OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 30 May 1862)

COLONEL DICKSON

, in rising to call the attention of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to certain murders lately committed in Ireland, and to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the organization, equipment, and employment of the Irish Constabulary, said, he trusted he should not be understood as being influenced in any degree by a spirit of hostility to a body of men whose conduct and discipline had invariably been above all praise, and who, he believed, under more favourable circumstances, would most efficiently perform the important duties for which they were enrolled. His sole object was to draw the attention of the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary and the 222 House to the military appearance which that force was assuming, and which he conceived, in common with many others of his countrymen, was detrimental to their efficiency as police. The first thing that attracted his attention in connection with the subject was the enormous increase of the expense of the force. In 1842, when Ireland was in such a state of excitement that Earl De Grey might be almost said to be barricaded in Dublin Castle, the expense of the Irish constabulary was £433,600, half of which was borne by the counties. Since that time the whole of it had been put on the Consolidated Fund. In 1858, when that country was again in a state of disturbance, the expense of that body was £562,500, the increase being £128,000; whereas at present, only four years afterwards, it had increased to the enormous extent of £779,860. Nor was that the whole of the expense; for, independent of that, there was a large outlay for barracks, which was charged in the Estimates for the Board of Works, and which, if taken into consideration, would make a very large addition to the cost of the police force. He thought that at a time when there existed a general feeling that the public expenditure was unduly increasing, the House had a right to demand the reason for so large an increase in the expenditure of the Irish constabulary. Among other items there was one of £80,000 for distribution of the Enfield rifle among the force, and their instruction in its use. Now, he could not understand why it was necessary to arm a purely constabulary force with that weapon, which was fit only for military service. He knew very well that the noble Lord would say, "If the men are to be armed at all, let them be armed with the best weapon;" but the most useful and appropriate weapon for the police was the short carbine, which was handy to carry, and did not impede the rapidity of their movements, whereas the Enfield rifle was a most delicate as well as expensive rifle, which was peculiarly liable to injury in the rough work police had sometimes to do, besides which it was a serious inconvenience to have to carry it in a hand-to-hand encounter. If they wished to make a standing army out of the police force, he could then understand arming them with such a weapon, and also sending detachments of them for training and instruction to Hythe and other military schools; but he contended that in the case of police- 223 men nothing of the kind was required. Then, with respect to the organization of the force, great stress had been laid upon the necessity of its being placed under a military commander; but, in his opinion, however desirable it might have been to place the force under a military commander during the time of its organization, he did not see the necessity of it at present. He said nothing whatever against the military officers at present commanding that force. On the contrary, he wished to pay them the highest possible compliment for the admirable way in which they performed their duties. Still, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that it was a sort of compensation for promotion in their own service, while at the same time it was detrimental to the efficiency of the force itself, because it deprived the constables themselves, who had important duties to perform, of all the chances of promotion which existed in ordinary police establishments. The plan adopted in Ireland had been to assimilate the police force as much as possible to the military service, and they even went so far as to keep a reserve in Dublin at great expense. What necessity, he would ask, was there in times of railways to keep a reserve in Dublin, when men might be brought from all parts if any district of the country were in a disturbed condition? He would now pass to the state of the country, which was rather a ticklish subject; and he hoped on that occasion he should neither be misrepresented nor misunderstood, and that the right hon. Baronet would not think it necessary to pass upon him the undeserved rebuke he had inflicted the other evening. He was sorry to say that noble Lords and right hon. Gentlemen on the Conservative side of the House had joined in that rebuke, while their precious ally, the Dublin Evening Mail, utterly regardless of the services which he had rendered to the party of which it professed to be the organ, in an article replete with audacious mendacity and virulent scurrility, held him up to the country as parleying with assassins, and making the coffins of his friends the platform on which he sought a miserable and despicable popularity. As a landlord himself, he was not likely to advocate any diminution of landlords' rights; he had never, like some of his right hon. Friends, concurred in the utopian scheme of fixity of tenure; nor should he be advancing the interests of the tenants by setting against them that class on which their 224 happiness and comfort depended. He was prepared to maintain that the landlords of Ireland, as a body, were worthy of their possessions, and that in the performance of their duties they would bear comparison with their peers in any other portion of the Queen's dominions; but if they were to investigate the truth, they would find that there was a peculiarity in the condition of the people which did occasionally affect the relationship of their dependency on each other for their mutual support. The tenants of the murdered gentlemen were actually in gaol for the offences; and when they saw the terms in which the threatening notices were crouched, if he said that the great majority of those crimes did arise from questions concerning the land, he was only enunciating the truth, which neither his noble and right hon. Friends, nor an ignorant and prejudiced scribbler could deny. The subject deserved the highest consideration on the part of the Government, and that consideration might be the means of bringing about a far more wholesome state of affairs than then existed. He did not wish the police to be disguised or used as spies, because that system would be fraught with evil repugnant to the feelings of everybody, and wholly unworthy of the Government; but he thought the less of a military character they possessed, the more they were separated from the centralizing system in Dublin, and the more they were placed under the control of the local magistracy, the greater respect they would receive from the people, and the more efficient they would become as police constabulary. They all knew that where a system of terror was established in the country, the farmers of Ireland were as much under the feeling of intimidation as the landlords themselves. He did not bring the subject forward from any hostility towards the police. So far from having any such feeling towards them, he believed that they generally discharged their duties as efficiently as their position allowed them. He simply complained of the duties that were imposed on them. He wished to put an end to their military organization, and to their military style of arms. The judges of assize had already expressed their opinions upon the subject. He felt he had now done his duty, in submitting the question to the House, and he hoped that he had said enough to induce the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland to take the matter into his most 225 serious consideration, with a view to remedying the evils which were so generally complained of. The hon. and gallant Member concluded by proposing his Motion.