recent disgraceful
attempt to beat up prejudice on the part of the _Daily Graphic_, which
reproduced what purported to be not the photograph of an actual
moonlighting scene, but a photograph of "the real moonlighters, who
obligingly re-enacted their drama for the benefit of our photographer,"
incurred the disgust which it deserved; but it was only one instance of
an organised campaign of bruiting abroad invented stories of lawlessness
in Ireland which constitutes the deliberate policy of the "carrion
crows," whose action Mr. Birrell so justly reprobated, and of which the
most flagrant instances were the purely fictitious plots to blow up the
Exhibition in Dublin; an outrage at Drumdoe, which on investigation
proved to be the work of residents in the house which was supposed to be
attacked, and the allegation of a dynamite outrage at Clonroe, in County
Cork, which the police reported had never occurred. One would have
thought that the experience which the _Times_ and the Loyal Irish and
Patriotic Union gained at the hands of Richard Pigott would at least
have made people chary of this form of propaganda. The comparison of the
criminal statistics of Ireland with those of Scotland which I have made
shows how much truth there is in the imputations of widespread
lawlessness, as does also the number of times on which in each year the
Judges of Assize comment favourably on the presentment of the Grand
Jury; and, moreover, the closing of unnecessary prisons which is going
on throughout the country is a further proof, if any be needed, of the
falsity of the charges which are so industriously spread abroad. The
only gaol in the County of Wexford was closed a few years ago; that at
Lifford, the only one in the County of Donegal, has since been closed as
superfluous. Of the two which existed till recently in County
Tipperary, that at Nenagh is now occupied as a convent, in which the
Sisters give classes in technical instruction to the girls of the
neighbourhood; but perhaps the most piquant instance is to be found in
Westmeath, where an unnecessary gaol at Mullingar, having been for some
time closed, is now used for the executive meetings of the local branch
of the United Irish League. All these, it should be noted, are to be
found in districts which are inhabited not by "loyal and law-abiding"
Unionists, but by a strongly Nationalist population.

Enough insistence has not been laid on one important fact in the
administration of t