I have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule, particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the Irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal world in Dublin.  The lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to be a firm legal reformer.  It would be impossible for me not to acknowledge the great service often done to the Government by the able men who have filled the law offices, yet I feel that under certain circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too strongly to prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the Irish Government, and to keep it within a circle too narrow for the altered circumstances of modern life.

The chief peculiarity of the Irish Administration is its extreme centralization.  In this two departments may be mentioned as typical of the whole—­the police and administration of local justice.

The police in Dublin and throughout Ireland are under the control of the Lord-Lieutenant, and both these forces are admirable of their kind.  They are almost wholly maintained by Imperial funds.  The Dublin force costs about L150,000 a year.  The Royal Irish Constabulary costs over a million in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times.  Local authorities have nothing to do with their action or management.  Local justice is administered by unpaid magistrates as in England, but they have been assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant and paid by the State.

This state of things arose many years ago from the want of confidence between resident landlords and the bulk of the people.  When agrarian or religious differences disturbed a locality the people distrusted the local magistrates, and by degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they are called, resident magistrates, spread over the country.  To maintain the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates is of the highest importance.  At one time this was in some danger, for the resident magistrates not only heard cases at petty sessions, but, as executive peace officers, to a very great extent took the control of the police in their district, not only at riots, but in following up and discovering offenders.  Their position as judicial and executive officers was thus very unfortunately mixed up.  Between 1882 and 1883 the Irish Government did their utmost to separate and distinguish between these two functions, and it is to be hoped that the same policy has been and will be now continued, otherwise grave mischief in the administration of justice will arise.  The existence of this staff of stipendiary magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the gentry