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 recent disgraceful attempt to beat up prejudice on the part of the Daily Graphic, which reproduced what purported to be not the photograph of an actual moonlighting scene, but a photograph of “the real moonlighters, who obligingly re-enacted their drama for the benefit of our photographer,” incurred the disgust which it deserved; but it was only one instance of an organised campaign of bruiting abroad invented stories of lawlessness in Ireland which constitutes the deliberate policy of the “carrion crows,” whose action Mr. Birrell so justly reprobated, and of which the most flagrant instances were the purely fictitious plots to blow up the Exhibition in Dublin; an outrage at Drumdoe, which on investigation proved to be the work of residents in the house which was supposed to be attacked, and the allegation of a dynamite outrage at Clonroe, in County Cork, which the police reported had never occurred.  One would have thought that the experience which the Times and the Loyal Irish and Patriotic Union gained at the hands of Richard Pigott would at least have made people chary of this form of propaganda.  The comparison of the criminal statistics of Ireland with those of Scotland which I have made shows how much truth there is in the imputations of widespread lawlessness, as does also the number of times on which in each year the Judges of Assize comment favourably on the presentment of the Grand Jury; and, moreover, the closing of unnecessary prisons which is going on throughout the country is a further proof, if any be needed, of the falsity of the charges which are so industriously spread abroad.  The only gaol in the County of Wexford was closed a few years ago; that at Lifford, the only one in the County of Donegal, has since been closed as superfluous.  Of the two which existed till recently in County Tipperary, that at Nenagh is now occupied as a convent, in which the Sisters give classes in technical instruction to the girls of the neighbourhood; but perhaps the most piquant instance is to be found in Westmeath, where an unnecessary gaol at Mullingar, having been for some time closed, is now used for the executive meetings of the local branch of the United Irish League.  All these, it should be noted, are to be found in districts which are inhabited not by “loyal and law-abiding” Unionists, but by a strongly Nationalist population.

Enough insistence has not been laid on one important fact in the administration of the criminal law in Ireland.  In England anyone who alleges that he has been wronged can institute a criminal process, and this is a frequent mode of effecting prosecutions.  In Ireland the social conditions in the past have brought it about that the investigation and prosecution of crime is left to the police, who, as a result, have attained something of the protection which droit administratif throws over police and magistrates in France and other Continental countries, by which State officials are to a large extent protected from the ordinary law of the land, are exempted from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals, and are subject instead to official law administered by official bodies.