RY AND DISPENSARY DOCTORS

An Englishman once asked me, if I could suggest any way by which all
Ireland could be made loyal. I inquired if he thought the Irish
constabulary a loyal body.

'Most decidedly,' said he, without hesitation.

'Then,' I replied, 'if you will pay every Irishman seventy pounds a year
for doing nothing, but look after other people's affairs--a thing by
nature congenial to him as it is--you'll have the most loyal race on
earth.'

That Englishman went away thoughtful, but I had shown him the solution
of one Irish problem which may be stated thus:--

Why do one half of the sons of farmers in Ireland, who have been or are
members of the Irish constabulary, represent a body of men unequalled
for their respectability, loyalty, and courage, while a large proportion
of the other, at least in the eighties, made up the bulk of the ignoble
army of moonlighters, cattle maimers, and cowardly assassins crouching
behind stone walls to shoot at an unsuspecting victim in the opening?

The answer is _L s. d._, not an agreeable one, but truth is not always
composed of sweetstuff.

The constabulary are recruited from the sons of peasants and farmers.
They are drilled, disciplined, well fed, well clothed, well paid, and
show themselves well conducted. During all the bad times, there was not
a single case of a disaffected man, though every sort of inducement must
have been brought to bear on them. The prevailing characteristic of all
ranks has been the high sense of duty, so that they composed the most
mobile and the most effective corps in Europe.

As detectives, they have, however, proved quite ineffective, because the
peasant has everywhere been too shrewd for them; 'yet the relative
position of the police to the people, and the intimate connection with
America, marked it out as a force peculiarly adapted to the prevention
and detection of crime committed in Ireland, but often inspired from
America.' So wrote one of the most experienced resident magistrates, Mr.
Clifford Lloyd, afterwards Minister of the Interior in Egypt, and
subsequently Lieutenant Governor of the Mauritius and Consul at
Erzeroum, where he died at the age of forty-seven.

The constabulary are enlisted without any consideration of creed, but
when Sir Duncan MacGregor was at the head of the force he arranged that
of the five men in every police barrack, two should be Protestant, and
three Roman Catholic, or _vice-versa_. This check has s