Police and public order in eighteenth-century Dublin.

IN RECENT YEARS A NUMBER OF HISTORIANS have been at pains to point out that the patterns and nature of public disorders in eighteenth-century Ireland are largely comparable with those that existed elsewhere in contemporary Western Europe. Irish riots and popular protests, it has been suggested, saw ‘a controlled and discriminating use of violence’, and were characterised by their ‘defensive, ritualised’ nature.1 Loss of life rarely resulted from such disturbances, neither through the actions of the rioters, nor through those of the authorities.2 In short, public order in Ireland, at least for the first three-quarters of the century, can be seen as fitting neatly into the wider pre-industrial European perspective.3 In the specific case of Dublin too, examples can be cited that conform to this model. For example, perceived shortages of food, be it bread, potatoes or oatmeal, led to riots aimed specifically at preventing exports and lowering prices.4 Tradesmen and artisans protested about cheap imported cloth by destroying clothes and occasionally looting shops, rather than by direct attacks on merchants or their customers. In any case, such actions were effectively being sanctioned by the rhetoric of the political classes, as Swift called for the burning of everything English, and scarves of Irish linen were ostentatiously handed out to the mourners at the funeral of a