missioner with no means of enforcing his orders;
but the only result was that he was laughed at by the natives as "a
man-of-war without guns"; and no one can say that the scheme was a
success. In fact, how can a law be a law unless it is enforced? The
Act does not make anything a crime that was not a crime before; it
merely provides a shorter form of procedure when a district is so
completely terrorized by an illegal association that injured persons
dare not make complaints, witnesses dare not give evidence, and juries
dare not convict. This, as we have seen, had been the case in parts
of Ireland at the beginning of the rebellion of 1798; and the
Nationalists, who claimed to be the modern representatives of the
rebels of that time, had succeeded in bringing about the same state of
things. In some of its most stringent provisions the Act is a copy of
the Police Act permanently in force in London; yet ordinary residents
in the Metropolis do not seem to groan much under its tyranny, nor do
the Radicals propose to repeal it.

And certainly the Act has worked satisfactorily from the point of
view of those who desire to see the country in a state of peace and
prosperity, though disastrously in the opinion of those who aim at
making government impossible. Between July, 1887, when the Act came
into force, and the end of the year, 628 persons were prosecuted, of
whom 378 were convicted and 37 held to bail. In 1888 there were 1,475
prosecutions, 907 convictions, and 175 persons required to find bail.
By 1891 (the last full year of Unionist Government) crime had sunk so
rapidly that in that year there were only 243 persons prosecuted,
of whom 105 were convicted, and 81 held to bail. In 1901 (when the
Unionists were again in power) there were 29 prosecutions and 22
convictions. In 1902 there was a revival of crime; the Act was again
brought into operation, with much the same result as before--there
were 157 prosecutions, 104 convictions, and 17 persons were held to
bail. In 1903 there were 3 prosecutions and 3 convictions.

(2) _Land Purchase_. The Unionist Government considered that the dual
ownership set up by the Act of 1881 would be a constant source of
trouble, and that its working could not be for the benefit of the
country. They believed that the best solution of the land question
would be a system of purchase whereby the occupiers would become
owners. This of course was entirely opposed to the wishes of the
Nationalists;