It is so easy to make fun about Irish administration that one has to be
cautious not to mistake the nature or exaggerate the dimensions of the
evil. The great defect is that the expenditure is not controlled by
Ireland and has no relation to the revenue derived from Ireland. The
Castle is not the odious institution that it was in the dark days of the
land war; but it is still a foreign, not an Irish institution, working,
like the Government of the most dependent of Crown Colonies, in a world
of its own, with autocratic powers, and immunity from all popular
influence. Beyond the criticism that one religious denomination, the
Church of Ireland, is rather unduly favoured in patronage, there is no
personal complaint against the officials. They are as able, kindly,
hard-working, and courteous as any other officials. Some of the
principal posts are held by men of the highest distinction, who will be
as necessary to the new Government as to the old. It is absolutely
essential, but it will not be easy, to make substantial administrative
economies at the outset, not only from the additional stress of novel
work which will be thrown upon a Home Rule Government, but from the
widespread claims of vested interests. It will require courageous
statesmanship, backed by courageous public opinion, to overhaul a
bureaucracy so old and extensive. Take the police, for example, the
first and most urgent subject for reduction. Adding the Royal Irish
Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police together, we have a
force of no less than 12,000 officers and men, a force twice as numerous
in proportion to population as those of England and Wales, and costing
the huge sum of a million and a half; and this in a country which now is
unusually free from crime, and which at all times has been naturally
less disposed to crime than any part of Great Britain. It is the
forcible maintenance of bad economic conditions that has produced Irish
crime in the past. Irishmen hotly resent that symbol of coercion, the
swollen police force, which is as far removed from their own control as
a foreign army of occupation. On the other hand, the force itself is
composed of Irishmen, and is a considerable, though an unhealthy,
economic factor in the life of the country. It performs some minor
official duties outside the domain of justice; it is efficient, and its
individual members are not unpopular. Reduction will be difficult. But
drastic reduction, at least by a h