A Flimflam Tale

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 34, 24 August 1905, Page 2

A Flimflam Tale

Some gay romancer has I>een spinning to a Southland inquirer some of the kind of ' tall tales ' that, in. Rabelaisian English, would fall under the designation of ' flimflam stories and pleasant fooleries.' On Rabelais" principles, ' an honest man, and of good judgment, be--lieveth what is told him.' But our correspondent politely, though firmly, draws the line at the solemn flimflam ' fact ' that there are in Ireland five policemen to each inhabitant ! The unregenerate would call this a jim-jam, rather than a flimflam, tale. It would burden the most distressful country with a standing army of over 22,000,000 ' peelers '—enough to ' make Dungarvaii shake ' and plant the British flag in every capital from Tokio westward to Lima. Knowing the infinite capacity of some people for padded-cell assertion, we am not surprised at this Munchausen tale. It is merely a good average sample product of that incurable form of folly which (as a Spanish pro\erb has it) does not itself thiak, and thinks that others do not think. The battled millions of armed Irish constabulary existt, of course, only in the mind's eye of the narrator ; for the total population of the country in 1902— including the p'leecemen — was only 4,434,000. The number of police in Ireland in JB9G— the latest date for which we have returns ready to hand— was 13,140. This gave a ratio of 20 to every 10,000 inhabitants, or one to about every 345. The Irish police force has been largely used as a landlords' garrison. Its chief function has long been the forcible collection of rackrents amd the carrying out

of evictions and those wholesale ' clearances ' that have left wide tracts of the country almost bare of population. The partial settlement of the land question and the rapid, sale of estates under the recent Purchase Acts have to some extent deprived t>he Royal Irish Constabulary of their chief traditional occupation. During the past two or three years the force has, therefore, been considerably reduced— except in the portions of Ulster that are infected with the virus of the Yellow Agony and convulsed Wy the annual revolution that takes place in the dog-days of July.

As we hatye shown from time to time, there are practically no criminal classes- in Ireland, grave crime is comparatively little known there, and (according to official statistics) the prison population is proportionately less than in England or S cotland. In 1903, for instance, there were 59,962 committals to prison in Scotland, amdi 32,669 in Ireland— the population of both coiutn tries being practically eqwal, that of Uhe Land o* Cakes numbering 4,507,000 in 1902, and the Green Isle 4,434,000. In Great Britain the police are a peaca force; in Ireland a military coercive one. The ' Royal Jrish ' have little to do with the prevention and detection of crime. Their diays are fillefl in with drill, patrolling country roads, fishing, cycling, and other forms of sport, -and prosecuting the owners of wandering donkeys and unlicensed dogs. For the rest (as Teufelsdroeck puts it in ' Sartor Resaftus ') they dress and digest and talk articulate words ; other vitality show they almost none. The sleepy monotony of these occupations among an almost crimeless people is occasionally broken by such fits of ' divarshißi ' as breaking the faces of Members of Parliament that dare to address ttheir constituents withcKut the high sanction of the Lord Lieutenant, disturbing or dispersing peaceful assemblies of the people, paying illegal domiciliary visits at unseasonable hours of the night to law-abiding cottagers' homes, giving ' the butt-end of the law ' to nine. year-old refoels caught whistling ' Harvey Duff,' escorting to gaol older desperadoes convicted of sneezing at a policeman on duty, or of ' smiling at him in a threatening manner,' or (as recently at Swords 1 ) ' blowing their noses disrespectfully towards ' a constable who was on the opposite side of the street. Chesterfield tells of a man wiho hanged himself for lack of occupation — for sheer weariness of putting on and pulling off his shoes and stockings every tlay. Ireland is enormously over-policed by a costly constabulary. Dublin Castle finds great difficulty in giving it enough occupation to keep the blue devils away. But one way or another it endeavors to give the idle, handsome, well-fed fellows enough amusement and exercise to make digestion wait on appetite and health on both.