CRIME IN IRELAND.
THERE is no more remarkable example of the trite common- place that if you throw enough of mud at anybody some of it is sure to stick, than the notions which most Englishmen have taken up about Ireland, Irish life, and the Irish character. For the prevalence of these notions Irishmen are themselves in a measure to blame. Many of them repeat half jestingly the worn-out witticism, "Ireland is a fine country to live out of," and Englishmen, who, not without reason, fail to see the point of the joke, seriously take them at their word. Then the perennial disaffection of the people, the really grave political dangers of our relations with Ireland, and the occasional ferocity of agrarian crime, have all tended to foster the idea in the English mind that in Ireland, whether for the capitalist, the settler, or the traveller, there is no safety either for life or property. That it is possible to pass along an Irish highway without being shot at from behind the hedge by a nonchalant scoundrel with a battered hat and a rusty blunderbuss, has for many English minds all the startling interest of a new revelation. And even more educated and liberal men,—who know perfectly well, many of them from experience, that the traveller in Irish country districts and the casual resident in Irish towns has not only nothing to fear for his life or his property, but is
rather pestered with a quickly growing swarm of attached dependents,—still cling to the superstition that the investment of capital in Ireland entails risks of a personal kind to the capitalist such as are not incurred in England or any other
European country. With this question of the influx of capital we are not immediately concerned, only we venture to suggest that if that influx is at present checked, as we believe it is, by notions about what is called "the disturbed state" of Ireland, those notions might be largely and beneficially modified by simple reference to the facts of Irish as compared with English crime. The Assizes for both countries have been going on for some weeks past, and the newspapers afford an easy basis of comparison. There is yet another test which should be resorted to, though we confess we do not repose very much confidence in the conclusions that may be drawn from it. The official statistics of judicature in England and Ireland are regularly published by authority. They are brought together for purposes of comparison in Thom's Almanac, an admirable statistical publication, as our readers are no doubt aware, annually prepared under the superintendence of the Irish Government. These tests will show how far the common notion that there is no safety for life or property in Ireland is consistent with facts.
The proportions of population in the Three Kingdoms must be borne in mind in making use of the statistical test. England and Wales, with their twenty millions of inhabitants, of course absorb a mass of crime vastly greater than Ireland with over five millions and a half, and Scotland, with more than three millions. It is not less material to recollect that the police system in Ireland is very efficient and widely dis- tributed, and that in this respect the repression of crime is conducted at least as successfully as in the sister kingdoms. In Thom's Almanac the latest official returns of convictions for criminal offences are for the year 1866. In England and Wales there were 14,254 convictions ; in Scotland, 2,259; and in Ireland, 2,418. These figures, at all events, do not indicate that tremendous preponderance of crime in Ireland which is conjured up to frighten away the capitalist from her shores. In proportion to population, England has forty per cent. more crime than Ireland ; and Scotland has only a fraction less crime than Ireland, though Ireland has nearly double the population. But even from these statistics we cannot fairly judge of the character of Irish crime. The newspapers furnish a better test. Of course, we find among the hot-tempered Celts a preponderance of offences against the person, under the head of assaults, riots, and public and private rows. Drunkenness, it is to be regretted, contri- butes much to this, and the religious quarrels in Ulster bear their part. But in general it will be acknowledged that the crimes tried before the Irish judges on circuit are almost wholly free from that element of brutality which is so sickening in the reports of English assize trials. There is a remarkable absence in the Irish calendar of those outrages on women which are perhaps the most horrible and the most common of crimes both in England and France. Of course, even in Ireland there are some offences of this character, just as there are some murders ; but, on the whole, we may challenge the comparison fearlessly on this head. Again, it has been observed that Ireland is a very tempting country for highway robbery, with its lonely reaches of moorland and mountain road, its facilities both for attack and for conceal- ment. Yet for more than twenty years highway robbery has been almost unknown in Ireland, and "offences against pro- perty with violence" generally yield but an insignificant per- centage of the mass of Irish crime. Agrarian outrages make a great noise when they do occur, but they are of necessity rare. Arson is not common. Forgery and offences against the currency are very rare. But the most remarkable fact is that, while minor offences in England only amount to 4 per cent. of the wile, in Ireland they amount to 20 per cent., so that when the Irish judges boast, as they do year after year, of the lightness of the calendar, they speak not only of the quantity, but also of the quality of crime. In England also seventy-one out of every hundred convictions are for ordinary larcenies, and other offences against property without violence. In Ireland the rate per cent, is only thirty-five.
It is difficult to say to what causes we are to attribute this striking purity of the Irish character from the most debasing criminal taints. To say that the Celtic nature revolts from some acts of lawlessness and cruelty which are not repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon temper, is really no more than a verbal evasion of the difficulty. In the west of France, where there is a purely Celtic population, peculation is universal, outrages on women and cowardly assassinations are but too common. Among the colliers of Wales also a most degraded moral tone prevails. In Ireland, we are inclined to think, after all, it is the religious influence that aids the police so effectively ; that in Ireland, and in Ireland alone, the Catholic priesthood have succeeded in turning their vast moral power into a machinery for eradicating crime. In other European countries it is admitted that Catholicism, with its extraordinary leverage of the Confessional, has not accomplished—it is doubted whether it has earnestly striven to accomplish—the diminu- tion of crime at all. Our readers will believe that we are no admirers of the Catholic system, or of the Irish Catholic priesthood ; but it is simple justice to allow that where they heartily condemn any sort of crime, they do not rest until they have taught their people to detest it. Where they do not heartily condemn the thing they denounce, as in the case of political or agrarian crime, the people of course are not moved by mere words. But in repressing dishonesty in money transactions, peculation, unchastity, and outrages on women, they have been most successful. For this they deserve praise, and though education and enlightenment may do as much as this, and do it better, because for a higher reason, we need not despise the aid of an institution for which, in other respects, we have no love.
Another reason for crediting the influence of the Irish priesthood with much of the freedom from crime that, as we have seen, characterizes Irish society is, that when the Irish peasant escapes from the influence of the priest, without at the same time having been raised to a higher moral level by educa- tion and some measure of prosperity, he sinks into the most brutal degradation. Every great town in England and Scot- land has its Irish quarter, where the most savage and degraded among the criminal and vagrant classes consort. From the state and habits of these English-Irish the evil reputation of Ireland for insecurity has in some degree originated and been disseminated. However that may be, it is certain that no two nations could be more different than the Irish peasant as you meet him on the pleasant hill slopes of Munster, and the Irish peasant as you meet him, if you are a rash man, in the fetid purlieus of Manchester. We can only explain this in one way, and that is by assuming that when the check of public opinion is withdrawn, a public opinion all the stronger because a religious element enters into it, the natural instincts of an uneducated and excitable mind entice the unfortunate Irish “navvy" or dock labourer into crime and debauchery from which, in his own country and among his own people, he would turn away in disgust. The Irish in England, we freely admit, are not free from the taint of savagery ; but the fact remains that the Irish in Ireland are, on the whole, peaceable ; that they respect property ; that they have a fine chivalrous feeling towards women ; that they are naturally a law-loving people, unless when they believe a law to be de- liberately unjust. There is no country in Europe, we venture to assert, where a stranger may travel with less molestation on account of his nationality, less danger to his life, and less insecurity for his property. If there is some foundation for the supposition that an Englishman settling down as a resi- dent proprietor in Ireland is not always very safe, this is only because such proprietors have usually commenced their career, surely not very wisely, as the phrase goes in Ireland, by "clearing the estate." We do not guarantee the security of a landlord who buys Irish estate with the resolution to stretch his legal rights to their full extent. But to the purchaser who does not want to screw the utmost profit out of his bargain, and to the capitalist who introduces a new industry, we can promise with perfect confidence not only safety, but affection and gratitude.
Previous page
