The figures which we quoted last week from the Echo,
as showing that the amount of agrarian crime in Ireland has not increased since 1879, have been shown-by Lord George Hamil- ton, in Wednesday's Times, to be quite untrustworthy. The nnpiler of the figures in question appears to have taken all the crimes in the year 1879 and compared them with twelve times the number of exclusively agrarian crimes committed in November, 1881, in order to obtain a comparison for the two years. This, of course, led to a totally false result. If he had added to the exclusively agrarian crimes of November, 1881, the total of ordinary crime also, and then multiplied by twelve, he might have offered that as a fair comparison ; but to exclude all crimes except agrarian in November, 1881, and then compare with the full total of crimes in 1879, was obviously quite un- fair. So far, then, as the increase of agrarian crime goes, we admit the argument for more adequate protection of property to be very strong. But from what we then said,—that that pro- tection should not be undertaken by an English Committee, but confided absolutely to trustworthy Irish hands,—we do not recede in the least. We believe the English Mansion-House Committee,—if intended to be Executive,—to be a very serious mistake ; and nothing could prove it better than the words let drop the other day by the Lord Mayor at a City dinner, when he intimated that the Committee was intended to do for the Government what the Government was incompetent to do for itself. The truth is, that the Government ought not to take the initiative in enforcing the rights of landlords, but only to protect them in doing it for themselves.
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