THE FUTURE OF THE IRISH POLICE.
THE argument about the Irish Police seems to us to be taking a false direction. It is said everywhere with approval that Mr. Gladstone, in his plan for Home-rule, will concede to the Irish Parliament the control of the civil police, but will retain the Irish Constabulary in English hands as a kind of gendarmerie. It is quite possible that when the plan is revealed to Parliament no such precaution will be found within it ; but if there is, it seems to us not only a foolish but a dangerous one. The reason against granting the control of the civil police to any Irish representative body is the final one against Home-rule,—that there is no ground for con- fidence that the police will be used to uphold Imperial law. No contract unpopular with the majority in the Parliament of Dublin will be of any worth, for the police will not act heartily, or perhaps not at all, when its enforcement is resisted. If, for example, the Parliament of Dublin contains a majority favourable to the House League, no contract for house rent will be valid, because the police will not assist in the evic- tions necessary to collect the money. There is no answer to that argument, except a blank denial of the hypothesis on which it is based ; but if Home-rule is granted, we see no good, and much harm, in retaining the Constabulary as gendarmes. It is the civil police, not they, who will be en- trusted with the enforcement of contracts, and their fidelity to Imperial orders will, therefore, prevent none of the dreaded evils, which, indeed, in the face of a legislative body whose members will on the theory consider those evils blessings, cannot be prevented. If the Irish are to rule themselves, they must work out their own problem un- restrained by us. On the other hand, if the Irish Par- liament desires to enforce its own laws, it will occasionally need the help of an armed body, and must either create one or use the old Constabulary. In the former case, the restriction will be of no avail except to increase expense ; while in the latter, we shall have this pernicious result,—that whenever the law is sustained by force, the force will seem to be foreign, and the hatred not only of England, but of law, will be kept up and intensified. If Home-rule is to do any moral good at all in Ireland, it must be by dissociating the ideas of law and of oppression, and by teaching the people that they them- selves, if they would keep down anarchy, must punish the lawless among themselves. That instruction is in all countries the very basis of free civilisation, and it has been impeded by the relation of Ireland to England. Under the proposed arrangement that healthy knowledge can never be acquired, for while the police which uses no force will be Irish and popular, the police which uses force will be, or be said to be, foreign and detested. It will be as if in London we employed
Englishmen to arrest sharpers, but in every case of riot relied on the intervention of a German guard. No system more fatal to the popular reverence for order could be devised any- where, and in Ireland its effect will be peculiarly evil, for the Irish masses entertain for the Constabulary a dislike which, probably from some inner sympathy with mili- tary display, they do not feel for the soldiers. They will acknowledge the military garrison to be necessary while Ireland remains under the Crown, but will denounce the Constabulary as the servants of the foreigner, and hate the enforcement of law because they hate them. We cannot see why, if Home-rule is to be granted, and with it the control of the civil police, the control of the armed police should not be granted too. They will not be wanted by the supreme Government, which, if it has to coerce a semi-independent Ireland, can only do it by military force or a blockade ; and they will be wanted by the native Govern- ment, which, when it once begins taxing, may have to face a hundred local insurrections. The habit of mind of generations is not to be cured by an Act, and Irishmen have resisted law in Pennsylvania just as bitterly as in Kerry. It is said the Constabulary is so good a force that it is equal to a small army, and therefore world be dangerous; but surely that is a counsel of timidity. If it comes to an armed struggle between the countries, what difference can a force not a 'fourth of the Belgian Army on a peace footing, without artillery, and unused to act in great bodies, make to the result ? The Constabulary would be ten times as easy to overthrow as the same number of guerillas, for they would collect together, and wage war with a hope of gaining pitched battles. Such a contingency will, we hope and believe, never arise, for should the English objection to use the soldiers ever vanish, the objection to use the Fleet will vanish too, and the Fleet is
the more irresistible weapon ; but if it did arise, the possession of a corps d'armie by Ireland will make no
appreciable difference, or one in British favour. Indeed,
we would press even a more advanced argument. The one subject upon which the British Parliament, during the
generation in which it has tried to do justice to Ireland, has been steadily unjust, has been the refusal to Ireland of equal rights with Britain as regards armament. There is no Irish Militia, though Ireland helps to pay military expenses ; and no Irish Volunteers, though Ireland contributes to the capitation grant. Those prohibitions, on the theory of equality, are unjust as well as dishonouring — for we English of all men are bound, in this hour of bitter- ness, to remember that Ireland's military honour has never been broken, and that her sons have no more betrayed the British colours than they have deserted them—and we are now paying a terrible penalty. It is because Ireland is not armed that it is so nearly impossible to act ; it is for want of an armed force that she devises impalpable forms of resistance. There may be conspiracy in the Irish blood—people used to say just the same about Italian blood—but human nature does not differ so much that a State possessing an army of brave men would not use it. The Generals would soon settle that, even if public opinion did not, and till battle had been tried, we should hear nothing of baser methods of continuing the struggle ; and be the end what it might, the contending nations would respect each other. Nor would the chances of a struggle be increased. As a contemporary recently observed, it is not the men in command of armies who are so ready to rush upon superior power, but the men who do not understand what armies can or cannot accomplish. General Sheridan would be far slower to risk war with Great Britain than Mr. Sheridan ; and it is the strong Government which can get itself obeyed that enforces law, not the weak Government which is afraid of resistance on every side. The fear, too, is opposed to all the facts. If England, with all her population and her wealth, and thirty thousand soldiers encamped in Ireland, cannot hold Ireland without armed constables, she cannot hold it at all, and had better give up the struggle, and commence a new career.
To us, who sincerely believe that Home-rule for Ireland means, in the near future, either war or Separation, and would greatly prefer the latter, some of these petty precautions seem almost amazing. Here are men by the dozen who say we have only to trust Ireland generously, and all trouble will be over ; and a third of them want to buy out the propertied class, while another third refuse to arm the police, and a con- siderable section of the remainder are most anxious about vetoes. If they really trust Ireland, and are conscious of being wise as well as right, what are they so fearful for ? Why should a " liberated," and " regenerated," and " friendly " Ireland not be as strong as natural circumstances will allow, and organise herself according to her own judgment of what is wise and fitting ? She will not be the less regenerated because she has a Constabulary, or the less friendly because she has a force of her own able to put down a local mob. The truth is, those who are about to vote for Home-rule distrust its results ; and as they are not prepared to say so, they cast about for devices which, if legislative power is once granted, will be as powerless to stay the rush of a popular wave as Mrs. Partington's mop. One would like to have seen Sieyes's face when told that La Vendee was to be allowed a Convention of its own, but that it was considered a necessary precaution to keep the gendarmerie still in Parisian hands. He would have said, we think, that the Commandant of the garrison would answer that no insurrection should happen, and that to answer for anything else was, under the conditions, not in mortal man.
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