As detectives these soldier-police are quite useless, and crime, unless openly committed, is rarely detected. Robbers have continued in their profession for years though perfectly well known, and no attempt has been made to capture them. There was one who was notorious for the impunity with which he had committed a long series of crimes. When he entered a house he intended to rob, he stripped, rubbed his body with oil, and crawled in, knife in hand. Unluckily for him, one night, being disturbed in his operations, he stabbed his assailant, who proved to be a Senator. It was all very well to rob and stab common people, but a Senator could not be thus treated with impunity; and the man, fearing no pursuit, was quietly captured in bed. The commissary of police, thinking that the fellow had had rope enough given him, and being sure that he would again escape from prison if sent there, had him taken out of town, and he was promptly shot, under pretence of having attempted to escape--_la ley de fuga_, as the Spaniards call it. General Vil Lubin was, during the time of the Emperor Soulouque, in command of the arrondissement of Port-au-Prince; he proved efficient in his post, but he was a hard man, and one day ordered two soldiers to be beaten. Their comrades carried out the order so effectually that in a short time two bruised corpses were lying at the barrack door. Soulouque heard of it, and, furious at the treatment of two of his own guard, bitterly reproached Vil Lubin, and for months could not meet him without using the expression, “Rendez-moi mes soldats.” Yet how many hundreds met their death by his order! In both the civil and military administration brutality is the rule, not the exception. There has been much talk of establishing a rural police, but nothing effective has come of it. The Government rely for the detection of conspiracies more upon informers than on the police, and as they are to be found in all ranks, friendship is often used for the purpose of obtaining information. President Geffrard sometimes referred to conversations to which members of the diplomatic corps had been parties, and perhaps too often, as, on comparing notes, they were enabled to fix on their communicative friends, and were thus free to let the President hear their real opinion about his measures, only so far, however, as it suited their purpose. Under Soulouque the system was carried to a greater extent, and his suspicious mind made him treat as truth every assertion of a spy. One day an old beggar-woman, passing before the palace, asked alms of some officers who were conversing together; on being refused, she ran under the Emperor’s window and began to shout, “Emperor, they are conspiring against you!” and made so great a disturbance that the guard turned out. The officers were too happy to get rid of the old woman by giving her money; she went off laughing, with her hands full of notes.