The Irish are perpetually saying that Ireland is without crime,
and Mr. Gladstone has recently repeated the same fallacy. Mr. W. Ambrose, however, in a letter to the Tinter), shows from official statistics that while in England 71 per 10,000 are accused of indictable offences, the proportion in Ireland is 94 per 10,000, the apparent innocence of the latter country being due to the fact that a great number of offences indictable in England are there dealt with summarily. A writer, who signs himself "Statistician," adds that in England and Wales, while 16,763 Irish men and women were committed out of 562,474 persons, only 134,750 English and Welsh persons were com- mitted out of 25,974,000 inhabitants. The Commissioners of Prisons report that one of the most remarkable facts in their returns "is the great excess of criminals in the population of Irish birth who have emigrated to England." The figures are important, because the opponents of the Crimes Bill keep on asserting that the Irish are the most innocent people in the world, and that, consequently, the object of that Bill can only be to diminish political freedom.
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