TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW IRISH PEACE BILL.
You refused a Coercion Bill, says an Irish Member to Ministers, when there were fifty murders a month, and now you ask for one when there are only nineteen murders a month. But Sir George Grey had already shown, that if the crimes in all Ireland are fewer than they have been at other periods, there is an alarming increase in certain districts. And statistics fail to make out the whole case. If the "homicides" (the official euphuism for mur- der) were to reach four places of figures, the fact would fail to create any very powerful sensation : the sight of a single blood- stained bullet of the hundreds that have been reddened this season would do more than the most multitudinous figures. Arithmetic is too abstract for eloquence and feeling. On the other hand, the cases which Sir George recites are too few and too meagre in the narrative to give any adequate idea of the aspect presented by the country in which they occur. The distant reader, for whom these descriptions are prepared, must fill up the picture by the exercise of the fancy. Imagination must vivify the dry statistics. A Carleton or a Lever can teach more, in quantity, in vividness, and in truth, than these dry " facts " ; the thing wanted being a fall idea of the social state which pervades the criminal district. It is not because Mr. Roe or Major Mahon has been murdered that we all agree to a Coercion Act, but because the bonds of society are loosened ; and such letters as those received by Mr. and Mrs. M'Causland speak more than the actual " homicides." The reader, then, must use these raw materials of " facts and figures" to perform for himself the office of a Carleton or a Lever. When shots, not all of them aimless, are heard every half-hour in the day—when bonfires at night are the illumination for some death actually inflicted—it is not difficult to paint the feelings in which those of the victim class must pass the hours. One can see the family of the landlord gathered round the dinner-table, start at the sound of the gun outside, not merely as sensitive young ladies in England will jump, eut as those do who fa- miliarly associate the idea of human death with the sound of the fowling-piece. Just as the butler removes the first cover—hark 1 there's a gun! AU eyes are turned towards the father of the house_, and are reassured by his presence. No shriek or outcry. The dinner goes on : it is half over—another ! They listen again; but all are together, and familiarity makes danger not so fearful. It is otherwise in the house on the next property. The family are waiting for dinner : the quick dull blow of a gunshot on the ear strikes dismay in the assembled drawingroom—Papa has not yet come in ! But he does come in presently ; though gloomy and disordered, because as he walked among his own people, servilely bowing to his " honour' " he recognized in the savage restlessness of their glittering eyes that fierce levity which might make them his assassins the next instant : it was indeed a toss-up whether he should reach the hall-door alive ; and he walks along, nodding to his future assassins, his body coated with the stiff uneasy con- sciousness that it is viewed by the eyes of deadly sportsmen. For in Ireland, the landlord is the game on his own preserve. Again, in the house on the next grounds, the dinner-bell has tang when the first shot is heard—but no one goes to the dining- room, for papa is out : there is a running about the lands—a bustle in the hall—the lady of the house leaves the room, followed by her daughters—somebody has been hurt : "it is papa! " Yes, there he lies, a ghastly sight even for alien eyes, but one that those gentle eyes never forget. In the agent's house not far off, the shot is heard, and people look to the doors and windows ; for this house is not so strongly defended. But the agent has es- caped this time. The two other great families hasten off, while yet alive, to Dublin : their agents cannot so easily abandon the place on which a livelihood depends; although the postman has distributed a circular all round threatening death. So the women remain prisoners in the house, for murder is abroad in the streets and fields.
Mike Doherty there, who is running with one shoe on, is known to have been a murderer before, and looks as if he had just been so again. The servants about the house—are they terror-stricken that they cannot see the obvious Doherty, or are they in league with him ? are they too murderers ? how many of them? which of them ? Alas I no one can tell ; and the family must sleep at nights con- tent to run the chance of having a murderer more or less on the premises. The spectacle of men practising the art of murder, by shooting at an old hat, is too common to be a wonderment. So life goes on, till the sound of shots by day and the blaze of fires by night grow familiar gossip, like the eruption of the mountain to the inhabitants near a volcano.
The effectual application of Sir George Grey's Bill to such a neighbourhood would totally alter the daily aspect of the place. The half-hour guns would cease ; the most familiar object abroad, in place of ragamuffin idlers practising at a mark or loitering assassins on the watch for the coming of " their murdered man," would be a number of green-coated Policemen, with .guns on their shoulders,—weapons seldom sounding, and always giving a sense of protection instead of danger : the ragged felons running about in all the mad excitement of blood would have retreated, either sulking at home in harmless moodiness, or at last returning to industrious work. But now the terror would be transferred to different abodes. Once more the women at the great house would breathe at ease. If a gun were heard a cheek might be pale, but hope would remain for papa would be well protected. It is in the cabin now that the sound would strike terror. The wife would clasp her hands and look out : "Oh ! is it Mike that has braved the law and brought it down upon himself ? is it Mike that is to go to prison, and be hanged, or sent out of the land ? is it Mike that is helping to keep that terrible Police watching the neigh- bourhood, levying a black mail on the poor people to pay for that green-coated army of occupation? is it Mike that is that wicked fool ?" Mike rushes in, terror-stricken. " Oh ! is it you, Mike ?" No, no ; he is not the guilty fool. Some one bangs at the door. "It is I, Mike," says a hoarse voice; "open the door: they are after me!" But Mike listens without stirring; an oath, a rush of feet, a silence —Pat Braghnan has gone. Two Policemen run up : Mike opens his door ; he proves that Braghnan is not there ; the Policemen, however, turn out the protesting Mike ; the whole country is astir ; Braghnan is hunted from cabin to cabin, through bush and brake ; he is found skulking in a ditch ; and Mike is set free, re- joicing, perhaps for the first time in his life, in the practical im- munity of innocence. It is those in the cabin that now listen with fear to the sound of the gun—they have ceased to be the privileged class : they long for the time when those hated but feared Police shall be taken away, and groan at the sound of every gun that renews the lease of those detested lodgers ; they begin to hate and despise the fools that help to keep them there by this senseless playing with deadly weapons, and set down the odious police-tax—not to be evaded by cajolery—as a debt against such lawless neighbours. It is in the cabin that terror, and tribu- lation, and a sickening, longing wish for order in the neighbour- hood, now abide. The strong iron hand of the law is on the whole people : the criminal community has struggled in vain ; it knows its master, and crouches down, trembling, subdued, and quiet.
No shots are heard. Perfect peace reigns all round. The green-coated men are collected ; they are marched away, and seen no more. The subdued district is once more free. No one listens in fear. If the landlord and his children no longer shrink at the sight of the armed ragamuffin, the labourer and his wife no longer cower at the sight of the armed policeman. Crime has been paid for, bitterly, in tribulation, in the hard coin of the police-tax; in confessed vanquishment—the hardest of all possible penalties. Without a present police or the instant terror of penalty, the spirit of law abides in the place. Such is the change which may be realized in the lawless district, after Sir George Grey's Bill shall have been effectually carried out.
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