Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is common, pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious supply of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are supplied, the mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point of view the small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred to,[23] seems to show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely touched the revenues of the Irish mendicant! An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime. Here we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in England and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the number of drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at an approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In Scotland, the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested numbered 26,209, or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population being 5,321,600, the drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253; showing the enormous proportion of one in every 47 of the people. Of course these figures in all three kingdoms include very many cases of repeated conviction, so that it would not be fair to say that one man in every 118 in England, still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard. All the same, this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing. It is rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion of apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and some people might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended mainly on greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police. On the other hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very flagrant paradox, argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for being drunk proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes less to make an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in temperament, and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually temperate man, when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very promptly; the habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another reason that may be given for the state of things here indicated, is that the police force is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population than in England or Scotland;[24] and as, for reasons which will be hereafter seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to expend a quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the busier constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly home. That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about the startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when we come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime with