man who was under police protection for twenty years! Night and day the police are at the disposition of the landlords to intimidate the peasants, or to lend military support to seizures and evictions. However cruel and inhuman, even in the opinion of the Castle, the

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6 In 1889, at Ennis a policeman begged pardon for batoning an Irish Times reporter whom he mistook for a Member of Parliament ! (N. MacDonagh, The Book of Parliament, 1897).

"legal" operations may be for which police assistance is demanded, the Castle has no right to refuse this assistance. Such is the jurisprudence of the High Court of Justice.7

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Is it matter for astonishment to find Irishmen willing to adopt the trade of protectors of landlordism, the Castle, and the whole English system in Ireland, in such numbers that the rank and file of the police are in great part composed of the sons of Catholic and Nationalist peasants? The Extremists loudly denounce these "janissaries" of Ireland, call for their condemnation by public opinion, and declare that there never was a conquered country that furnished its conquerors with such an army of mercenaries. On the other hand, the bulk of the people, who have been taught by slavery, poverty, and the mere necessities of life to temper their antiEnglish feeling with a certain leaven of practical opportunism, show no great anger against the police for taking service under the oppressor." "If our sons did not join," they say, " would not England at once import twelve thousand Englishmen to do the work? In that case we should only have helped to Anglicise and Protestantise Ireland a little more.' In fact if people have no hesitation about denouncing publicly the "Castle police the individual constables are not regarded with any very severe eye. They are, moreover, for the most part, honest fellows, sober and disciplined, although characterised by certain traits of authoritarian brutality, impressed on them by long servitude, accentuated by the fighting temper of the country, and aggravated most of all by the influence of the officers. It must be said that the spirit with which the police are inspired by those in command is one of a deplorable and arbitrary provocativeness. Is it necessary to recall certain orders issued from the Castle in times of trouble, the "Don't hesitate to shoot," of 1887,8 or Forster's instructions with regard to

7 It over-ruled Sir M. Hicks Beach on this point in 1886, and Mr. John Morley in 1893. The former was Conservative Chief Secretary ! 8 Issued in 1887 under Mr. Arthur Balfour. A similar instruction had been issued in 1882. (Annual Register, 1882, p. 187).

the use of buckshot? 9 Even in normal times the police are excited beyond the bounds of prudence; there is a continual demand for "incidents," for Ireland must not, it appears, be tranquil ! It is this which gives rise to such frequent scenes of police violence, dispersals of meetings, and baton-charges on inoffensive crowds which offer such a striking contrast to the patience and selfrestraint of the police in England. There are unhappily other causes of a graver character. Ninety-nine out of every hundred constables are honest fellows. But the hundredth is a scoundrel who, seeing that he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by "incidents," provokes or invents such "incidents" and sometimes. sends innocent persons to prison for them. One Talbot, for instance, in County Tipperary, induced young men to join secret societies so that he might afterwards have the pleasure of "informing " against them. Chief Constable Whelehan, through the medium of an accomplice, incited a gang of evil-doers to make an attack on a house at night, and then surprised them in the act. His colleague, Sergeant Sullivan, attempted the same manœuvre at Westport in 1902. As for Sergeant Sheridan, he went still further. Aided by two or three accomplices, he set fire to haggards, and killed or mutilated cattle, and then proceeded to arrest for these crimes innocent persons whom he succeeded in sending to prison or to penal servitude. Whenever Sheridan was moved to a new post there was an increase of crime, or at least of arrests for crime, for which he was commended. In 1901 all was discovered, and Sheridan fled the country before the issue of a warrant against him.10 What are we to say of a government which, while professing to be the guardian,

9 He was called after it Buckshot Forster.

10 The Government did not dare to prosecute Sheridan, for fear, as it is said, of revelations. He was allowed to quit the country, and two of his accomplices and accusers left the service with "compassionate allowances of £50 and £200 respectively (more, that is to say, than Sheridan's victims received by way of compensation). See Hansard, July 24th, 1902, and October 20th, 1902.

and the sole guardian, of "law and order," covers away such base scandals under the cloak of "law and order " as to produce a state of affairs which, in the words of a recent English writer, is like a "glance into Hell?" Could such scandals arise at all if those who are charged with the administration of justice did their duty?

V.-JUSTICE: THE LOWER Courts.

The legal system of Ireland, looked at from the outside and from a distance, seems a very faithful copy of the legal system of England. It is apparently based on the same guiding principles and exhibits the same general traits. The judges of the High Court, rather few in number, enjoying handsome salaries and not removable by the Government, exercise a preponderating influence. The judge sits alone in a great many cases; there is no public department charged with the direction of civil actions, and in criminal proceedings direct prosecution at the suit of an individual is always possible. The jury must be unanimous in its verdict, and is employed in many matters which, in France, would be dealt with summarily by a Court of Correction. A jury is sworn in a civil cause if the parties think it worth while; there are no tribunaux administratifs"; law is, on the whole, expensive.1 . . . . . The entire system seems at first sight closely modelled on that of Great Britain, but when you look more intimately into its working it turns out to be not a copy but a sufficiently gross caricature. It is another proof that the best institutions in the world are worth only as much as the men who direct them, and that laws are of very little value unless they are supported by custom and public practice.

Of all the judicial institutions of Great Britain the most original and characteristic is the Justice of the Prace,

I Cf. Comte De Franqueville, Le Système Judiciaire de la GrandeBretagne, Paris, 1893, II., p. 621 to 639.