bearing when cases of legal reform or administration are under
consideration; it then requires unwonted courage and independence for
the law officers of the Crown to support changes which the lay members
of the Government deem necessary.

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 £150,000 a year. The Royal Irish Constabulary costs over a million
in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times. Local authorities