efficiently discharging duties never faithfully and efficiently discharged in Ireland before.

The end and object of a police force is the prevention of crime and the detection of offenders. A police force succeeds or fails in proportion to the amount of crime prevented or detected, and its success or failure must be gauged by its success in prevention as much as by the sum of its detection.

But the duties of the Irish constabulary are by no means confined to its duties as a police force pure and simple. Leaving out of account their duties as to the prevention or detection of crime, the police have to act as water-bailiffs; look after the safety of the roads; remove cattle found wandering, and summon for road nuisance; serve summons for attendance of jurors at assizes; the same at quartersessions; act as game preservers under the Poaching Prevention Act; collect the census statistics; collect annually the agricultural statistics; issue and collect voting papers for the election of poorlaw guardians; execute loan fund warrants; keep a register of all houses in the district, number of forges, number of carts available for troops in case of emergency, number of licensed dogs; look after the suppression of illicit distillation; and dozens of other duties not. dreamt of by an English policeman. In fact, to understand what their duties are, one need only add together the duties of every person in England connected with the collection of statistics, the preservation of fish or game, the supervision of the roads, and the business of the police. Everything in Ireland, from the muzzling of a dog to the suppression of a rebellion, is done by the Irish constabulary.

No policeman in Europe receives the same amount of theoretical training for his duties. The recruit having been accepted after his antecedents and those of his family have been inquired into, and an examination passed in reading and writing, he spends six months at the depôt in Dublin, where he learns as much drill as will enable him to use properly the arms with which he is supplied for emergency, and prevent a number of men assembled in discharge of their duty from being a mere armed mob. Each day he is instructed by an experienced head constable in the various branches of his duty. Crimes, with their possible motives, are gone over, and broad lines of action in certain cases are mapped out, and by the time he has learned his drill he is thus well grounded in theoretical knowledge of his duty. Here his instruction differs from that of any other police force of which I know. Nothing is left to be learnt by rule of thumb. His powers and his duties are regularly taught to him, and, if he has an opinion on cases that come under his notice, he must be prepared to give legal reasons for the faith that is in him. Hereafter as a trained policeman he may be sent to the north of Ireland, or to the south. He may never be stationed in his own county. He is thus saved the awkwardness of having to perform duties, often

unpleasant, among those who have been his friends and companions. He is paid from 20s. to 248. a week. A constable's pay is 727. a year, and a head constable's 90l. to 1017. All have in addition lodging, clothing, and firing. This rate of pay is far beyond what an ordinary farmer's son could hope to earn, and the force offers every inducement for success in bringing offenders to justice.

Passing over the prevention of crime for the present, let us examine the probabilities of detection in Ireland. There are two kinds of detectives besides the men in large towns who wear no uniform so that they may not appear remarkable, but are well known as policemen. I shall call them the English and the foreign types. The English typical detective is a policeman in plain clothes, clever in the collection of materials from which a chain of evidence can be woven, quick in the appreciation of the smallest items of information, with a good memory for faces, and a genius for possible causes of outrage, or probable subsequent action of a known criminal. The foreign type is the man or woman in society, or the baker, or butcher, or servant, or criminal, in the pay of the police, and is a spy pure and simple. Of such a one it may be accepted as a truism that the man who spends his life in deceiving those with whom he comes in contact will have little compunction in deceiving his employers the Government-if it be his interest to do so. The utility of the English type, on the other hand, depends very much upon the readiness or truthfulness with which his inquiries are answered. At the same time there is in England a superstition that a detective can discover anything if he only likes, and the supposed failure of detection in Ireland is accepted as a proof of the failure of the police.

The following case will illustrate the difficulties attending the detection of agrarian crimes:

A man has been murdered, and it is generally known that his life has been taken in consequence of some action of his respecting a farm lately come into his occupation. There is but little difficulty in saying who murdered him. Everybody in the neighbourhood mentions his name in a whisper to each other, but will not open their lips to a stranger. A policeman hears the circumstances from a friend, who tells him without reserve the entire story of the concoction of the plot, and possibly the amount of money paid to the murderer. The policeman, being energetic and anxious, after trying to induce him to come forward as a witness, compels him to come before a magistrate for examination. In answer to the justice the person says he knows nothing of the matter, and only told the policeman what he heard somebody say in a fair. He does not even know the man who said it. He is sworn, and repeats this statement; and now, if he came forward to-morrow, his evidence would be worthless, for his sworn denial of its truth is recorded. It would be difficult to formulate a plan by which this man could be compelled to

speak the truth. If he did, he would either be obliged to expatriate himself, or to live for years under the protection of the police. A detective-for there are detectives in Ireland-has been for some time in that neighbourhood. He is possibly a butcher, or drover, or labourer. He has heard the murderer himself acknowledge the crime. Here one may assume that justice will be done. But such a detective would only be accepted as an informer; and it is an inflexible rule that the evidence of an informer is worthless except so far as it is corroborated by untainted evidence, or by circumstances. The effect of bringing forward the detective of the neighbourhood would be that while the prisoner would be acquitted, the detective would be useless for the future, and the valuable preventive information that he might hereafter glean would be lost. As to any stranger, policeman or otherwise, obtaining information, it is impossible. Unfortunately, not one in five hundred of the community, be he gentleman or peasant, looks upon the commission of crime upon another as a matter affecting anybody but the Government. It is entirely a matter for the police, and neither the desire for security nor the temptation of a large reward will induce any person to offer assistance. I know myself a man who was an involuntary witness to a murder. He is penniless; his wildest dream of wealth probably never went beyond the possession of ten pounds. Two thousand pounds were offered to him if he would divulge the terrible secret of the murder. He refused. He was asked to name his own sum. answered that life was sweet, and prefers eking out a wretched. existence to braving the danger of giving evidence. It is thus not strange that detection, or rather conviction, of crime in Ireland is difficult, but that any convictions can be obtained where society seems to have lost the instinct of self-preservation. It is worthy of remark that in cases of murder in England, committed by Irishmen upon Irishmen, the English police are powerless. No clue has been discovered in either the case of the Sheffield murder or the late assassination at Solihull. These murders bore the marks of being the work of a society; but there, as in Ireland, accomplices can hold their tongues.

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I have hitherto not spoken of the details of the Irish constabulary system. The head-quarter staff is composed of an inspector-general, a deputy, and three assistants, who inspect the stations from time to time in the different counties. Each county is commanded by a county inspector, and is divided into districts, each in charge of a sub-inspector. The districts are in turn divided into from eight to twelve sub-districts, each in charge of a constable, who has four or five sub-constables stationed with him. There are 1,415 such stations in Ireland; and as the total area of the island, independent of lakes, is 20,192,186 acres, the average acreage of each sub-district is 14,270 statute acres. A few of the officers are promoted from

the ranks, but the large majority have entered as cadets by competitive examination. The pay, including allowances, is-Inspectorgeneral, 1,500l.; deputy-inspector general, 1,000l.; assistants, 600l. to 800l.; county inspectors, 500l. to 650l.; sub-inspectors, 250l. to 4501. The pay of the lower grades I have given before. The force is absolutely homogeneous, and promotion is by seniority independent of counties, with power of rejection. The regulations as to the guidance of the force are identical to the minutest detail; and the sub-constable in the wilds of Donegal will answer the same questions in the constables' daily examination as to his knowledge of police duties, get up at the same hour, parade at the same time, and fold his barrack-bedding in exactly the same pattern as his brother stationed in the quiet glens of Wicklow or the troubled city of Cork.

Every outrage occurring in the sub-district is verbally reported without delay to the nearest local magistrate, and a written report sent to the sub-inspector, who visits the scene and reports in triplicate to the inspector-general, the county inspector, and the resident magistrate. All complaints go through the sub-inspector to the county inspector, who transmits them to the inspector-general. In cases of serious outrage the county inspector is supposed to visit the place and see that no necessary steps have been neglected; and the telegraph is at the service of any policeman who may require to send a telegram on police service. This system has many advantages; for in the flux and reflux of large numbers of men-now to the north to keep party processions from each other's throats, now to the west to protect process servers from the attentions of an angry peasantry, possibly to the south to meet more serious troubles-the different parts of a heterogeneous force would be all at sea. The interchangeability of the men is useful in another way, for men who have served in towns and become acquainted with the criminal classes there congregated may know them when they set out upon a tour of mischief. I remember a case in Belfast where a serious crime was committed by two men who escaped from the town. Two hundred notices were printed, and sent to every station in the north of Ireland, naming one man and describing both. Next day a sub-constable in a country station thirty miles away who had been stationed in Belfast, recognised one of the men, and both were captured. In England a criminal from London, Liverpool, or Birmingham, who takes the precaution of leaving his own town, is safe from recognition except he happens to meet a detective from the place.

I have said that a police force must be judged by its preventive action as well as by the sum of its detection. Putting the former aside, I find, on examining hard facts, that the Royal Irish Constabulary can afford to base its claims on its detection alone. I have before me the following Blue Books :-(1) Judicial Statistics, England and Wales, 1879;' (2) 'Police, Counties and Boroughs, 1879;' VOL. IX.-No. 48.

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(3) Report of the Commissioners of the Police of the Metropolis, 1879;' (4) Statistical Tables of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, 1879;' (5) Return Agrarian and other Crimes (Ireland).' The first four returns give identical tables for 1879, so far as indictable offences go, and are, therefore, on all fours for purposes of comparison. The fifth is a Parliamentary return of indictable offences in Ireland from the 1st of May 1878, to the 31st of December 1879. In the want of method in its compilation, and the paucity of information given, the return compares very unfavourably with the exhaustive reports presented yearly by every English county and borough, as with the information contained in the Dublin police report. The Irish crime report merely states the crimes, and does not separate indictable crimes tried at petty sessions from those in which the persons made amenable were uischarged or committed for trial. The other reports make this distinction, and I have extracted from the Irish report the materials for a similar table. For purposes of comparison of averages it does not much matter that the Irish report covers six months' longer time. There are two offences in the Irish return that have no place in the English tables. They are threatening letters and riots; one being by its nature as impossible to detect, as identification is certain in the other. Of the 5,526 offences mentioned in the return no less than 900 are threatening letters, and 60 riots or assaults on police, for which 580 persons were made amenable. Both these offences I deduct from the return, as I also put aside 339 cases in which 650 persons were made amenable but tried at pettv sessions, as is the custom in Ireland whenever possible, and fines .nder five pounds imposed, or imprisonment under two months inflicted. This leaves the number of indictable offences 4,227, for which 2,508 persons have been made amenable.

I give in the table on the opposite page the same information for the several districts of England and Wales, and for Dublin, with the average percentage of detection for each district. I distinguish the reports from which the figures are extracted by the numbers I., II., III., &c., and give the pages as far as possible.

The table speaks for itself. I have added the statistics for a couple of English and a couple of Irish seaports whose populations approach equality. It must be remembered that there is a larger police force in the Irish towns in proportion to population, but still the disproportion in percentage of apprehensions is very striking, Taking the three great districts of England-the London Metropolitan, the London City, and the Dublin Metropolitan police districts—and comparing them with the efficiency of the Royal Irish Constabulary, it will be seen that the force is second of the seven in its average of apprehensions. I do not wish to load this paper with more statistics; but I find, deducting the same class of offences as in the other case, that in 269 agrarian crimes reported in the same time 120 persons, or 45.6 per cent., were made amenable.