y a
French writer exclaim--"Combien differents du legendaire et corpulent
'bobby,' cette 'institution populaire' de la Grande Bretagne," who goes
without even a truncheon as a weapon of offence. The numbers of the
Royal Irish Constabulary, which were largely increased in the days of
widespread agitation, 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 L160,950, 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, 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