The maintenance of law and order is the first duty of a Government, and if it could be proved that the proposed measure of Home Rule for Ireland would lead to crime and disorder, the cause would lose many of its more prominent adherents. To those, however, who are interested in the administration of the law—and particularly the criminal law—it is obvious that Home Rule will have the effect of still further diminishing crime, and will also enable considerable saving to be effected in the sums now spent on law charges and criminal prosecutions. At the present time, and indeed for many years past, Ireland has been practically crimeless. The Judges at the Spring Assizes, 1912, were unanimous in describing all the counties in Ireland, except two, as peaceable and orderly, and free from serious crime. In two counties—Fermanagh and Carlow—there were no cases whatever for trial, and it was only in Galway and Clare that dissatisfaction was expressed with the present state of affairs, and even in those counties the affected districts comprised a very limited area. The following table taken from the report of the General Prisons Board for Ireland for 1910, shows how the Government have been able to close prisons in consequence of the diminution of crime and reduction in the number of prisoners: “The number of prisons and bridewells,” says the report, “under the control of the General Prisons Board on the 1st April, 1878—the date when the local prisons and bridewells were transferred to the Board—and now is as follows:— 1878. 1910. 4 Convict 1 Convict Prisons. Prison. 38 Local 1 Joint Convict Prisons. and Local Prison. 95 Bridewells. 15 Local Prisons. 6 Bridewells.”