A Crimeless Catholic Land

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 3, 21 January 1904, Page 30

A Crimeless Catholic Land

Here is an extract from an article which may be usefully read in connection with our recent editorial romarks on the question of the comparative criminality of Catholics and non-Catholics in New Zealand. It is by Mr. Bryan J. Church, who writes in the American Catholic Quarterly Review on ' Ireland in the Twentieth Century. 1 In the course of his article he says :— In what may be called the social and moral aspect the condition of Ireland is much more satisfactory than in the material one. Though poor the country is free from crime to an extent unknown elsewhere in th* civilised world. The total number of penitentiary or State prison convicts is only about five hundred in the four and a half millions. There is but one such to every nine thousand individuals. The proportion in the United States last year was more than ten times that amount. During the last two months only two homicides have occurred throughout Ireland. One was the act of a lunatic, the other of an English soldier who came over expressly to commit it. In about half the counties absolutely no crime has been brought before the courts. It seems that during the preceding three months there was no case of murder or homicide in the whole country. The proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births, as told by the Registrar General, for the last year is equally noteworthy. The percentage is two and a half, or about one-third that of England. Drunkenness is not common either in city or country, and agrarian Quarrels have almost ceased. The constabulary returns for the three months ending the day of my arrival gave the following curious figures for the whole country's record. It should be added that they deal not with crimes proved in court, but merely incidents reported by the police as possibly such. The list ot possible offences is a long one. It 'enumerates murder, homicide, firing at the person, inciting to kill, poisoning, conspiracy to murder, cutting or maiming, cattle stealing, highway

robbery, burglary, sacrilege, perjury, conspiracy and attempted extortion. No case of these was reported among the whole population of Ireland during three months. The total docket of agrarian crime for that time in a population nearly that of Pennsylvania consisted of twenty-nine threatening anonymous letters, six charges of malicious mischief, six alleged incendiary fires of the same class, six ordinary battery charges. One case was reported of each of the following : Assault on police, firing at a dwelling, assault with deadly weapon and taking forcible possession of premises. It may be well asked what population elsewhere can show such a record ? The comparison between the lists of crime in Ireland and the number of guardians of the peace which the government deems requisite to maintain order is absolutely comic. Dublin, with tho same population approximately as San Francisco, has just three times its police force. The latter has four hundred, Dublin eleven hundred. The constabulary through the rest of the country number twelve thousand, or about the same proportion for a crimeless rural population as for a crowded city. The difficulty in killing time of the official guardians of the peace is ludicrous when they are not deliberately employed in some work of petty persecution ordered by the Castle authorities. I was in Tipperary town in July on a fair day, and passing the constablary barrack I noticed a dozen able bodied men in uniforms engaged at midday in casting shoulder weights in their back yard. Their presence was wholly needless in the fair itself* The cost to the Irish people of this valuable body is over five million dollars annually. One sixth of the number would ne ample for the practical purposes, and the four million dollars expended on tlFem would more than maintain the whole indigent population now supported by the Irish ratepayers from their small earnings. The cost of the constabulary is much greater than the whole amount now spent on public education in Ireland.