Few political questions have been discussed, from time to time, with greater conflict of opinion, or with more of controversial keenness, than have those which relate to the functions, the limitations, and the control of Police. The very definitions of the word which we meet with in our ordinary dictionaries and legal text-books, indicate, by their vagueness and elasticity, how various are the points of view from which police arrangements may be regarded, and how numerous are the links which connect a subject, familiar even to triteness under some of its aspects, with not a few of the most complex problems of the thorny science of government.

Johnson tells us that by "police" is meant "the regulation and government of the city and country, so far as regards the inhabitants" (admitting that the word is a French one); which is little more than an abridgement of the passage in which Blackstone says—"By the public police and economy, I mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of a State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behaviour to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood, and good manners; and to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive in their respective stations." This, certainly, is a comprehensive definition; elastic enough to include alike the police systems of countries where individual liberty is jealously guarded, and those which exist where statecraft has victoriously established its most repressive agencies.

Bentham's definition will contrast favourably with these, as respects both precision and limitation. Police, he says, "is, in general, a system of precaution, either for the prevention of crimes or of calamities. . . . Its business may be distributed into eight distinct branches,—1. Police for the prevention of offences; 2. Police for the prevention of calamities; 3. Police for the prevention of endemic diseases; 4. Police of charity; 5. Police of interior communications; 6. Police of public amusements; 7. Police for recent intelligence and information; 8. Police for registration." There is here, we think, a definition clear and practical, and little open to exception, save in the phrase "police for recent intelligence," which is vague enough to cover a system of espionage, always more fruitful of evil than of good; and although by no means unattempted in this country, invariably condemned as soon as detected.

But in Britain the chief arena of conflicting opinion on this subject lies rather in the control of police than in its local and functions. The claims of local self-government come here central into contact with those of central administration, and the administration questions recur, "Is it wise to sacrifice something of executive efficiency for the better maintenance of the old constitutional safeguards?" And if it be, "How can the sacrifice be made as small as possible?" Nor is it uninteresting to remember that in all these current discussions about "dangers of centralization," and the like, we have but mediæval questions under a new phase. The citizens and burgesses who, now-a-days at very short intervals, call meetings, sign petitions, and appoint deputations, to protest against the subtle designs of Boards of Health and of Secretaries of State, are but imitating, in modern fashion, those early burghers who made the walled town a sturdy rival to the feudal castle, and who were in the habit of keeping their weapons at least as sharp as their words.

To attempt, even in briefest form, a historical review of the police institutions of all the prominent countries of Europe would greatly exceed the needful limits of this article. For such an account there are ample and little-used materials, and it might be made a useful contribution to our political literature. But here it must suffice to look mainly at the experience, in this matter, of France and of Britain. The one will present us with the most elaborate police machinery that human ingenuity has yet built up, by dint of long-continued application, and under little check from without; the other, until a very recent date, with a series of mere hand-to-mouth expedients, each of them postponed to the last moment, adapted to meet some pressing emergency, and watched in its working by a jealous public opinion. On the one hand, we shall have to keep in view the plain truth, that a nation may pay too dearly even for the repression of crime, and may after all far overshoot the mark; on the other, grave facts will be frequently suggesting the readiness with which petty and tortuous interests assume the mask of a care for liberty, and the necessity that instruments of police,—those especially which strike at the roots of crime, and not merely at its spray,—should have free scope and be held in a firm grasp, if they are to be used effectively. I. THE POLICE OF FRANCE.

In France, as elsewhere, the organization of police for the repression of crime has its beginnings amidst the strife of conflicting powers. Manorial lordships and clerical privileges of sanctuary are found to present tough obstacles to the due punishment of evil-doers, and those to whom the task is committed have to cast about for some effectual means of surmounting the difficulty. If the same body of men, whose claim to accord the privilege of sanctuary has become a covert to the vilest criminals, is found inflicting atrocious punishments on its own dependants for slight offences, an opening is made for innovation, of which a resolute hand can hardly fail to make good use. When Blanche, regent of France and mother of St Louis, at the head of some servants, hastily gathered at the news of the sufferings which the Chapter of Notre Dame was inflicting on men, women, and children, for default in a village tax, struck with her staff at the door of the Capitular prison, she did something more than bring relief to its suffocating tenants. That blow had many echoes.

But we must pass rapidly over the initiative stage of the police of Paris. It will suffice to say that, until the end of the fifteenth century, the maintenance of the peace of the city, the pursuit and custody of criminals, and the suppression of vagrancy, were the functions of the provost of Paris. Towards 1450 much of the real power of that office, in the police department, had passed into the hands of his lieutenants (lieutenant civil du Châtelet; lieutenant criminel du Châtelet), although the ultimate control lay still with him. Paris was divided into sixteen districts, each presided over by a commissary of police, with a certain number of sergeants (sergents) under him.

The state of France at this period might well seem almost desperate. The long struggle with the English invaders was indeed almost at an end; but the departing foes left behind them devastated provinces and half-deserted towns. In many parts of the country, barbarism seemed to have resumed its reign. The bands called flayers (corcheurs) were still striking a terror into the minds of the scanty population, the traces of which remained for centuries afterwards in oral tradition, and may be seen still in the popular literature of the time. In Paris itself, wolves ranged the streets by night. Deserted, but not yet dismantled hovels, stood in groups, closely shut up, but without claimants.

To reorganize the police at such a time must have been a formidable task. Charles VII took one resolute step, by vesting in the provost of Paris a general jurisdiction over the vagrants and malefactors of the kingdom. There was a great outcry; but some degree of order ensued, and the highways became passable. "The traders in various parts," says a chronicler, "began to resume their journeys; the peasants set to work to rebuild their cottages, to clear their fields, to trim their vines, and to weed their gardens. Towns and districts were restored and re-peopled. After having been so long in tribulation and sorrow, it seemed that God had at length extended to them his mercy and pardon." This first step was followed up by the royal appointment of tax-assessors, who, in 1448, in addition to their ordinary functions, were directed to choose at least one man for each parish (propice pour être archeur), to be equipped as a bowman. The purpose was to get the nucleus of a militia; but the Franc-archer seems to have been occasionally policeman as well as militiaman. He was always a favourite subject of the jokers and the satirists of the day.

About 1520 Francis I created a special officer, called Police Prévôt-Marshal (Prévôt des Marché-loués), for the city and district of Paris, and gave him power both to apprehend and to punish vagrants and disorderly persons, without appeal. Thirty constables were placed under his orders. Francis I also doubled the number of the commissaries of police, and that of their sergeants. The night-watch and town militia were at this period, as they had been for a long time before, distinct bodies, in which the towns-people were obliged to serve by rotation; but numerous exemptions had reduced both of them to inefficiency. Francis I annulled most of the exemptions. Henry II imposed a watch-rate on the traders and artisans, releasing them from their compulsory service, and replacing them by paid watchmen. He also established a municipal guard, composed of three companies—bowmen, constables, and arquebusiers, or men with fire-arms. These also were paid from municipal funds.

Drunkenness, ill-regulated lodging-houses, and the opportunities offered to thieves by shows and crowds in the main public streets, are matters which we find pressing on the attention of the police functionaries of Paris in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, much as they do on those of our own towns in the nineteenth. As early as 1372, regulations occur for the regular closing of taverns, the responsibility of lodging-house keepers, and the restriction of street minstrels. But here, as elsewhere, the regulations look more formidable on the record than the offenders in many cases found them to be in practice. Sturdy beggars and disbanded soldiers flocked to the capital in crowds, and the municipal force found itself ill able to make head against them. Even as late as 1560 it counted but 500 men of all ranks.

The repression of crime was also especially impeded by sale of a monstrous abuse which had grown up at periods of financial embarrassment—that, namely, of selling royal pardons for money. So far was this abuse carried, that we find instances of the release of criminals, at various stages of the procedure against them, by mere verbal order of the king, carried to the provost or his lieutenant by a chamberlain, a secretary, or a court usher. On strong remonstrance from the Parliaments, edicts appeared laying the blame on the importunities of courtiers, and forbidding the future release of persons in custody, save on the production of letters-patent passed in council, and sealed with the royal seal. But the evil was rather checked than cured.

The police of markets and of public health is an interesting branch of this topic, the history of which in France is copious and remarkable. In our own country a considerable change has taken place of late years in public opinion on such matters. Measures of precaution which, not very long ago, were by turns ridiculed as puerile, or denounced as tyrannical, have commended themselves to legislative attention as both wise and essential. It has come to be increasingly apparent that the free use of weights... and measures forms no part of the true doctrine of free trade, and that the liberty of wholesale poisoning is a very undesirable development of the liberty of the subject. A view of French practice in this department can hardly fail to be instructive, both when erroneous and when wisely directed. And it should be noticed, that the regulations made immediately for Paris were substantially those which governed the other cities and towns of the kingdom. In some particulars, very similar regulations will be found in the English statute-book, but with less of system and coherence.

As early as 1350 we find a royal ordinance of police which provides public weighing-offices, regulates the localities and the hours of open markets, and establishes an inspection of millers, bakers, and butchers. The last named proved to be an especially troublesome race. They took an active part in the disturbances occasioned by the quarrels of the dukes of Burgundy and Orleans and made themselves formidable partisans of the Burgundian faction, a service which was rewarded by special privileges accorded to the fraternity. Hence arose a sort of monopoly in course of time, and much employment for the police.

The cleansing of the city was another troublesome department of duty. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were repeated enactments directing its discharge by the inhabitants, the owner or chief tenant of each house being bound to keep his own share of the street or highway free of encumbrance and dirt. But these were so little operative, that at length (in 1506) a cleansing rate was established. In order to make the novelty work as smoothly as possible, a committee of rate-payers was organized to co-operate with the commissaries of police. It seems strange to read that, when contagious diseases were prevalent, this rate was tacitly suspended, and the cleansing left to the goodwill of each inhabitant. The reason assigned is, the probability that such an impost, added to existing privations, would excite disturbances. Other regulations, however, of a sanitary kind, as, for example, the removal of noxious trades, were at such times enforced with more than usual strictness. The earliest police enactment respecting sewers—such as they were—and their appurtenances, is of the time of Charles VI.; but there are long anterior municipal regulations as to the provision of latrines to every house, on pain of confiscation of rents. Under Francis I., the houses themselves were forfeited if the law continued to be neglected. The paving of streets, and the survey of houses in course of construction, are also the subject of many enactments (e.g., 5th April 1299, 28th July 1500, 16th Feb. 1533, 10th May 1538, March 1557-6). Here the chief difficulties of the police seem to have arisen from the stringent rules of those wardenships and corporations of arts and trades (jurandes et communautés des arts et métiers), the procedures and influence of which, especially but not exclusively in France, form so striking a feature in the later portions of medieval history, and in the earlier epochs of the history of modern Europe. This conflict of authorities resulted in the increase of the powers of the provost and his officers.

In 1577 a new development was given to the administration of police in Paris, by the power accorded to the inhabitants of each of the seventeen districts (the number had then recently been so augmented) to elect two police magistrates, empowered to hear and determine petty charges, involving only a small fine. The appeal from this summary jurisdiction lay to the weekly general meeting of police functionaries, presided over by the provost or one of his lieutenants. In addition to their judicial duties, these new magistrates acted, jointly with the commissaries of police, in the inspection of markets, workshops, and lodging-houses. A further step towards the suppression of the baronial and manorial jurisdictions was taken in 1639, by the transfer of their powers in matters of police to the Châtelet.

It was also in the reign of Louis XIII., that new measures were originated with a view to the suppression of houses promiscuity. Workhouses in the faubourgs St Victor, St Médard, and St Germain were provided for the reception of able-bodied vagrants. The first was assigned to able-bodied men, who were employed in grinding wheat, in pounding cements, tails for the brewing, and other hard labour; the second to women infirm, and children, whose task was knitting, button-making, and 1612-1618, other feminine occupations; the third was made an hospital for the infirm. Within a week, a very large portion of the Paris mendicants were safely housed; sturdy beggars entirely disappeared from the streets; and for some years the plan was vigorously carried out; but eventually it proved to be a failure.

In the Histoire Générale des Larrons we have an authentic and singularly graphic account of the criminal and vagrant classes of the French, and especially of the Paris population, as they were under Louis XIII. They were organized much on the plan of the incorporated trades; had their system of apprenticeship, and of "freedom" on proof of competency; and their common fund, fed by a pro rata contribution from the proceeds of robberies. There are but few of the stratagems which excite attention for their ingenuity in the criminal reports of the nineteenth century, that were not practised with frequent success in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Those extensive changes in the administration of police which the power and energy of Louis XIV. enabled him to introduce, with so much temporary profit to the predominance of the royal authority, tended undoubtedly to check Louis XIV. ordinary crime, and to strengthen the hands of the judicial magistrates. But this increased vigour of the laws was obtained, as we shall see presently, at the cost of frightful abuses. The manorial and other exceptional jurisdictions were now wholly absorbed in the functions of the Châtelet. To meet the increase of its business, the single bench was divided into two, each with its separate provost and staff, but both collectively forming one body. A lieutenant-general of police was created, whose functions absorbed those of both: the existing lieutenants, by whom the police duties of the provost had long been discharged. The double bench of the Châtelet lasted only for ten years, the inconveniences of the division having been found to exceed its advantages. But the office of lieutenant-general of police lasted from the 26th March 1667, when its functions were first conferred on M. de la Reyse, until the memorable 14th July 1789, when its last holder, M. Thiroux de

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1 Delamare, Traité de la Police, iv. 208; Frézier, ut supra, l. 518. 2 Isambert, ali. 651; Delamare, l. 568-570, as quoted by Frézier, l. 521. 3 Delamare, iv. 174, 176, 182, 186; Frézier, l. 531. 4 In France these bodies retained many of their privileges until 1776. See the edict for their suppression in Isambert and others, Recueil des Anciennes Lois Françaises (from A.D. 120 to 1789), xxiii. 370-386. 5 Ibid. 55 (quoting Règlement sur les Hospitales, Aug. 27, 1612, in the Lamologum MSS. preserved in the archives of the prefecture of police, x. 727. M. Frézier's book, we may add, is one of great labour and of great value; but it is impossible to praise its arrangement. The periods which form its leading divisions are arbitrary and unmeaning; while, at first glance, looks like an approach to chronological order proves on examination to be chaotic, and the baffled reader seeks in vain for an index. The neglect of clearness of dates becomes in many parts of the book quite ludicrous. In other respects, M. Frézier's work is praiseworthy and we are much indebted to it. Its continuation (on a better plan) from 1789 to the second empire would be a public service. Crosne, hastened to place his post at the disposal of the conquerors of the Bastille as soon as they had established themselves in the Hôtel de Ville.

De La Reynie filled the office of lieutenant-general for thirty years, a period twice as long as that of the most tenacious of his successors. If we hear in mind what those thirty years were, the fact of itself almost paints the man's portrait. Able, supple, stern, and unscrupulous, we feel little surprise at meeting with him in that instructive chapter of French history which narrates the revocation of the edict of Nanterre. In that fatal business he was a commissioner, and one of the most rigorous. Apart from that, the ordinary regulations of criminal procedure, in the preparation as well as the execution of which he had doubtless his share, are animated from the first page to the last by the principle that vigorous repression is everything,—the possible risk of condemning the innocent nothing. Scarcely was the accusation lodged, when the accused person began to be treated as guilty. Of the many remarkable trials in which De La Reynie presided or held a prominent place, that perhaps of a female poisoner named La Voisin, is best remembered, from its having elicited a smart reply from the Duchess of Bouillon. The prisoner in this case (who was burnt in the Place de Grève in February 1680) had accused certain persons of high rank, of whom the duchess was one, of having "made a compact with the devil."

"Have you ever seen the devil?" asked De La Reynie of the duchess in the course of her examination. "Sir," said she, "I see him now; he is very ugly, very stupid, and is disguised as a councillor of state." The incident, and the scene of it, throw light on many other things, in the France of 1680, than the quickness of a woman's tongue.

The sumptuary laws still in force, and frequently renewed at this period, gave occasion to innumerable ordinances of police, and were amongst those laws which were most easily abused to the injury of inoffensive persons. That such laws, in any form, should emanate from a monarch whose taste for ostentation and extravagant expenditure amounted to mania, is but a proof the more how strikingly near together were the periods of ripeness and rottenness in the tumid monarchy of France.

De La Reynie was succeeded by the Marquis of Argenson, who was lieutenant-general from 1697 to 1718. In his dealings with the remnant of the Protestants, he presented a marked contrast to his predecessor. He was succeeded, within four years, by Machault d'Arnouville (June 1718 to 1720); by the Count d'Argenson (January to July 1720); and by Taschereau de Baudry (July 1720 to April 1722). The administration during this period presents little occasion for remark; but on the return of the Count d'Argenson, in April 1722, an active crusade was undertaken against the press. No book or writing was to be published without preliminary censorship by the police.

The whole trade of printing was already under strict regulation, its development limited by law, and its practice hampered by many restrictions. These were now increased and made more stringent. The conditions of the cataloguing, valuing, and selling of libraries, booksellers' stocks, and the plant of printing-offices, were minutely prescribed. It was in this storehouse that the unlucky functionaries of Charles X. sought their precedents.

The succeeding lieutenant-general of police were Ravot d'Ombreval (1724–25), René Hérault (1725–39), Feydeau de Marville (1739–47), and Berryer (1747–54). The first of them has the miserable distinction of having been almost wholly engrossed with the affairs of the Protestants. Hérault effected considerable improvements in the lighting and watching of the streets of Paris. Feydeau de Marville organised himself by some vigorous efforts to check the growth of mendicancy. But no head of police, nor any other functionary in high place, seems to have reached, even in idea, some of the principal causes of the evil. Trade continued to be hampered by the old restrictions, and mere palliatives, often severe in their operation upon wretched but inoffensive people, some of whom could not find work, however earnest in the search, were resorted to, as of old.

When, as we have seen, the work-house and hospital system was first established (1657), the mendicants who were housed were from 5000 to 6000 in number. Every case, one that worked was entitled to a third of the produce of his labour. But in 1720 able-bodied mendicants were no longer received. They were sent back to their respective townships. Almsgiving was forbidden. Inhabitants of Paris were prohibited from lodging any persons of whose means of livelihood no satisfactory account could be given to the police. The provinces soon complained. A new system was then tried in the capital, by opening registers for able-bodied paupers, who were brigaded, and employed on roads and other public works. But the evil outstripped the remedies. It had been deeply rooted in the days of Louis XIV., a period as remarkable for the multiplicity of its laws and regulations respecting the poor as for the profuse squandering of the national resources. In the succeeding reigns the "standing army of misery," as a recent historian has called it, became more formidable still. In 1767, according to the minister Necker, 50,000 mendicants were actually taken into custody. At this period the receptacles for such captures throughout the kingdom were but thirty-three in number. Incredible as such a statement would seem to be on less sufficient authority than that of Necker, there is yet conclusive evidence that, ten years later, after a series of deficient harvests, mendicancy had enormously increased.

At the time of which Necker writes, De Sartine was lieutenant-general of police, having succeeded Bertin, who since 1754 had filled the office until 1759. De Sartine re-established at the head of the police until the 30th August of the year 1774. He was a man of considerable ability, but will long be deservedly gibbeted in history for having prostituted his office to the basest uses. The systematic reports by which he ministered to the crapulous tastes of Louis XV. give us a view of kingcraft at its lowest possible pitch of degradation. Such a court, in juxtaposition with the "army of misery," might well be the prelude to a "reign of terror." If other proof be wanted, it will be found in the details of that Ordonnance d'Instruction Criminelle of August 1670, which remained in force, with very rare slight modification, at the eve of the revolution. Preliminary torture, perforation of the tongue and of the lips, mutilation, quartering, burning alive, and breaking on the wheel, will all be found prescribed in this memorable edict, coupled with a provision that the judge might increase the punishment enacted, if he thought fit so to do.

De Sartine's term of office is also marked by that calamity at the public celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XVI.), which seems to have been partly caused by the conflict of authority between the lieutenant-general and the provost of trades (prévôt des marchands), and which certainly led to a better demarcation of their respective functions. The accident cost the lives of a hundred and thirty-two persons.

The inquiry before the Parliament of Paris into the causes of so lamentable a disaster, resulted in divesting the provost of all share in the control or responsibility of public festivities, except within the town-hall and on the river.

The lieutenant-general alone was made answerable for all needful precautions on such occasions beyond those limits.

The lieutenant of the successor of De Sartine, M. Lenoir, was marked by very different characteristics. His first tenure of office lasted but a few months, Turgeon having replaced him by a follower of his own, Remond d'Albert, early in 1775. But the fall of that eminent minister led to Lenoir's resumption of office in 1776, and he retained it until August 1785. The improvement of the public markets, and the better lighting, watching, and cleansing of the streets, were among the unostentatious but effective labours of this officer. No such vile scandal as the reports of De Sartine can be alleged against Lenoir; but the monstrous abuses which placed the powers of the police at the disposal of private vengeance and family hatreds were as rife as ever. Temporarily checked under the ministry of Malherbes, that of the Count of Vergennes gave them back their full swing; to the content even of that marvellous "ami des hommes," the old Marquis de Mirabeau, whose chief complaint against the police (the strings of which few men had pulled so frequently), was that "the ruinous expense of commissions of this sort is frightful." Of Lenoir's successor, M. Thiroux de Crose, nothing very notable seems to be recorded, save the significant manner of his resignation.

The electoral committee sitting at the town-hall amidst its multifarious labours on that famous 14th of July, nominated a town-council, consisting of sixty members, and divided into six sub-committees, to one of which the business of police was specially confided. The administration thus improvised speedily submitted to the National Assembly a decree, which it adopted, and which, with the king's sanction, was promulgated on the 6th of November, under the title of Letters-Patent on the Provisional Police of Paris. When it is perceived that by these letters-patent the duties of this department were distributed among sixty petty committees (under the general authority of the municipal body) it will not be surprising that as early as June 1790, the arrangement was considerably modified. The mayor of Paris and the sixteen "administrators," who are first named in the new laws as members of the municipality were formed into six executive committees, one of which became the "committee of police." The primary assembly, however, of each of the forty-eight sections into which Paris was divided, exercised certain minor functions, resembling, as it would seem, those of the former commissaries. But it need hardly be said that, after a very brief period, duties of police occupied little of the time either of assembly or of committee.

After the 9th Thermidor (27th July 1794) the National Convention vested the control of the various branches of police in a committee of twenty members, afterwards reduced to three, which became, under the constitution of the year III., the central executive, and retained its authority until the creation of the prefecture of police in March 1800. From this last-named period may be dated the organization of the French police as, in substance, it now exists.

The definition of the objects and functions of police, as previously laid down in a law of the National Assembly of the 16th and 24th August 1790 (division xi, Des juges en matière de police) remained in force. It runs thus:

"The objects of police intrusted to the vigilance of the municipal officers include—

1. All that concerns the safety and convenience of traffic in the streets, quays, squares, and highways; in the cleansing and lighting of the city; in the safe repair of dangerous structures; and in the removal of public nuisances.

2. The repression and punishment of offences against the public peace, such as affrays, riots, and disturbances in the streets and other public places.

3. The maintenance of good order in fairs and markets, at public festivities, and in places of public resort, such as churches, coffee-houses, &c.

4. The inspection of weights and measures; and precautions for insuring the wholesome condition of articles of food exposed for public sale.

5. The prevention by suitable precautions, and the mitigation by needful assistance, of accidents and calamities, such as fires, epidemics, contagious cattle diseases, and the like.

6. The duty of obviating or remedying casualties resulting from the acts of lunatics or of dangerous animals.

7. The supervision of theatres and other public amusements."

The principles thus laid down still form, professedly at least, the basis of police intervention in the matters which they cover. They were further developed when the official organization of the department was settled by the consular decree of 1800, the main provisions of which are as follows:

"The prefect of police shall discharge his duties under the immediate authority of the ministers; shall correspond regularly with them in relation to matters which lie within the purview of their respective functions; he may republish from time to time the police laws and regulations, and may frame and issue directions to insure their execution.

His duties shall include the delivery of passports, of residence licenses (permis de séjour), and of tickets of security (cartes de sûreté); the repression of begging and vagrancy; the supervision of public-houses and of prostitutes; the dispersion of crowds; the police of religious worship, of printing, and of bookselling; that of theatres, of powder-mills, saltpetre-works, and storehouses of arms, and the pursuit of deserters; that of the highways, of public health, of fires and inundations, of river accidents, of the exchange, of commerce, of taxes, of the food markets, and of prohibited wares; and the protection of public monuments."

And to this list, long as it is, is added an et cetera.

"It shall also be his duty to regulate the expenses of officers of health and of veterinary surgeons, the removal of sick persons and of corpses, the recovery of drowned persons, and the pounds or green-yards (les frais de fourrière).

"The prefect shall charge the costs of his department on the revenue of the commune of Paris; his budget shall be presented to the town council, and have the sanction of the home minister.

"The commissaries of police and of the exchange, the inspectors of highways and wharfs, and peace officers of all kinds, are placed under his orders, as is the National Guard on due requisition. Finally, the entire control, under the home minister, of the lighting and cleansing of the city is vested in his hands."

In the following year the district assigned to the prefect of police was enlarged, by being made co-extensive with the department of the Seine, with the addition of the communes or townships of St Cloud, Sèvres, and Meudon, which form part of the department of the Seine and the Oise.

During the fourteen years which elapsed between the establishment of the new prefecture and the first abdication of Napoleon, the office was filled by two prefects only; namely, by Count Dubois from March 1800 to October 1810, and by Pasquier (afterwards the chancellor and Duke Pasquier of Louis Philippe, but better known as "Pasquier the Inevitable"), from October 1810 to May 1814. The tenure of each of these officers was marked by a signal public disaster. It was during the prefecture of Dubois that the terrible calamity at the Schwarzenberg palace occurred in the emperor's presence, and it led to the prefect's resignation. His successor was of a family long eminent in the legal magistracy. The father of M. Pasquier, a counsellor of the Parliament of Paris, had perished in 1794 on the revolutionary scaffold. To the lot of his grandfather, more unhappy still, it had fallen to take a leading official part in the legal murder of Lally. A more remote ancestor, as advocate-general under Henry IV., signaled himself by his resolute curbing of the Jesuits. But no incident in a remarkable pedigree seems to have approached for singularity that strange event which saw the prefect of police, at a moment of entire apparent tranquillity, surrounded in his own house (13th October 1812), and hurried, without a struggle, into one of his own dungeons. Ridicule, however, was M. Pasquier's chief penalty for having suffered himself to be so surprised. The weight of the master's anger at this "political debauch" (so Napoleon designated it) fell on Frochot, prefect of the Seine. Pasquier retained his office until the 13th May 1814.

The first prefect under the Restoration, but with the altered title of Director-General, was M. Beugnot, a converted Bonapartist, who resembled his predecessor in being a favourite butt of the Paris wits, although in little else. The cause in his case was a stringent regulation respecting Sabbath observance, which he issued shortly after entering on his functions; and speedily followed up by a sort of manifesto on the duties of his department, wherein he compared the police to a "drop of oil," which, duly applied, kept the springs of government from rusting. Count Beugnot held the directorship but a short time, and had a crowd of successors. In the year 1815, indeed, the police of Paris was administered by six successive directors or prefects. The most notable of these was M. Decazes (afterwards duke, and grand referendary of the Chamber of Peers), who in this capacity had the ill-omened task of arresting and examining Labédoyère and Ney. From the prefecture (the old title had been restored after the Hundred Days) Decazes passed to the ministry of general police, of which we shall have to speak presently.

From the end of 1821 to the end of 1836 there were ten prefects. The administration of M. Gisquet, the last of these ten, was on many accounts remarkable. Characterized by ability, firmness, and power of combination, he made himself a very formidable antagonist to the republicans and oppositionists of all shades. But he overdid his part. Owing his appointment entirely to the favour of Casimir Perier, he permitted his anxiety to carry out that minister's policy to lead him into acts, or into the toleration of acts by inferior agents, that were directly provocative of the crimes it was his duty to prevent. The minister's policy was of that dangerous kind which thrusts forward pretensions beyond its strength. He was, it is true, opposed not only by men who were combating for rational and responsible liberty, but by others who were striving with might and main to bring chaos back again. Such opponents mistook reckless turbulence for political courage, and heated their imaginations until any sort of weapon seemed a fair one, so long as it was to be used against the powers that were. Gisquet's most honest acts of duty were doubtless sometimes distorted into crimes. But with all due allowance for the violence of party passions, it remains certain that the functions of police were grossly abused.

M. Gisquet has, indeed, under his own hand proved the essential points of his assailants' case. When he entered the police on the prefecture, he found a police prosecution pending against two journals—Le National and La Tribune—for having charged the authorities with "brigading and paying," bludgeon-men," in 1831, on occasion of the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. The defendants pleaded that the truth of the charge would be substantiated by certain reports addressed to the prefect on the 13th and 14th of July. The tribunal (Cour Royale) decreed that those reports should be produced. When summoned to obey this decision of a court of judicature, pronounced in strict conformity with the code, M. Gisquet refused obedience, assigning as his motives "that such a production would have the inconvenience of acquainting the enemies of order with the means of repression at the disposal of government; and the danger, more serious still, of revealing the names of certain secret agents, who, by such an act, and in direct breach of the compact made with them, would be handed over to the hatred and vengeance of their enemies." The decree was neither annulled nor enforced; or, in other words, the prefect of police was placed above the law.

Such facts and such arguments, synchronizing as they did with the violent straining of the law against the press on every possible occasion, might well elicit from Armand Carrel his memorable protest:—"It shall not be said that a system which could institute the innumerable and absurd prosecutions for which our lawyers blush; which could plan the piecemeal confiscation of our property by fines and costs; a system under which writers are branded, whilst yet untired, by being coupled with swindlers, or are quietly killed off by the pestilential miasma of St Pelagio, may aggravize itself yet more by incorporating the 'jurisprudence of the self-evident fact' (jurisprudence du flagrant délit). . . . We should be guilty if we suffered it. . . . The life of a man slain furtively at the corner of a street, in the tumult of an insurrection, may be counted a small affair; but the life of a man of honour, murdered in his own house by M. Périer's sbirri, whilst resisting in the name of the law, would be much. His blood would cry for vengeance. If the ministry is daring enough to play for such stakes, it may fail to win." That such a man as Carrel should have the opportunity of writing thus within a year or two of the foundation of the "monarchy of the barricades," is a small fact which enfolds as much of history as do many large volumes that bear the name. M. Gisquet's defence of his administration is a book of remarkable ability, and it extends to four volumes, but the reader will seek in vain, from end to end, for an answer to Carrel's description of the political police of 1831-32. Nor will it in 1858 need any arguments to prove that the significance of these bygone events did not cease with the monarchy of the Orleans branch. We have recently seen an eminent statesman standing at the bar of a police court to answer charges based upon repressive laws dating from the worst days of the Restoration; and have seen him condemned (for an act which has made his name illustrious wherever liberty is valued) by a sentence involving the possibility of transportation like a felon. The names are changed, but the story is the same. The end, however, is not yet.

If we turn from the police of politics to the region of municipal affairs, the prefecture of M. Gisquet presents equal many commendable features. He has himself described police this municipal portion of the duties as employing nineteen-twentieths of the staff, and, if fully attended to, at least ten hours daily of the prefect's time. But be this as it may, there is no doubt that he found leisure to make important ameliorations in matters of public convenience and of public health. He had, from his first entrance into office, the monition of the swift-coming cholera.

One of the many secondary incidents of the three days of July which appealed impressively to the eye in the streets of Paris for a long time afterwards, was the enormous encroachment of stall-keepers on the streets, quays, and bridges. The number of these was reckoned in 1831 as ranging from 25,000 to 30,000, the suppression of which would seem to have needed an army of police; yet some considerable approach to such a result was obviously essential to the safety and salubrity of the streets, and to the satisfaction of the reasonable complaints of rent-paying and tax-paying shopkeepers. M. Gisquet set to work, ingeniously enough, by instituting a series of inquiries among the stall-keepers themselves, the scope of which they could not appreciate, but which had the effect of putting many of them on the side of the police. Beginning by the expulsion of those who were not domiciled in Paris, and then of those who had learnt a trade, and so on, he gradually reduced the number to little more than one-tenth of its previous extent, without uproar, and under conditions which seemed to ensure that the authorized were in a large measure the deserving.

In like manner, important improvements were introduced into the management of the markets; the police of the river, the wharves, and the canals; and the lighting and draining of the city. Some injurious monopolies were suppressed, and some needless interferences with trade, compensated by no adequate public service, were terminated. By using a wise discretion in such matters, M. Gisquet was the better able to deal vigorously with crying abuses in respect to the adulteration of food. So gross were some of those which he had to suppress, that the narrative forms a notable chapter in the annals of mercantile roguery.

The extent and cost of the staff attached to the prefecture of police under the government of Louis Philippe Paris may be briefly indicated thus:

| Division | Specific Functions | No. of Persons employed | |----------|-------------------|------------------------| | Prefect's Office | Correspondence; reports; registration; foreign refugees | 19 | | Secretary's Office | Framing of regulations and public announcements; archives; police appointments and pay; public festivities and amusements | 30 | | Criminal and Passport Department | Arrests and preliminary examinations; supervision and inspection of prisons, houses of correction, and penitentiaries; supervision of criminals at large, and of vagrants; records of criminal jurisprudence; delivery and use of passports; matters relating to lodging-houses | 323 | | Markets, Public Buildings, and Public Health Department | All matters relating to the cleansing, lighting, and draining of Paris; survey of dangerous structures; street and highway traffic; provisioning of the city, and matters affecting public health | 425 | | Accountant's Department | Accounts of receipts and expenditure | 12 | | Watchings Department | Patrol; nightly watch and detective department | ... | | Commissaries' Department | Local inspection of the forty-eight quarters of Paris; intermediate agencies between the central prefecture and the local application of its orders | 211 |

Poets, messengers, and menial servants | | 603 |

At this time there were also attached to the prefecture a Consulting Board of Health, consisting of eighteen physicians, chemists, and apothecaries; a Consulting Board of Architects, composed of thirteen persons, professionally conversant with building; and a Medical Board (ten in number) specifically employed in the inspection of prostitutes.

The strength of the watch and detective department cannot be accurately stated; doubtless for reasons which hinge upon the intimate connection between the police of ordinary crime and that of political subserviency. On the much-debated question of "secret agents" M. Gisquet has a great deal to say. He shows very convincingly that a police must be open to information; and that information may be given from good motives. He shows just as clearly, although without intending it, that the ramifications of the secret service are so complex, its disguises so multifarious, and its social leprosies so spreading, that a writer who could much exaggerate them must be endowed with uncommon gifts.

When M. Gisquet entered on his functions (15th October 1831), the expenditure of the prefecture, so far as it was charged on municipal funds, amounted to nearly eight millions of francs (L.333,330); the staff was considerably increased in several departments during his administration, but was pruned in others of less importance, and was kept well in hand. When he quitted office (6th September 1835), the expenditure had been reduced to 7,189,500 francs (L.299,362); the receipts from market-dues, and other like sources, had been considerably increased; and an improved system of accounts established. In this department M. Gisquet's previous experience as a banker stood him in good stead; and the improvements appear to have had enduring results.

Amongst the new measures introduced by this prefecture was, he tells us, the systematic compilation of biographical records of contemporary politicians. In the nineteenth century such a compilation must be costly as well as curious, but it does not appear whether the expense of it was defrayed from municipal or from other funds. Another and remarkable collection of records had existed already in the archives of the prefecture for some 120 years. Here are registered the names, identifications, convictions, punishments, or acquittals of every person who, during that long period, had been accused before any tribunal throughout France of crime or misdemeanour, and the utmost pains are taken to continue it in the completest form. In 1833 it had long occupied a standing body of clerks (fourteen in number) and an array of ponderous volumes (400 in number), besides an alphabetical index containing about 500,000 names. Even then it was difficult to consult it, on account of the thousands of Martin, Dubois, Dupuis, &c., with which it teemed. M. Gisquet employed a sufficient staff to copy the whole of these records on slips of card-board, each assigned to one individual. The task was accomplished in four years, and thenceforward two clerks did the work of the previous fourteen. The collection bears the title of Sommiers Judiciaires, and is in daily use in the criminal courts. If, however, we may judge from passing transactions, this collection is now (November 1858) in a fair way... Here, then, we leave a branch of the subject which is far from being exhausted. The police of Paris is undoubtedly the most remarkable institution of its kind which has ever existed. It would be instructive to trace it further, and to bring it into connection with the recent statistics of crime. That section, however, has still more importance for the present purpose, in relation to our own country; and to treat of it in relation to both countries is here impracticable. But there is another section of the Paris police hitherto unnoticed, which is one of eminent difficulty and delicacy. It must not be passed over without some mention, however inadequate.

Few things in the external aspect of London strike a Frenchman with more surprise than the audacity with which female prostitution thrusts itself upon the public gaze. The wonder is none the less, even if the visitor be one to whom the corruption of Paris or of other continental cities is no mere hearsay. There, at all events, this scandal has limits beyond which it dares not venture; and vice, whatever its extent, is rarely permitted to insult those who do not seek it.

The police regulation of this opprobrium of civilization dates in France from the thirteenth century. The first steps followed close upon the earnest but futile efforts of St Louis for its total suppression, by the public exposure and ultimate banishment of those engaged in it. Such measures failing of their desired effect, prostitutes were tolerated, but permitted to reside only in certain streets, forced to wear a prescribed dress, and to close their houses at fixed hours. No direct measures appear to have been taken until the fifteenth century against the guiltiest class of all—the traders in the recruiting of those miserable ranks. In the sixteenth, the curb in this direction was tightened. Procurers and procuresses were pilloried, branded, and then banished.

The assembly of the States-General, held at Orleans in the middle of this century, recommended a revival of the frustrated efforts of the thirteenth for the total proscription of prostitution. Owners of houses in which it was permitted incurred fines equal to three years' rent, and on repeated conviction, forfeited their houses. But the sin was too extensive and too deeply rooted to be thus extirpated. Clandestine prostitution was found to have its special evils; and a tacit toleration, under stringent rules of the old sort, returned. Under Louis XIV. (that pontifical legislator against immorality and luxury), asylums were opened under the designations, "Refuge," "Maison des Filles de la Madeleine," and "Maison du bon Pasteur;" and the hospital of the Salpetrière was assigned partly as a penitentiary and partly as a house of correction. A swoop was made by the police once a week upon such of the prostitutes as were deemed most disorderly; and these, lodged meanwhile in a house of detention, were brought monthly before the magistrates. Some were discharged, others sent to the Salpetrière, and others to the hospital of Bicêtre for medical treatment. Here we seem to have the beginning of the existing system of periodical supervision.

In October 1831 the number of persons of this sort inscribed on the police registers was 3479; in 1836 it was 3800. About two-thirds of the number resided in houses or apartments which they themselves rented, and nearly the whole of the remaining third in houses called maisons de tolérance, 194 in number. These houses are licensed; and the licensees, it is stated, are never given without "the assent of the neighbours;" by which, we suppose, must be meant that of a definite number (la permission n'est jamais accordée qu'après un enquête et qu'avec l'admission des habitants du voisinage). Its conditions prescribe various regulations as to quietness and seclusion; limit the number of the inhabitants, and provide for the weekly visit of the medical officer. As respects the first-named two-thirds, the condition of inscription on the register is, that they present themselves for a like purpose once a fortnight. M. Gisquet states, as the result of his official experience as prefect, and of his acquaintance with the archives of his department, that, irrespectively of the other results of the system, it has reduced the ravages of disease by one-half within fourteen years.

If this part of the punishment of vice were liable to the vicious, the legislator might have reason to hesitate ere he interposed. But it is otherwise ordained. Nor can it be doubted that a system which may seem, on the one hand, to carry with it an implied sanction of practices which the law of a Christian country must always and utterly condemn, does, on the other hand, present itself as a stigma not less degrading than was the pillory of the fifteenth century, or the open cart of the seventeenth.

In another of its aspects police intervention appears to be in some measure indispensable. Between the class in question and the predatory classes there is an indissoluble tie. Some sort of supervision lies therefore at the threshold of the pursuit of criminals. The means of detective police have recently been everywhere strengthened, as is well known, by the employment of photography. But a quarter of a century ago, a remarkable "gallery of female portraits" had already been commenced at the Paris prefecture, which led to a kind of exceptional police court, by no means to be recommended as a model, to the extent there attained, although, under proper restriction, it may be justifiable and salutary.

Than this question of the treatment of prostitution there can be none which presents greater difficulties to the prudent legislator. To thrust it out of sight will no more remove the evil than the closing of the hatches of a ship on fire will save the ship. The experience of Paris in relation to it may offer much to avoid, but can hardly fail to contain something to imitate. The day will come when a thorough inquiry, in competent hands, into the results of that experience, will be a recognised necessity. The problem is to check a growing evil, without, on the one hand, opening a door to new evils, or, on the other, undermining in any way those first principles of morality, for the weakening of which no improvements of police could make amends. And the problem is a pressing one.

It will have been seen that, under the old monarchy, the police of Paris was intimately connected with that of the kingdom at large. But there has always been a police of wider scope, more or less developed according to the tendencies of the government of the day, and more immediately in the hands of the ruling power, whether monarchical or ministerial. Usually this secret police had been attached to the ministry of the home department, and had thus been in the same keeping with the direct control of the rural police of the kingdom. The gendarmerie, justices of peace, mayors, sub-prefects, are all controlled by the prefects of departments, who, in their turn, are accountable to the home minister.

The creation of a separate "ministry of police" was the II. The Police of England.

The ancient police of England may be dated from Alfred. It grew out of his subdivision of the shires into hundreds and tithings. Every man in England must belong to some tithing (or like division, under another name); the inhabitants of every tithing are collectively pledged for the preservation of its peace and security, and are mutually responsible for the apprehension of every accused person within the district. If the offender take flight into another Saxon laws district, he becomes a man "unpledged," and therefore of frank-virtually an outlaw. Whatever we may think of William pledge, of Malmesbury's famous story of the golden bracelets, hung by Alfred's order in the public roads, there is conclusive evidence that these rigid preventive measures brought about a state of internal tranquillity that was in striking contrast with previous experience, and in all probability scarcely less in contrast with the changes which ere long ensued.

If we pass on to the reign of Edward I., we find the main difficulty complained of as obstructing the peace of the realm to be the lack of effective pursuit of felons. The isolation of districts, after the rigid method of the Anglo-Saxon times, must have soon evinced itself to be a measure, so far as it may have been found possible to maintain it, of which the mischievous exceeded the salutary consequences. The effort now was to increase the efficiency of the hue-and-cry. Thus we find it enacted in a statute of 3 Edward the first, that "the whole commonalty be ready and equipped to and cry, 3 pursue and arrest felons at the order and summons of the sheriff; and at the cry of the country, as well within franchise as without. (Pareu est que tu communiaiment send prez et aparaisse al maundement e a la somonse des vic-contre ou au cri del pays, de suire e de arrester les felons quant mester serra; ausi bien dedenz frounaches comme delors). Ten years later, the statute of Winchester commands that, "in great towns being walled, the gates shall Winchester be closed from the sun-setting until the sun-rising; and that no man do lodge in suburbs, or in any place out of the town, from nine of the clock until day, without his host will answer for him; and the bailiffs of towns every week, or at least every fifteenth day, shall make inquiry of all persons being lodged in the suburbs; . . . . and if they do find any that have lodged any strangers or suspicious persons against the peace, the bailiffs shall do right therein." It was further provided that highways between market-towns should be cleared from trees and bushes to a breadth of 200 feet from hedge to hedge; that every man between fifteen and forty years of age should have arms; and that constables shall be appointed to make view of such arms from time to time, and to present defaulters "to the justices assigned, and after by them to the king, and the king will provide remedy."

This statute of Winchester was again sent throughout England fifteen years afterwards, "to be read and proclaimed four times in the year;" and three knights were assigned to each shire to watch over its execution, as "keepers of the peace." In the 1st Edward II., the keepers were directed to appoint two citizens in cities, two burgesses in boroughs, and two lawful men in every market-town, for the due enforcement of the statute.

By the 25th Edward III. (the "statute of labourers"), justices of assizes are to hold sessions four times a year, and at all labours, other times needful for the conservation of the peace; and 25 Edw. III. in staple-towns the mayors and two constables are directed to keep the peace, and to arrest all evil-doers in the staple, for trespass, debt, or breach of contract, and to imprison or otherwise punish them, according to the laws of the staple.

As early as the 35th of Edward I., the term "justice of peace" occurs on the Patent Rolls ("Par ceo que nostre peace fealt e loial peres de Moulay est entenduant a nostre service en office de justice de la pes, vous mandons," &c.); but it was not until the 34th of Edward III. that these officers had power to try felons; although their functions had been gradually enlarged in lesser matters by several successive statutes (e.g., 2 Edward III., the "statute of Northampton," c. 3.; 4 Edward III., c. 2). By the 5th Henry IV., c. 10, it is enacted that—"Because divers constables of castles within the realm of England have been by the king's commission appointed justices of the peace, and under colour of such commission they take up people to whom they bear ill-will, and imprison them in their castles, until they pay fine and ransom for their deliverance; it is ordained that no person shall be imprisoned by any justice of the peace, but only in the common gaol, excepting by these lords who have gaols within their franchise."

In the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Henry VII., various royal charters conferred upon the mayors and certain aldermen of the principal cities and boroughs, and their successors, the office of justices of the peace within their several jurisdictions. The parochial and township constables formed the only police that existed. As to any remedial measures aiming at the removal or diminution of the causes of crime, no trace is to be found until a period comparatively recent. The main dependence of the legislature appears to have been placed on the tender of impunity to accomplices, and the offer of rewards to informers.

Thus, by the 3rd and 4th of William and Mary, c. 8, persons guilty of robbery in the highways or fields, &c., who, being out of prison, shall so discover any two offenders as to lead to their conviction; and persons not concerned in the offence who shall apprehend and prosecute to conviction any highwayman, shall receive of the sheriff L.40, within a month after the conviction; and any sheriff making default in such payment is made liable to a penalty of double the sum. If the person seeking to apprehend the robber he killed in the encounter, his heirs or executors are entitled to the reward. The apprehender is also empowered to claim the horse, harness, arms, and money taken with such highwaymen, notwithstanding any vested right in the crown or in the lord of a manor, or any claim by the owners and lessees for hire of any such horse, &c.; the only right saved being that of owners feloniously deprived.

The 10th and 11th of William III., extended the provision respecting accomplices to burglary and various other felonies; and a statute of Anne extended the L.40 reward to cases of burglary and housebreaking.

But all these inducements were little operative. The administration of the laws was almost entirely in the hands of unpaid and very partially responsible magistrates. Some of those in London had fallen into practices which gave them the current appellation of "trading justices." The only police-office in the metropolis was that at Bow Street, which had grown up in a casual fashion, under the authority of the secretary of state, and without any parliamentary sanction or support. But it chanced that the necessities of a great writer led him to accept the office of "Bow Street magistrate," at a time so critical as to induce him to employ his powers of authorship, as well as his knowledge of law, in the public service. Henry Fielding took the first steps towards an efficient police by forcing on the attention of the public, as well as of men in authority, what seemed to him to be the causes of the growing evils. "First, with regard to private persons," he says, "there is no country, I believe, in the world, where that vulgar maxim so generally prevails, that what is the business of every man is the business of no man; and for this plain reason, that there is no country in which less honour is gained by serving the public. Secondly, . . . so far is the power of apprehending felons from being universally known, that many of the peace-officers themselves do not know that they have any such power, and often from ignorance refuse to arrest a known felon until they are authorized by a warrant from a justice of peace. Thirdly, . . . the person of an informer is more odious than that of the felon himself; and the thief-catcher is in danger of worse treatment from the populace than the thief." ("The force of this opinion," he elsewhere adds, "may be seen in the following instance: We have a law by which every person who drives more than six horses in a waggon forfeits as many horses as are found to exceed that number. This law is broken every day, and generally with impunity; for though many men yearly venture and lose their lives by stealing horses, yet there are very few who dare seize a horse, where the law allows and encourages it, when by such seizure he is to acquire the name of an informer.") And, "lastly, as to the reward, . . . the prosecutor's title to it is too often defeated by the foolish lenity of juries."

The proposal which Fielding laid before the Privy Council, by way of remedy, consisted mainly in the establishment of a paid police force, to be under the orders of the acting magistrate at Bow Street, and to be composed of picked men who had served the office of constable. At this time (1753) there existed in London "a most notorious gang of street-robbers, in number about fourteen, who divided themselves in parties, committed such daring robberies, and at the same time such barbarities, by cutting and wounding those they robbed, in every part of this metropolis, as spread a general alarm through the town, and deterred his Majesty's subjects from passing and repassing on their lawful occasions after nightfall. These outrages induced his Majesty to issue a proclamation, and offer L.100 reward for apprehending each of these violators of the public peace. And though this was humanely intended as a remedy for this dreadful evil, instead of answering the end proposed, it soon begat a greater, by inducing a set of villains to decoy unwary and ignorant wretches to commit robberies, and then to make a sacrifice of them for the sake of the reward, while the real offenders not only escaped justice, but increased their barbarities even to murder." Henry Fielding's new force succeeded in capturing the particular gang referred to at the beginning of this extract, after a desperate struggle, in which one constable and one of the robbers were killed on the spot. Considerable head was made against highwaymen, and many gangs of housebreakers were dispersed.

The plan had scarcely been initiated, when the rapid decline of Henry Fielding's health forced him to resign his office to his brother, afterwards Sir John Fielding, who followed in the same track with great, though, as it proved, but temporary success. Moderate as were the innovations thus made on the old criminal law, they did not fail to be denounced as a "reversion of the darling and essential privileges of freeborn Englishmen;" and a glowing picture was drawn of the ultimate result of such tamperings with the constitution, when this island "would be no more the seat of liberty; slavery would introduce indolence, indolence poverty, and poverty contempt; freedom, arts, and sciences, would then have their rotation, winging their vagrant flight up the Baltic, shunning their once-loved streams of Ilissus, Tiber, Thames, and Seine, and fixing their residence on the long-neglected banks of the Volga; infusing all their spirit among the rude inhabitants of the North; civilizing the unpolished Muscovite, and giving the descendants of the Czarian family an opportunity of gloriously unfolding their imperial eagle in the very centre of the southern nations, and of becoming the sovereign arbiters of Europe;" and so on, ending with an outline of our familiar acquaintance, "the British lion, ingloriously slumbering in the net of captivity."

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1 Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c. (1751), pp. 102, 103. 2 Sir John Fielding, An Account of the Origin and Effects of a Police set on foot in 1753, pp. 15, 16. 3 Observations on Mr Fielding's Enquiry into the Causes of the Increase of Robbers, pp. 84, 85. Forty years afterwards, crime had become again so rampant as to necessitate more vigorous measures. By the 32nd George III., c. 53, seven additional police-officers were established, each with three stipendiary magistrates (at a salary of £400 each, afterwards increased to £600) and two clerks. The magistrates were empowered to determine summarily, in a multitude of cases, respecting offences against the public revenue and game laws, against highway acts, and against the various laws of master and servants; to license and regulate public-houses; to punish vagrancy; to suppress nuisances; to instruct parochial constables in their duties; to issue search-warrants for stolen property; to regulate the billeting and recruiting of soldiers; and to take preliminary examinations in all charges of felony and misdemeanour not specifically provided for. The only power conferred by the act which directly addressed itself to the prevention of crime, relates to the apprehension of persons of ill-repute found in the avenues to public places, under circumstances indicative of an intent to rob. The expense of each office was restricted to two thousand pounds a year.

In his elaborate Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (of which the 6th edition was published in 1800), Dr Patrick Colquhoun, one of the magistrates first appointed under the act of 1792, indicates, as the main deficiencies which the experience of eight years had brought saliently out, the want of an entire re-organization of the system of constables, and of an adequate fund for rewarding informers. "If criminals," he says, "are at war with the community, are to be detected; if risks are to be run to effect this purpose; if it is to be done, as it must frequently be, at the hazard of the loss of health, and even of life, by watching desperadoes in the night-time; if accurate informations are necessary either to discover where stolen property is deposited, or where the delinquents are to be found, a fund must be provided, or the public cannot be protected."

At this period six police constables only were attached to each of the metropolitan offices, making 40 in the whole; 68 other constables were under the orders of the chief magistrate at Bow Street, as patrols for the principal metropolitan roads; 41 formed the civil force of the Thames police establishment (organized in July 1798); 40 stipendiaries were employed in the city of London under the corporation; and there were in addition 843 parish officers—beadle, constables, or head boroughs—servicing without stipend. The nightly watch and patrol comprised in the city of London 803 men, generally aged, often infirm, and the honest among them very frequently half-starved,—their wages varying from 8½d. up to 1s. 6d. for each night; and in the other metropolitan districts (Westminster, Southwark, and part of Kensington included) 1241 men, very similar in age and physical condition, but, in the more opulent districts, somewhat better paid. These watchmen and patrols were under the control of more than 70 different boards or trusts, the powers and procedure of which were regulated by about 120 several acts of Parliament.

Those who knew London at this period, or during the following quarter of a century, will remember that the turning out of the "nightly watch" was, once in a way, a sight worth seeing, although for quite other reasons than those which are said to have brought Henry VIII. into Cheapside one night to witness a similar spectacle. To connect, in idea, such an assemblage of the halt, the lame, and the blind, with the terror of thieves and the repression of outrage, required vivid powers of imagination. That crime increased, no statistics need be cited to prove. The establishment of the police-offices, and that, most especially, of the Thames police-office, had produced excellent results; but in the absence both of an efficient executive force and of a central superintending authority, it failed, and could not but fail, to make head against the ever-increasing temptation of augmented wealth and a rapidly-growing population.

Repeated inquiries took place before committees of the Parliament House of Commons. The utter inefficiency of the existing police force was clearly shown. The necessity of an improved system of licensing and controlling public-houses was proved; and it was made not a whit less apparent that "coffee-shops" may be so conducted as to stand quite as much in need of regulation as do beer-houses. "Another proper call for additional powers to the magistrates," writes a competent witness in 1822, "is furnished by the coffee-shops,—an extraordinary nuisance which has recently risen up in this great city. These places are the resort of the vilest thieves and prostitutes, and have hitherto gone on with impunity, because, as neither beer nor spirits are retailed in them, they are not required to be licensed." The monstrous impunity with which systematic trade in stolen goods was carried on and extended likewise forced itself upon attention. But the inquiries of 1812, 1816, 1817, and 1822 led to little more than an increase in the salaries of magistrates, and gradual accretions to their jurisdictions, as the police acts were severally renewed. On one of these occasions, also, Sir Robert Peel laid down as a formal rule the practice that had been usually but not invariably followed since the days of Lord Sidmouth, of appointing as police magistrates none but barristers.

The committee of 1828, however, has left its plain mark Sir Robert in the annals of police legislation, inasmuch as it paved the Peel's Po-way for Sir Robert Peel's act of 1829 (10 Geo. IV., "An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis"), by which a large approach was made towards that cardinal point in police reform,—the separation of the incongruous functions of thief-taker and judge, and an effective constabulary force was established under the control of two commissioners. This act, it is true, left many petty, detached, and independent bodies of peace officers in certain districts of the metropolis, irrespectively of the city of London, to which it did not at all apply. And to this extent it contained the seeds of future embarrassment in the proper working of the new constabulary. But if the state of parties in 1829 be borne in mind; if it be remembered how greatly Sir Robert Peel's political position was hampered by the results of his manly conflict for the Catholic Relief Bill, and how imperfectly public opinion was enlightened to the true importance of the police measure, even after all that had been done and said in relation to it, the surprise will rather be, that he effected so much, than that he did no more.

In 1838 the working of the new system came fully under Parliament's review of a parliamentary committee. The inquiry in 1838 into the measure of 1829, and the wisdom of extending it. Notwithstanding the loud prophecies of the worst than Egyptian bondage that was sure to follow so flagrant an innovation, no evidence was forthcoming that new police liberty had suffered by the suppression of the old watchboxes, and of the woollen nightcaps by which they were wont to be tenanted. The committee reported its opinion—(1.) That the several constabulary forces (including that of the city) of the metropolis should be consolidated; (2.) That all executive duties of police should be entrusted to the commissioners; (3.) That the police-offices should be so regulated as to assimilate them, more than heretofore, to courts of justice; (4.) That, within the jurisdiction of the Police Act, one magistrate, sitting alone, should be empowered to deal with all cases; (5.) That police justices should be empowered to determine cases of simple larceny up to a value of forty shillings; (6.) That they should like-

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1 Colquhoun, Treatise, &c., 6th edit., p. 510. 2 Ibid., pp. 397, 414. wise be empowered to determine certain petty and constantly-recurring questions of a civil nature, especially affecting the most numerous classes of the population, and not previously provided for; (7) That a revision of the police districts should be made, with a view to their better adaptation to the growth of the metropolis. There were many other recommendations on points of detail, but those we have cited comprise the matters of chief importance. In the following session bills were introduced in accordance with the principal recommendations of the committee; and again there was an active opposition.

The main contest was as to the consolidation of the police of the city with that of the outlying districts. It resulted in the introduction and ultimate passing of a corporation police bill, modelled in its details on that of the government, but retaining the separate control. The city force was to be placed under a commissioner, intrusted with like powers within the city to those which the metropolitan commissioners possessed without it.

The chief provisions of the acts of the 2d and 3d Vict., c. 47 and 71 (the former entitled "An Act for further Improving the Police in or near the Metropolis;" the latter, "An Act for Regulating the Police-Courts in the Metropolis"), carrying into effect the above-cited recommendations of the committee of 1838, from the 2d to the 6th inclusive, give large powers for the pursuit and recovery of stolen goods; for the better regulation of hired carriages, and highways; and for the suppression of nuisances of various kinds. They raise the maximum salary of the magistrates to the sum of L1200; and empower the Queen in council to alter the number and situation of the police-courts, as well as of the magistrates.

Finally, by the 19th and 20th Vict., c. 2, entitled "An Act to Amend the Acts relating to the Metropolitan Police," it is provided that one commissioner only shall be appointed after the passing of the act, at a salary not exceeding L1500 per annum; power is given for the appointment, under the sign-manual, of two assistant commissioners, each at a salary not exceeding L500 per annum; and it is enacted that all powers theretofore vested in the joint commissioners shall thenceforth be exercised by the sole commissioner.

On the 1st January 1858 the metropolitan police force consisted of 17 superintendents, at salaries varying from L200 to L440; 140 inspectors, at salaries varying from L81, 18s. to L200; 630 sergeants, at weekly pay, amounting, in the lowest class (610 of the 630), to L68, 1s. per annum, and in the highest class to L109, 4s.; and 5296 constables, with pay ranging from L49, 8s. up to L78 per annum. Both sergeants and constables receive coals in addition to their pay and clothing, at the rate of 40 lb. weekly to each married man throughout the year, and 40 lb. weekly to each single man during six months, and 20 lb. weekly during the remainder of the year. The aggregate expenditure for pay and clothing amounted to L349,315, 19s. 3d. The total expenditure of the department during the year ending 31st December 1857 was as follows:

I. Metropolitan Police Force, 1857.—Expenditure.

| Office salaries and expenses (including law charges, L191, 3s. 6d.) | L11,367 0 8 | | Pay, clothing, and equipment of the force | 349,315 19 3 | | Retired allowances, and contribution to superannuation fund | 28,510 1 7 | | Medical and funeral expenses | 3,087 7 8 | | Horses and vans | 8,562 2 11 | | Police-station and service-houses | 18,770 16 10 | | Fuel and light | 13,649 18 6 | | Survey and protection of dangerous structures | 2,609 14 7 | | Miscellaneous expenses | 8,389 19 1 |

Total expenditure | L444,212 1 1 |

At the same period—namely, the close of 1857—the establishment of the metropolitan police-courts consisted of one chief magistrate at L1500; 22 magistrates at L1200 per annum each; 23 clerks, at salaries varying from L75 Establishment to L500 per annum; and 52 ushers, jailers, messengers, at wages averaging L82 per annum. The total expenditure on account of the courts, for the year, was as follows:

II. Metropolitan Police Courts, 1857.—Expenditure.

| Salaries and wages | L39,376 0 4 | | Retired allowances and pensions | 4,882 1 3 | | Purchase and repair of premises, rent, taxes, &c. | 6,118 17 2 | | Fuel, light, and miscellaneous expenses | 1,883 18 6 | | Police Gazette | 3,142 9 9 |

Total expenditure | L55,403 7 0 |

When the police force was first organized (under Portion of Geo. IV., c. 44), the contribution from the Consolidated Fund, in aid of the police rate, was limited to L60,000 per annum. This sum continues to be the contribution of the borne by Treasury, as respects the original district. For the extended district a contribution is made equal to one-third of the proceeds of the rate levied on that district.

The total sum charged in 1857 (by half-yearly warrants) upon the parishes within the original district was, at six-pence in the pound (upon a rental of L9,811,926), L245,298, 3s., to which, as we have seen, L60,000 were added from the Consolidated Fund; the total sum charged in like manner upon the parishes within the extended or additional district (upon a rental of L1,822,953) amounted to L45,573, 16s. 6d.; to which was added from the Consolidated Fund, L15,191, 5s. 6d.; making in the aggregate L365,063, 5s.

The smallest contribution by rate, it may be worth while to note, is that of the liberty of Twyford Abbey in Middlesex, being L13, 6s. (upon a rental of L532); the largest that of the parish of St Marylebone, being L24,984, 6s. (upon a rental of L999,372).

Besides the sums which have been specified, there are Special paid out of votes of Parliament, in pursuance of provisions contained in the acts of the 2d and 3d Vict., c. 47, of the 17th and 18th Vict., c. 94, and of the 19th Vict., c. 2, the following sums, viz., to defray the increased charge arising from the addition of the duties of the horse patrol and the Thames police, L20,000; to defray the salaries of commissioner, assistant-commissioners, and receiver, L4,100; to defray certain superannuation charges, L4080, 19s. 6d. Other sums received from public offices and departments for special services, severally rendered to them by the police, amount to L24,701, 16s. 8d.; and like sums received from trading companies and private persons amount to L8194, 0s. 10d. The total receipts from all sources stand thus:

III. Metropolitan Police Force, 1857.—Receipts.

| Police rate (6s. in the pound) | L290,871 19 5 | | Treasury | 103,380 5 | | Public departments for special services | 24,701 16 8 | | Companies and private persons | 8,194 0 10 | | For conveyance of prisoners | 819 17 7 | | From owners of dangerous structures | 1,621 2 4 | | Scoopages from police pay for lodging | 5,218 14 11 | | Miscellaneous receipts | 687 17 2 |

Total receipts | L435,555 14 0 |

By the 16th and 17th Vict., c. 33 ("An Act for the better Regulation of Metropolitan Stage and Hackney Carriages, tan Carriages, and for Prohibiting the use of Advertising Vehicles"), the Flag Act inspection and regulation of public carriages is made one of the duties of the commissioners of police; the certificate of 1858, the commissioners being the condition precedent of the licensing of any such carriage by the Boards of Inland Revenue. The expenses of this department are borne by the board out of the proceeds of licenses, and amounted in 1857 to L.11,828, 15s. 5d.

The receipts of the police-courts during 1857 were:

IV. Metropolitan Police-Courts, 1857—Receipts.

From the Consolidated Fund (under 2 & 3 Vict., c. 71, § 11) .................................................. L.29,625 9 1 Out of vote of Parliament, 1857-8 ........................................... L.30,968 2 10 Fees, penalties, and forfeitures at the various courts .................. 11,291 2 9 Contributions to the superannuation fund ................................. 1,112 3 8

Total receipts ........................................................................ L.70,736 17 11

The whole amount received for fees and penalties is paid over to the Exchequer, and the whole expense (L.55,403) defrayed by the Treasury; but of course about one-fifth of the cost of the police-courts is virtually self-defrayed from the former source.

The total cost of the police force within the city of London was in 1857, L.43,945, 6s. 9d., defrayed from corporation funds. The aggregate number of police of all ranks employed was 552.

The number of apprehensions by the metropolitan police, and their results before the magistrates, will be seen by the following comparative table, which comprises (1.) the three charges, years ending 1856, and (2.) the three years ending 1856-6:

VI. Metropolitan Police.—Apprehensions and Results 1834-36, and 1854-6.

| Years | No. of Persons taken into Custody | No. Discharged by Magistrates | No. Delivered to Jail | No. Committed | |-------|----------------------------------|-------------------------------|----------------------|--------------| | 1834 | 64,269 | 34,499 | 26,302 | 3,468 | | 1835 | 63,474 | 32,544 | 27,817 | 3,113 | | 1836 | 63,384 | 29,776 | 30,453 | 3,176 | | Total of the 3 years, 1834-36 | 191,127 | 96,819 | 84,672 | 9,756 | | Yearly average of those years | 63,769 | 32,273 | 28,190 | 3,252 |

The proportion borne by the discharges to the apprehensions (1854-66) is, it will be perceived, no less than 51 per cent. in the metropolitan district. This appears to be a much higher percentage than obtains in other districts. In Liverpool, for example (as will be shown presently), it was, on an average of the same three years, 42-8 per cent.; in Manchester, 35-3; in Dublin, 31-4 per cent.

The subjoined table shows the degree of instruction, as far as could be ascertained by the police functionaries, of the whole number of persons taken into custody within the metropolitan district in the year 1856-6:

VII. Metropolitan Police.—State of Instruction of Persons taken into Custody, 1856.

| Instruction Level | Number of Persons | |-------------------|------------------| | Could neither read nor write | 15,482 | | Could read only, or read and write imperfectly | 33,540 | | Could read and write well | 3,837 | | Possessed of superior instruction | 381 |

Total number of persons apprehended ........................................... 73,240

Any elaborate classification of the cases included in the preceding tables would require space not here available; but limiting the statement to the summary convictions and offences within the committals of 1854-56, the nature of the offences may be thus briefly indicated:

VIII. Metropolitan Police.—Class of Offences for which Prisoners were Committed for Trial, 1854-6.

| Nature of Offences | 1854 | 1855 | 1856 | Total of Three Years | |-------------------|------|------|------|---------------------| | 1. Offences against the person | 266 | 241 | 224 | 731 | | 2. Offences against property, with violence | 250 | 207 | 376 | 833 | | 3. Without violence | 4,232 | 3,132 | 2,300 | 9,664 | | 4. Malicious offences against property | 12 | 1 | 11 | 24 | | 5. Forgery, and offences against currency | 377 | 251 | 289 | 917 | | 6. Offences not included in the above classes | 22 | 27 | 38 | 87 | | Total number of Commitments | 5,159 | 3,859 | 3,238 | 12,256 |

IX. Metropolitan Police.—Class of Offences for which Persons taken into Custody were Summary Convicted, or Held to Bail, 1854-6.

| Nature of Offences | 1854 | 1855 | 1856 | Total of Three Years | |-------------------|------|------|------|---------------------| | 1. Offences against the person | 6,440 | 6,114 | 6,314 | 18,868 | | 2. Offences against property, without violence | 6,334 | 6,299 | 8,659 | 21,292 | | 3. Malicious offences against property | 1,435 | 1,504 | 1,742 | 4,681 | | 4. Drunkenness | 1,726 | 1,642 | 1,608 | 4,976 | | 5. Offences against Police Act, severe | 534 | 447 | 337 | 1,318 | | 6. Betting-House Act | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | | 7. Common Lodging-Houses Act | 10 | 7 | | 17 | | 8. Hackney Carriage Act | 391 | 314 | 434 | 1,139 | | 9. Highway and Turnpikes Act | 38 | 23 | 24 | 85 | | 10. Juvenile Offenders' Act | 246 | 270 | 390 | 906 | | 11. Militia Act | 36 | 22 | 15 | 73 | | 12. Railway Acts | 20 | 20 | 33 | 73 | | 13. Vagrants and suspicious characters | 2,584 | 2,189 | 2,592 | 7,365 | | 14. Offences not included in the above classes | 11,245 | 10,945 | 11,302 | 33,492 | | Total number of Summary Convictions, &c. | 30,941 | 29,796 | 33,451 | 94,188 |

We have abridged these returns from the voluminous and valuable tables published in Miscellaneous Statistics of the United Kingdom, presented to both Houses of Parliament (1857) pp. 84-88. The number of fires reported by the metropolitan police during the same three years was 1468, and the number extinguished by the force before the arrival of the engines was 115; the number of public-houses and beer-shops summoned was 3441, of which 2666 were convicted, and 775 dismissed; the number of stage and hackney carriages, carts, and waggons summoned was 9362, of which 8184 were convicted, and 1178 dismissed.

Under the Municipal Corporations Act (5 and 6 Will. IV., c. 76), or under local acts, 171 cities, boroughs, and towns in England and Wales maintain a police force, which, on the 29th September 1857, amounted in the aggregate to 5251 officers and constables of all ranks. The city or borough police is a charge upon the borough funds, aided in a majority of instances, by a police rate. One-fourth, however, of the cost of pay and clothing is repaid from the public revenues to all cities and boroughs having a population exceeding 5000, and to all boroughs of lesser population, provided the police force be amalgamated with that of the county; but such repayment is in all cases subject to the certificate by the home secretary, upon annual report from her Majesty's inspector, that the force maintained is efficient as respects both its numbers and its discipline.

The total cost of the borough police throughout England and Wales in 1857 was £1,337,833, 2s. 11½d., of which sum £60,970, 8s. 4½d. was borne by the Treasury. The largest local force—both numerically and in respect to population—is that of Liverpool, which is composed of 956 officers and men of all ranks, and is in the ratio of one policeman in every 393 of the population. Then follows Bristol, with 301 police, or one in 459 of the population. Manchester comes next, with a force of 554 persons, or one to 547 of the population. At the opposite extremity of the scale come some of the smaller manufacturing towns of Lancashire and Northern Cheshire, the Cornish boroughs and some quiet easy-going towns in various parts of the country; as, for example, Saint Albans in Hertfordshire, which has 7 policemen to a population of 49,000; and Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which (if the judicial statistics presented to Parliament in 1858 are accurate) has but one such functionary in 8915 of population. But this great variety of condition in respect of police will be best appreciated if we tabulate a few examples out of the official statistics of the 171 towns and boroughs which are before us:

| Name of Borough or Town | Number of Police Force | Total Cost | Contribution from the Treasury | |-------------------------|------------------------|------------|-------------------------------| | Liverpool | 956 | 59,920 | 13,709 | | Bristol | 301 | 14,604 | 3,246 | | Manchester | 554 | 37,923 | 7,767 | | Birmingham | 332 | 21,191 | 4,735 | | Cambridge | 34 | 884 | 424 | | Ipswich | 34 | 961 | 447 | | Winchester | 13 | 1,054 | 187 | | Canterbury | 14 | 1,272 | | | Oadham (Lancash.) | 30 | 2,000 | | | Oxford | 10 | 2,784 | | | Stockport | 15 | 2,588 | | | Helston (Cornwall) | 1 | 4,000 | | | Bodmin | 1 | 4,297 | | | St Albant | 7 | 7,000 | | | Beverley | 1 | 8,915 | |

The blanks in the last column of this table indicate that in the case of those boroughs respectively the state of the police force was unsatisfactory to the inspector, and that the certificate of the secretary of state was in consequence withheld. There can be no doubt that this plan of government inspection and certificate is the hinge on which the efficiency of the borough police mainly turns. The certificate is often granted conditionally, when the deficiencies pointed out by the inspector, whose reports are communicated to the respective local authorities, appear to be in the way of remedy. Thus, in December 1857, Sir George Grey, in transmitting Colonel Woodford's report to the watch committee of Salford, states that he had granted the certificate "in the confident expectation that the observations of the inspector as to some defects in the condition and discipline of the borough police will receive due attention;" on the like occasion, to the watch committee of Newcastle, "trusts that the recommendation of the inspector of a moderate augmentation of the force will receive due attention;" while that of Halifax is informed that the secretary of state "will not feel himself justified in certifying . . . that your police has been maintained in a state of efficiency in point of numbers and discipline for a longer period than from 21st September last" (i.e., twelve weeks of the year); adding, however, that "if your police force is maintained (as he has no reason to doubt), at its present state throughout the ensuing year, he will have great satisfaction in granting the certificate to which it will be fully entitled."

Some similar provision for a systematic and efficient necessity government inspection is greatly needed in respect of our large towns is designated "cottage property," have of late years associated themselves for the express purpose of resisting sanitary improvement. In some of the towns which stand most in need of such improvement this class of persons has succeeded in attaining a prominent influence in the town councils. In the municipal elections of November 1858, this influence has been repeatedly observed. By such means, even in large towns like Manchester, sanitary associations, acting upon principles which have had the direct sanction of the legislature, after searching inquiry, find themselves opposed by the local influence of the corporations and functionaries, whose duty it is to further the very measures they impede. Nor is it without precedent to find men placed on committees which have to deal with specific questions of this sort, who are known to have a pecuniary interest in obstructing the due action of those committees, and who are so placed for that express reason. In large and wealthy towns public opinion will, in the long run, be too strong for petty and tortuous interests. In small and poor towns, local opinion stands in much need of being reinforced from without.

Take, for example, the question of "cellar dwellings," cellar the inhabiting of which is absolutely incompatible with vigorous health, and the bare existence of which, in English towns in 1858, is a proof of the gross neglect in past years of the rudiments of sanitary police. In Manchester some real improvement in this respect has been effected, although not without great difficulty. But how does the case stand in the neighbouring town of Bolton?

In August 1855 it was ascertained that about 6000 persons, or one-twelfth of the entire population of Bolton, dwelt in cellars, the number of which was about 1600. It follows, therefore, that each cellar was tenanted on the average by nearly four human beings. This was the fact in 1855, twenty-three years after the fearful lesson of 1832, repeatedly enforced by other like warnings of later date. The attention of the town council was pressingly... claimed to a state of things so dangerous and so disgraceful. It set to work at length, but in a very lethargic fashion. In politer phrase, its members "showed their anxiety to proceed gradually and with caution." In the year 1856 they closed 128 of these places; in 1857, forty-nine; and in 1858, thirteen. At the end of 1858, a "Cottage Owners' Association" interposed in the municipal elections, with the view of securing the return of councillors for whom even this rate of "interference with property" was too rapid. The reader may calculate with little difficulty the period of time requisite for the removal, if left entirely in such hands, of an evil which the law of the country has emphatically condemned, and which a medical member of the town council in question (to whom the honour of effecting the little that has been effected is mainly due), stated, on the professional experience of a long practice, to "involve an immense loss of human life."

The large improvements which have been effected in the borough police of England, under the legislation of the last quarter of a century, are nowhere more striking than in the manufacturing towns of the north, much as yet remains to be done in a like direction in many of them. The rapidity of growth of the manufacturing system; the utter unscrupulousness as to means with which the aggregation of working-people was, in its early stages, urged on; and the then almost entire neglect of moral and educational agencies by a large proportion of those who were suddenly raised from obscurity to influence, had brought about in these towns a state of society which was especially and eminently perilous. Class animosities had become chronic. The masses of the working population saw the functions of the magistracy and the machinery of the law habitually employed to keep down the weak, and to aggrandize the strong. Disaffection and turbulence could not fail to spread.

The appointment of stipendiary magistrates, and of factory inspectors, in combination with improved means of education, and with a well-ordered police, subject to strict rule and constant publicity, have in this respect completely changed the face of things. If a prosperous Lancashire manufacturer is presented at court, it does not now occur to royalty to inquire, as William IV. did on a like occasion, "Are you quiet in Manchester now?" Royalty has seen with its own eyes that the crowded population of our manufacturing towns can throng their streets on a great occasion with orderly but manly demeanour, uttering no cries but those of loyal attachment.

The police force of Manchester was organized in 1839. For the first four years the number of apprehensions was continually and largely on the increase; and the proportion of persons discharged on appearing before the magistrates was enormous. In 1841, for example, with a population of 235,000, the number of persons taken into custody was 13,345; of whom 10,208 were discharged by the magistrates, 2138 were summarily convicted, and 999 were committed for trial. Of the latter, 824 were convicted and sentenced. The discharged, therefore, were no less than 76·49 per cent. of the number taken into custody, exclusive of 1·31 per cent. acquitted on trial. Such a result could only occur under considerable abuse of the large powers conferred by the Borough Police Act; an abuse, however, which may be partly excused by the novelty of the organization. By zealous attention on the part of the late exemplary chief constable, Captain Willis (now one of the government inspectors of police), a remarkable change has been brought about. The character of the force itself was raised. A certain degree of elementary education was gradually exacted. Great pains were taken to habituate the constables to cautious and discriminating conduct, especially in dealing with charges of a trivial nature, and with such as grew out of disputes and street broils. Intelligent and superior constables were kept constantly on duty at the stations, and were held responsible for strict inquiry into the nature of the charges, before the persons charged were placed in confinement. The importance of a conciliatory bearing towards the inhabitants at large, within the limits of duty, was impressed upon every member of the force. Thus, in 1851, with a population of 303,382 the number of apprehensions was reduced to 4890 (against 13,345 in 1841), and the proportion of cases discharged by the magistrates to 37·50 per cent. (against 76·49 per cent. in 1841). The precise figures of 1851 run thus:—Apprehended, 4890; discharged, 1834; summarily convicted, 2176; committed for trial, 880; convicted and sentenced 722. There can be no better proof of the increased discretion and judgment evinced both by the police constables in taking, and by the sergeants and inspectors in receiving, the persons charged with offences.

The following tables show (1.) the population, police force, apprehensions, and disposal of persons apprehended, within the city of Manchester, for each of the seven years 1851-57 inclusive; and (2.) the degree of instruction of the persons so apprehended during the same period:

### XI. Manchester Police.—Persons Apprehended, and their Disposal, 1851-7.

| Year | Population | No. of Police | Persons Apprehended | Discharged | Summarily Convicted | Committed for Trial | Convicted and Sentenced | |------|------------|---------------|---------------------|------------|--------------------|-------------------|------------------------| | 1851 | 303,382 | 466 | 4890 | 1834 | 2176 | 880 | 722 | | 1852 | 316,487 | 477 | 5165 | 1783 | 2494 | 880 | 730 | | 1853 | 322,873 | 481 | 5362 | 1941 | 2627 | 954 | 623 | | 1854 | 328,897 | 529 | 5955 | 2416 | 2584 | 955 | 805 | | 1855 | 330,690 | 532 | 6034 | 2041 | 3077 | 936 | 748 | | 1856 | 337,915 | 546 | 4470 | 1463 | 2372 | 635 | 565 | | 1856-7 | 345,986 | 554 | 7797 | 2861 | 4144 | 792 | 602 |

### XII. Manchester Police.—Degree of Instruction in Persons Apprehended, 1851-7.

| Years | Total Number Apprehended | Good Manners and Orderly Conduct | Good Manners and Orderly Conduct | Of Superior Instruction | Of Instruction | Percentage | |-------|--------------------------|---------------------------------|---------------------------------|------------------------|----------------|------------| | 1851 | 4890 | 1866 | 2851 | 172 | 1 | 38·2 | | 1852 | 5166 | 1882 | 3067 | 213 | 4 | 36·43 | | 1853 | 5362 | 1967 | 3217 | 177 | 1 | 36·69 | | 1854 | 5529 | 2055 | 3574 | 144 | 1 | 37·54 | | 1855 | 6054 | 2151 | 3761 | 162 | 1 | 39·16 | | 1856 | 4470 | 1743 | 2933 | 163 | 1 | 38·99 | | 1856-7 | 7797 | 3229 | 4413 | 154 | 1 | 41·41 |

The following table shows the number of public-houses Offences of and of beer-houses within the city of Manchester, and the publicans' number of offences reported against them respectively by the police, in each of the years 1854, 1855, 1856, and 1857:

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1 Proceedings of the Town Council of Bolton, Nov. 25, as reported in the Manchester Guardian, Nov. 26, 1858. 2 Criminal and Miscellaneous Statistical Returns of the Manchester Police, 1843 to 1857, parsim. 3 The return for 1856 is for nine months only (ending 29th Sept.) in consequence of that provision in the Constabulary Act which directs the preparation of the returns at the end of September in each year. Each year shows a relative decrease of both classes of houses, as compared with the population of the city. In 1857 the proportion of licensed victuallers to the population was as 1 to 713, against 1 to 691 in 1856; and that of beer retailers as 1 to 219, against 1 to 217 in 1856.

The Liverpool returns of 1858 (which are before us, but only in an incomplete form) show a decrease of 2386 in the number of apprehensions; and also a marked decrease in juvenile crime, ascribable to the effect of the reformatories hereafter noticed.

We now advert to the condition, as respects police, of the English counties. This branch of the subject was fully investigated by the commissioners appointed in 1836 "to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient constabulary force in the counties of England and Wales." The commissioners were Mr C. Shaw Lefevre (afterwards Speaker), the late Sir Charles Rowan, and Mr Edwin Chadwick. They reported in 1839. After an elaborate exposition of the nature, ramifications, and extent of crime with which their inquiry had acquainted them, the commissioners report that "the primary functions of 'watch and ward' have entirely fallen into desuetude, which is ascribable to the dereliction of the constitutional principle of local responsibility to the supreme executive for the prevention of crime. As a consequence of this state of things, we find private watchmen extensively employed by individuals and by associations for self-protection. The men hold themselves engaged for the service of those who directly appoint and pay them, and question as little as they can the propriety or legality of any services required of them." Elsewhere they state that "There are upwards of 500 voluntary associations for promoting the apprehension and prosecution of felons, besides very numerous voluntary associations in various parts of the country for the repression of vagrancy and mendicity. Amongst the rules of some of these associations for self-protection, we find rules for mutual assurance by the payment of a part of the loss sustained by depredation. In several of the farmers' associations are rules binding the members, in the case of horse-stealing, to take horse and join in pursuit of thieves, upon an alarm of a theft having been committed;" and they add: "Hereafter such associations and such rules may be cited to prove that the community in which they arose was relapsing into a state of barbarism."

This aspect of the question was forcibly illustrated in the evidence of the late Rev. Thomas Spencer, of Hinton, near Bath:—"In our part," he said, "if a person's property is safe, it is owing to the good conduct of his neighbours, or to accident, or to the means he may himself use; but it is not owing to any legal protection that he has. I feel that we are, as it were, without the pale of the law; that every man that would be safe must be his own watchman, his own constable, and his own magistrate; that unless he himself takes all the precautions to make his house and property secure, there is no other remedy; that unless he himself watch his property, and take up the offender,—shall take him to the constable,—shall order the constable to go with him to the next town, and be at the expense of the constable doing that,—and shall promise the constable to be responsible for putting the man into custody until he can be brought before a magistrate; shall appear before the magistrate, and reason with him, and probably give him an indemnity, if the case be one of doubt; in fact do all the work, the man will escape; whatever be his crime."

The commissioners also cited some remarkable circumstances which occurred during the agricultural riots of 1830 and 1831, as showing the utter want of any adequate provision for cases of emergency. For example, in Berkshire, on the 19th of November, that a mob was coming from Brompton, and special constables were about to be sworn in, the town-clerk and the clerk to the magistrates for the division were quarrelling about jurisdiction; that is, whether the constables should be sworn in for the county, or for the town of Newbury. The Newbury people stuck up for the rights of the town, and would only be sworn before the town magistrates. This fermented a division. Luckily, the mob had been beaten and dispersed." And in answer to the question, "Were any organized parties sent from the town?" the answer was, "Parties were sent out, but there was no organization, no system. Those who chose to go, went. In one instance, a party went out, and after they had gone some way out of the town, some of them asked, 'Where are we going to?' It turned out that no one knew, and that each believed he was acting under the guidance of some of the others."

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1 Here also the return for 1856 is for some months only (ending 30th Sept. In consequence of that provision in the Constabulary Act which directs the preparation of the returns at the end of September in each year). 2 Report of Constabulary Force Commissioners, pp. 97-99. 3 Ibid., pp. 106, 107. Such evidence is but a fair specimen of the general character of the testimony which was gathered, as respects both the repression of ordinary crime and the control of riot. Apart from the ulterior peril of habits of lawlessness, with their possible but indefinite consequences, it must be apparent that such a state of things could not but be costly.

In dealing with felonies, every inefficient step at the outset entailed expenses which increased at every subsequent stage, and by leading to frequent impunity, sowed the seed of new crimes; whilst, in dealing with popular commotions, every hour that passed without measures of repression, at once temperate and firm, gave the opportunity for devastations not to be covered by sums that would suffice to maintain an efficient constabulary for many years; to say nothing of the social results, more serious still, which must ever attend on broils in which master is armed against servant, and neighbour against neighbour.

At the date of this inquiry a paid and trained constabulary force had been tried experimentally, and upon a small scale, in many parts of the country. A paid watch, without training, had repeatedly failed. In places where the associations for prevention of robberies were most successful the success was partial, and very frequently had the effect of making the state of things just beyond their limits worse than it had ever been before. Nor was even this degree of efficiency maintained until the establishment of the metropolitan office enabled rural districts, willing to take advantage of the Lighting and Watching Act (3 and 4 Will. IV., c. 90), to obtain the services of practised constables. The change of circumstances which then resulted in many parts of England was strikingly narrated in evidence before the commissioners; as, for example, in the case of Barnet in Hertfordshire, in that of Beckenham in Kent, in that of thirty of the thirty-two parishes which form the Blofield union in Norfolk, and in that of Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire.

But the most extensive trial of a paid constabulary force in rural districts was that which had been made in Cheshire, under the provisions of an act of the 10th George IV., c. 97 ("An Act to enable the Magistrates of the County Palatine of Chester to appoint Special High Constables for the several Hundreds or Divisions, and Assistant Petty Constables for the several Townships of that County"). The whole force established under the act consisted of only three high constables and twenty-four petty constables, and the total expense was £1,274, exclusive of certain fees and perquisites. Small as the force was, petitions were got up in various townships complaining of its cost and "uselessness," and in some townships reductions were made.

At this period a state of things existed in Cheshire, and especially in the hilly districts near the county town, the unadorned account of which reads more like a picture of some of the worst parts of Ireland in their worst days, than of an English county towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Nightly gangs, composed of known persons, yet unbroken for years; individual robbers whom five athletic constables were unable to arrest; habitual plunder, so systematized as to be looked upon by the sufferers as a sort of dispensation of Providence, which it was idle to think of resisting—such are the features which were conclusively brought out in evidence. Under circumstances like these, it is not surprising that almost all that was achieved by the Local Constabulary Act lay in preventing the districts in which crime was already least formidable from becoming worse; whilst those—the hundreds of Bucklow and Broxton, for example—in which it had never been fairly grappled with, were left at the mercy of events; each farmer hoping that if he did not make himself especially obnoxious to his predatory neighbours, his share in the common loss would be lighter than that of somebody else.

It is right to remember that the criminal facilities of some parts of Cheshire were increased by special and temporary incidents; such as those arising from the vexatious character of the old salt duties, from the want of an efficient coast-guard for the prevention of "wrecking," from the long lines of canal, and the like. Nor is it uninteresting to notice that an inquiry which was made into the incubation of certain petitions, not unsuccessful, against an effective increase of the constabulary, elicited the facts, that they had been hawked about by persons having a pecuniary interest in the retention of the old methods, signed by convicted offenders, and actively supported by the keepers of beerhouses. On the whole, two things appeared to be clear: the one that the Cheshire Constabulary Act had failed of its proper effect; the other, that the failure tended to strengthen, not to weaken, the arguments for a county police, composed of trained men, and so controlled as to combine the advantages of uniformity of system with those of local supervision and local responsibility.

The recommendations in which the commissioners of 1839 summed up the results of their inquiry are too elaborate for insertion here, even in epitome. It must suffice to describe the new laws, on the ultimate passing of which the report, and the discussions thence arising, had naturally great influence. Public opinion has not endorsed, nor is it likely to endorse, all those recommendations; but that the zeal and ability of the commissioners have laid the country under great obligation, is an obvious fact.

One of the most thoughtful and most incisive of recent writers has told us that whereas our ancestors made laws which have lived for centuries, and promise to live for centuries to come, men in these days do not expect "that any law enacted during the last session will escape without either revision or repeal the next,—beyond which it would be invidious to ask how many members of our legislature have projected their minds." If the reproof was amply justified twenty years ago, what is to be said now? But if piecemeal legislation be excusable at all, it is so in relation to matters of police, in which the new and the old are at once so various and so intimately linked together, that cautious handling might easily destroy whilst seeking only to amend. Here the legislator has to deal with measures in the gross, the whole issue and effect of which, in their particular application, depend on the wide-spread concurrence and hearty fellow-working of all classes of the community. The inventor who should contrive for daily necessities machinery so intricate as to require the constant interposition of the maker to keep it in order, would fail of his object, however admirable the mathematical or mechanical skill embodied in his invention. Frequent amendments in the familiar mechanism would be less embarrassing to the workers. The lawgiver may in like manner overshoot his mark by changes too elaborate and too sudden. In the series of enactments which have at length gradually brought us to a general constabulary system, we have at all events no fault of this kind to complain of.

The first step was the passing of the Rural Police Act (2 and 3 Vict., c. 93, amended by the 3 and 4 Vict., c. 88), which empowered the magistrates of any county in England 1839–40, and Wales to appoint chief and petty constables for such counties, in such numbers and under such apportionment to the several districts as they might deem advisable; permitted the magistrates of several adjoining counties to unite in such appointments if they thought fit; and also gave discretional powers for the amalgamation of the police of... boroughs with that of the counties in which they were situated or to which they were adjacent.

These acts, it will be seen, were simply permissive. Essex was one of the first counties to adopt them. Its constabulary was organized in February 1840, and it had the good fortune to obtain a most able and energetic chief constable in the person of Captain J. B. M'Hardy (of the Royal Navy), who had been for many years an inspecting commander of the coast-guard. At this time the new act was in bad odour in many parts of England, and especially, as it would seem, in Kent, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, and Cambridgeshire. The remarkable success which attended Captain M'Hardy's exertions in Essex, at the head of a force composed of 200 men (14 superintendents, 20 inspectors, and 166 constables in three classes), obliged the neighbouring counties, Kent excepted, to follow the example. All these eastern and south-eastern counties were overrun with vagrants, who in large numbers had for years levied a considerable tax on small farmers and cottagers, over and above the amount of casual relief administered to them under the poor-law. In Essex the plan of making the police, under discreet regulations and careful supervision, assistant relieving-officers "for casuals," was tried with excellent effect. This measure checked vagrancy when all other expedients had failed. Hampshire soon followed; and here, as in Essex and the contiguous counties, both crime and vagrancy were remarkably diminished.

During the fourteen years 1840-1853, eighteen English and four Welsh counties adopted the constabulary for the whole of each county; and seven other English counties for parts only. Fourteen English and eight Welsh counties still continued the system of parochial constables.

With a view, however, to some increased efficiency in the counties last named, in which the adoption of the Police Act was successfully opposed, the act of the 5th and 6th Vict. c. 109 (Superintending Constables Act), enabled the magistrates of any county to appoint a head constable to each petty sessional division of a county, or to some selected divisions, whose duty it should be to exercise a general supervision over the parochial constables within his district. Much and somewhat conflicting evidence as to the operation of this act was taken by the select committee on police of 1853. Mr Oakley, governor of the county gaol of Somerset, for example, said:—"It increases the evils by inducing the parish constables to set themselves in opposition to the superintending constable. . . . The superintending constables being altogether uncontrolled, and without supervision, themselves fall into habits which render them unfit for the proper performance of their duties." On the other hand, Lieut.-Col. Clifford, a magistrate of Herefordshire, and chairman of the court of quarter sessions, stated his belief that "the prevention of crime is entirely met by the comparatively small number of superintending constables we now have there;" and that the "superintending constables are as efficient as possible."

On this part of the question the committee reported its conclusions as follows:—"The superintending constables have proved useful as police-officers to the extent of their individual exertions and services;" but such an appointment, it adds, "provides no remedy for the inefficiency of parochial constables; and it is the opinion of your committee that any system of police mainly dependent on the aid of parochial constables must prove ineffectual for the protection of property, more especially that of the poorer classes; for the prompt detection and pursuit of offenders, the maintenance of order, and other duties of a police force, for which their necessary avocations and local connections entirely disqualify them."

On the more general question of the working of the rural police acts, the committee resolved:—1. That the ... Rural Police Act (from the permissive character of its enactments), has failed to provide such a general and uniform constabulary force as, in the opinion of your committee, is essentially required for the prevention of crime and security of property. 2. That in the districts in which the Rural Police Act has been adopted, its efficiency for the prevention of crime, by rendering the detection and apprehension of offenders more prompt and certain, has been proved to the satisfaction of your committee; that it has tended to the maintenance of order, and to the improved habits of the population; that vagrancy has greatly decreased, and, more especially in combination with the casual relief order of the Poor Law Board, has been in some places almost entirely suppressed; and the effectual protection afforded to property peculiarly exposed to depredation has, in the opinion of owners and holders of land, rendered its occupation more desirable. The adoption of the rural police, therefore, in the opinion of your committee, has proved highly advantageous to those districts, whether tested by moral, social, or economical considerations." The committee further recommend that provision should be made for the equitable adjustment of the police rate between the various divisions of a county, in cases wherein great differences existed as respects the density and employments of the population; that the smaller boroughs should, for police purposes, be consolidated with districts or counties; that the police of the larger boroughs should be brought under like management with that of the adjoining district or county; and that the wisdom of some contribution by government "towards defraying the cost of an improved and extended system of police, without essentially interfering with the local management of that force, deserved the consideration of the House;" and the report concluded with the emphatic recommendation, "That legislative measures should be introduced without delay by Her Majesty's government rendering the adoption of an efficient police force on a uniform principle imperative throughout Great Britain."

In conformity with this recommendation, the act of the County and Borough Police Act, 19th and 20th Vict. c. 69, became law three years after wards ("An Act to render more effectual the Police in Counties and Boroughs," July 21, 1856). Its principal provisions are these:—1. If a constabulary be not already established for the whole of a county, the justices in general or quarter sessions, are to cause the same to be established; if already established in part of a county, then it is to be extended to the residue. 2. Constabulary establishments existing in particular divisions of a county are to be consolidated into a single county police force. 3. But Her Majesty may, by order in council, require separate police districts to be established in counties. 4. Her Majesty in council, on representations from borough authorities, may arrange the terms of consolidation of such boroughs with counties, for police purposes, and may from time to time vary such terms. 5. County constables are to have the like powers in boroughs as are possessed by borough constables in the counties. 6. No constable shall receive any fees for his own use, or shall vote at municipal or parliamentary elections. 7. Powers are given to grant pensions and superannuations. 8. An annual statement as to crime in counties and boroughs is to be made to the secretary of state. 9. Her Majesty is empowered to appoint three inspectors of county and borough police, whose reports shall be laid before Parliament. 10. On due certificate of efficiency, one-fourth of the charge of police pay and clothing in any county or borough is to be paid by the Treasury; but no such payment is to be made to boroughs of less population. The remaining provisions tend chiefly to the maintenance of existing powers until the new act shall have been brought into full operation. Finally, nothing in the act is to apply to any part of the metropolitan police district, or to the city of London.

From this statute, the establishment of a uniform system of police is to be dated. Until the end of 1856 no provision had been made in many extensive districts of the country for the protection of life and property, other than that of the old parochial system, which left those duties to the untrained, unpaid, and frequently unwilling officer, and often failed to equip him with the most essential appliances for the pursuit, apprehension, and safe custody of criminals.

On the 29th September 1857 the county constabulary was returned to the secretary of state as comprising 7301 officers and constables; and its cost, for the twelve months then ended, as £441,569, 7s. 3d. (a sum which is about L600 less than the cost of the metropolitan police, and about L50,000 less than the cost of the metropolitan and city of London police together). It must be noted, however, that as in several counties the police was not fully organized until the year had considerably advanced, this amount will not cover the ultimate annual cost of an average year. The payments from the public revenue towards the cost of the county constabulary amounted during the same period to L71,112, 1s.

The following table exhibits the establishment, the relative strength as compared with the population, and the total cost of the constabulary in each of the English counties; independently, of course, of all city and borough police, separately maintained. The county returns are not yet complete enough to afford any adequate basis for the exhibition of direct results in respect of the prevention, detection, and punishment of crime:

### XIV. County Police of England.—Strength and Cost, year ending 29th September 1857.

| County or Division | No. of Police | No. relatively to Population | Cost | County or Division | No. of Police | No. relatively to Population | Cost | County or Division | No. of Police | No. relatively to Population | Cost | |--------------------|--------------|-----------------------------|------|--------------------|--------------|-----------------------------|------|--------------------|--------------|-----------------------------|------| | Bedford | 70 | 1 in | L1,600 | Huntingdon | 48 | 1 in | L1,250 | Stafford | 367 | 1 in | L1,372 | | Berks | 114 | 15,281 | L833 | Kent | 231 | 222 | L1,084 | Suffolk, E. | 114 | 1,669 | L6,517 | | Bucks | 102 | 5,279 | L500 | Lancaster | 657 | 1,440 | L5,000 | Suffolk, W. | 81 | 1,400 | L5,968 | | Cambridge | 70 | 4,625 | L750 | Leicester | 96 | 7,550 | L1,400 | Surrey | 133 | 8,500 | L8,773 | | Isle of Ely | 52 | 3,026 | L200 | Lincoln | 210 | 1,810 | L200 | Sussex | 72 | 1,444 | L6,677 | | Chester | 173 | 1,744 | L400 | Monmouth | 49 | 2,252 | L3,640 | Sussex, W. | 72 | 1,444 | L5,012 | | Cornwall | 173 | 1,490 | L120 | Norfolk | 221 | 1,485 | L5,231 | Warwick | 138 | 1,260 | L6,918 | | Cumberland | 73 | 2,317 | L586 | Northampton | 94 | 1,709 | L4,748 | Westmoreland | 20 | 2,395 | L1,047 | | Derby | 156 | 1,590 | L251 | Northumb. | 61 | 2,811 | L3,351 | Wilts | 201 | 1,206 | L4,091 | | Devon | 300 | 1,402 | L921 | Northumb. | 61 | 2,811 | L3,351 | Worcester | 146 | 1,550 | L10,169 | | Dorset | 121 | 1,209 | L734 | Nottingham | 108 | 1,861 | L6,711 | Worcester | 146 | 1,550 | L10,169 | | Durham | 199 | 1,380 | L455 | Oxford | 89 | 1,680 | L3,879 | York, E.R. | 70 | 1,503 | L4,190 | | Essex | 241 | 1,197 | L478 | Rutland | 21 | 1,419 | L269 | York, W.R. | 487 | 1,651 | L29,153 | | Gloucester | 254 | 1,267 | L255 | Salop | 58 | 3,320 | L4,018 | York, N.R. | 105 | 1,924 | L7,518 | | Hereford | 45 | 2,173 | L269 | Somerset | 277 | 1,240 | L6,294 | Total | 7301 | 441,569 | 7 3d |

The relative strength of the county police ranges, it will be seen, from one in 836 of the population in Surrey, to one in 11,491 of the population in Rutlandshire. Its relative cost also differs considerably, but within smaller limits, depending partly upon the density or sparseness of the population within a given area, the extent and nature of ordinary employment, and the character of the adjacent counties, boroughs, and other districts. Thus, for example, it will be seen that 73 constables in Cumberland cost nearly as much as 173 constables in Cheshire; 114 constables in Berkshire cost L15,281; whilst 121 in Dorsetshire cost L1,7343.

By way of summary, it may be stated that the total cost of the police force, of all kinds, within England and Wales, during the year ending 29th September 1857, was as follows:

| Description of Police | No. of Officers and Constables | Total Costs | Defrayed by the Treasury | |-----------------------|--------------------------------|-------------|--------------------------| | County | 7,301 | L441,569 | L71,112 | | Borough | 5,251 | 337,853 | 60,970 | | Metropolitan | 6,083 | 442,212 | 103,380 | | City of London | 552 | 43,945 | | | Totals | 19,187 | L1,266,579 | L1,235,452 |

The extent to which criminal adjudication begins and ends as a mere matter of police, in various counties, would, if it could be brought out fully and clearly, afford no mean indication (as one element among many) of their relative position, both politically and socially. The value of such a statement would, however, materially depend on its including an accurate definition of the offences summarily punished. In this particular our English statistics have been seriously deficient. Under the new constabulary law a considerable improvement may be hoped for in this, as in many other respects. Full statistics are the more important, on account of the large extension which many recent enactments have contributed to give to the summary jurisdiction of justices. By the statute of the 7th and 8th of Geo. IV., c. 29, for example, many petty thefts, as of house fixtures, of fish from inclosed waters, of growing fruit or vegetables, and the like, were subjected to fine and imprisonment, without the intervention of a jury; as were also, by another act of the same session (c. 30), other petty offences of the nature of wilful damage and trespass. By the 9th Geo. IV., c. 31, that extensive and somewhat indefinite class of offences, assaults, was brought within the same jurisdiction.

Every police act, whether general or local, has made large additions to this category. In like manner, the Juvenile Offenders Act of 1847, and the Criminal Justice Act of 1855, have severally transferred to summary jurisdiction numerous offences which were theretofore punishable as felonies, and liable (up to the year 1853) to the penalty of transportation.

The stronger may be the conviction of thoughtful men that these steps are right and salutary, the more important must it be to bring their consequences under full and en- lightened publicity. What, in this respect, the country owes to the newspapers, is incalculable, but insufficient. It needs to be supplemented by the deliberate and systematic summary of results from time to time.

It has been shown already that the police returns of 1857 are unavoidably incomplete. But so far as they go, they give better data than have been hitherto available. Here, however, they can be but briefly noticed in relation to a leading point or two. The total number of cases summarily adjudicated in England and Wales in 1857 was 369,235; the discharges were 135,474; the convictions were 233,759, and may be classified thus:

| Offences | Total No. of Convictions | |---------------------------|--------------------------| | Assaults | 44,860 | | Drunkenness | 44,894 | | Stealing, and attempts to steal | 29,577 | | Vagrancy | 18,623 | | Infractions of police acts| 25,913 | | Infractions of local acts | 21,112 | | Infractions of ways acts | 17,382 | | Infractions of beer acts | 11,320 | | Wilful damage and trespass| 13,583 | | Infractions of the laws of master and servant | 9,687 | | Nuisances | 4,828 | | Other offences | 2,080 |

Total of summary convictions: 233,759

The punishments in these 233,759 cases may be classified thus:

1. By various periods of imprisonment (from a week to nine months): 62,293 2. By committal to juvenile reformatories: 768 3. By fines: 143,463 4. By whipping: 826 5. By other punishments: 26,710

Total: 233,759

The second item in this table of punishments applies only to a small section of offenders, but it is at once the most novel and the most pregnant consequence of our recent criminal legislation. It dates from the passing, in August 1854, of "An Act for the better Care and Reformation of Youthful Offenders in Great Britain." After reciting that reformatory schools for the better training of juvenile offenders, have been and may be established by voluntary contributions in various parts of Great Britain, and that it is expedient that more extensive use should be made of such institutions, it proceeds to enact that the secretary of state shall, on application, direct the inspection and certification of the inspection of such schools. It is further enacted, that whenever any person under the age of sixteen years shall be convicted of any offence punishable by law, either upon indictment or by summary conviction, it shall be lawful for any court, judge, police magistrate, stipendiary magistrate, or any two or more justices of the peace, or in Scotland for any sheriff, or magistrate of a burgh, or police magistrate, before or by whom such offenders shall be so convicted, in addition to the sentence then passed as a punishment for the offence, to direct such offender to be sent, at the expiration of the sentence, to one of the aforementioned reformatory schools, to be named in such direction, the directors or managers of which shall be willing to receive such offender, and to be there detained for a period of not less than two years, nor more than five years; and such offender shall be liable to be so detained, provided the sentence passed as a punishment shall have been one of imprisonment for fourteen days at least; and it is further provided that the home secretary may at any time direct a discharge. Power is given to the Treasury to defray the costs of maintenance, part of which may be recovered from parents, &c.

Within ten days after the passing of this act, the reformatory for boys at Saltley, near Birmingham, was certified in accordance with its provisions. It had been originally established in the town of Birmingham, mainly by the liberality of Mr C. B. Adderley, M.P., with the assistance of Mr Joseph Sturge. At first, great difficulty occurred from the unsuitableness of the indulgent discipline of the voluntary school to the more stringent regulations necessary for inmates received under judicial sentence. But this difficulty has been overcome. At the beginning of 1858 the Saltley school had 39 inmates. The next reformatory certified under the act was that for girls, established and partly maintained by the zealous exertions of Miss Carpenter, at Red Lodge, near Bristol. Here the number of inmates in January 1858 was 57. An adjacent cottage is used as a means of separating the older and more advanced girls, and placing them under the ordinary conditions of free domestic service, previous to their final discharge from the school.

But the most remarkable of these reformatories is that established by Mr Sydney Turner (now the government inspector of reformatory schools), at Red Hill, near Reigate, and of late well known as the "Philanthropic Society's Farm School." Here, in January 1858, 275 boys were maintained, at a nett cost per head of L25, 4s. The number of boys discharged in the course of 1857 was 149, and the number admitted 129. Of the former, 66 emigrated, at a cost of L1,374, or L20, 16s. 4d. per head; and 8 were transferred to the Akbar frigate, to be trained for the sea. The institution comprises five schools, each containing on the average 50 boys, and the farm-house containing 20. The total number of English Protestant reformatories in operation at the end of March 1858 was 41, containing 1528 inmates (1287 boys and 241 girls), of whom 180 were free (131 boys and 49 girls), and the remainder were under detention.

Besides these, there are five Catholic reformatories: one in Gloucestershire, one in Leicestershire, two in Middlesex, and one in Yorkshire. The first of these was opened for girls at Arno's Court, near Bristol, under certificate of the 22nd April 1856; it contained in 1858, 104 inmates, and formed part of the convent of the "Sisters of the Order of the Good Shepherd." The nuns of that order have another reformatory at Beauchamp Lodge, Hammersmith, which has but very recently been brought into operation. The most extensive and remarkable of these Catholic reformatories is that of the Trappists, designated the "Agricultural Colony of St Bernard's Abbey, near Loughborough." This abbey justifies the old proverb as to the skill of monks in the choice of situations for their monasteries. It is in a beautiful part of Leicestershire, and has a striking aspect. The number of inmates at the close of 1857 was 288, at an average cost of L23, 10s. per head. "A cheerful, kindly spirit," says Mr Turner, "prevails throughout the establishment, and the whole seems to be in good order." But he is of opinion that, whilst the Fathers themselves justify Napoleon's description of their order ("the Trappists eat little and work much"), they are somewhat disposed to reverse the maxim for the boys, who eat much and work little. Finally, the "Christian Brothers" have two reformatories,—one at Brook Green, Hammersmith; the other at Hulme-on-Spalding in Yorkshire. At the close of the year the former contained 80 inmates, the latter 43. The total number of inmates in the Catholic reformatories in March 1858 was 552 (437 boys and 115 girls), all of whom were under detention.

In summing up, generally, the results of the new system, so far as, at this early stage of its operation, "results" can be at all spoken of, the inspector lays great stress on the importance of zealous exertion to place the liberated persons in favourable circumstances for their permanent industry and honesty. Often, he argues, and particularly as regards young offenders from large towns, permanent separation from their old haunts and companions is indispensable; and in such cases emigration offers the best method of provision. But it involves heavy charges, and however economically carried on, must considerably increase the expenditure of the reformatory which resorts to it. The reformatory acts make no provision for the costs of any method of ulterior disposal. Yet, as there is no special limit to the amounts that may be contributed from the rates for "care and maintenance," there would seem to be good economy in making those amounts liberal enough to enable the managers of schools to defray from that source some portion of the expense of that final measure, on the wisdom and foresight of which the profit of the previous steps must mainly hinge. Mr Turner also expresses his strong conviction of the value of that clause in the Reformatory Act which makes the parents of delinquent children liable to contribute towards their support in the schools in which they are detained, although some time must elapse before the principle of parental responsibility can be generally and effectually enforced. Already it has in many cases had the effect of inducing drunken and dissolute fathers to be more sober, and has made the family at home more comfortable, by the pressure exercised in exacting payment (rarely exceeding one-twelfth of the average wages) for the child or children in the reformatory.¹

The number of parents and step-parents against whom authority has been taken for proceeding, from 31st March 1857 to 31st March 1858, is 605; that of persons under contribution on the day last named, 292; and the total amount of contributions already received, L629, 12s. 8d.²

Hitherto little has been done to check the juvenile delinquency of Middlesex and Surrey, where the necessity is so great. But the Middlesex industrial schools will soon be in operation under the special act passed for that purpose; and the Surrey magistrates are about to place a considerable number of the juvenile criminals of that county at Redhill and other reformatories. Meanwhile, the commitments of offenders under sixteen years of age in England and Wales has already fallen from 13,981, which was the number in the year ending 29th September 1856, to 12,501, the number in the year ending 29th September 1857; being a decrease of 1480 commitments, and of at least 600 individual children.³ This is a fact of good augury. If the industrial training be made efficient, if parental responsibility be in proper cases enforced, and if the management of the reformatories be discreet and frugal, no expenditure for purposes of enlightened police was ever better invested by any community. Nor must it be forgotten that the honour of having laid the foundation of reformatories belongs to a small and unostentatious band of voluntary workers, who have sought no reward save that of witnessing effectual and permanent provision for the continuance of their good work, apart from the uncertainties of casual benevolence and temporary excitement.

III. THE POLICE OF SCOTLAND.

The early history of crime and punishment in Scotland has naturally much in common with that of its southern neighbour, but has also its special and characteristic features. In the long series of acts against vagrancy, for example, we find greater prominence given to the pursuit of gipsies, and also greater severity of treatment in respect of all the offending classes. Identification as "Egyptians" seems to have been often sufficient for capital punishment, apart from proof of specific offences. Thus, there is an act of the Privy Council (10th November 1636) which recites, in respect of certain gipsies who had been arrested and lodged in Haddington jail, that "whereas the keeping of them longer within the said Tolbooth is troublesome and burdensome to the town of Haddington, and fosters the said thieves in an opinion of impunity to the encouraging of the rest of that infamous byke of lawless limmers to continue in their thievish trade, therefore the Lords of Secret Council ordain the Sheriff of Haddington or his deputies to pronounce doom and sentence of death against so many of these thieves as are men, and against so many of the women as wants children; ordaining the men to be hangit and the women to be drowned; and that such of the women as has children be scourged through the burgh of Haddington, and be burnt in the cheek." Even of such less dangerous offenders "as make themselves fools and are bards, or other such like runners about," it had been enacted half a century earlier, that, being apprehended, they should be put "in the king's ward and irons, sae lang as they have any goods of their own to live on; and when they have not wherupon to live of their own, that their ears be cuttit off, and be banished the country; and if thereafter they be found again, that they be hangit." These statutes are followed up by their like at brief intervals for a century and a half. Yet, for a much longer period, the criminal law of Scotland stood in honourable contrast to that of England in two particulars at least. On the one hand, it established a public prosecutor,—in the higher courts the lord advocate, acting by the solicitor-general and four advocates-depute; in the lower courts, the procurator-fiscal. On the other hand (and in the germ, as early as 1587), it assigned counsel to prisoners, provided them with a copy of their indictment, and withheld from the lower courts the power of inflicting any punishment greater than imprisonment.

The first distinctive organization of a police force of some sort appears to date from the year 1725, when the act of 11 George I., c. 26, authorized the freeholders of every shire or district "to make an assessment for raising a sufficient fund to defray the charges of apprehending, sub- sisting, and prosecuting criminals." This power subsisted in the freeholders generally, until, by the 2d and 3d Will. IV., c. 65, it was transferred to a more limited body of freeholders designated commissioners of supply. In the following session (by 5d and 4th Will. IV., c. 46), the Scottish burghs were empowered to establish a system of police, the details of which were amended by the act of the 10th and 11th Vict., c. 37, and by that of the 13th and 14th Vict., c. 33, the latter being entitled "An Act to make more effectual Provision for Regulating the Police of Towns and Populous Places, . . . and for Paving, Draining, Cleansing, Lighting, and Improving the same." The general control of the burgh police maintained under these acts, like that of the police of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and some other large cities having local acts, was in the hands of a board of commissioners elected by the rate-payers.

In Scotland, as in England, the rural police of counties was very inadequately provided for by enactments which were merely permissive. The acts of 1839 (2d and 3d Scotland, Vict., c. 65) increased the assessing powers of the commissioners of supply of any county for purposes of police, but those powers were exerted in but few counties. Where the act was adopted, as in Mid-Lothian, Aberdeenshire, Fifeshire, Stirlingshire, and Dumfriesshire, a county meeting was convened for the election of a police committee.

¹ Turner, First Report of the Inspector of Reformatory Schools in Great Britain (1858), p. 204. ² Turner, Return relating to Reformatory Schools, 1st June 1858, p. 306. ³ Turner, Return relating to Reformatories, 1st June 1858, p. 306. which committee determined the assessment and the extent of the force, and appointed a superintendent or chief constable, to whom the control of the force was entrusted. But the police assessment, like its predecessor, the "rogue-money fund," was on landed property exclusively.

Finally, the act of 1857 (20th and 21st Vict., c. 72), entitled "An Act to render more effectual the Police in Counties and Burghs in Scotland," dealt with the question in the spirit of the English act of 1856. It made provision for an efficient force in every county of Scotland, and gave facilities for the consolidation of burgh police with county police. By this statute it is enacted: (1.) That the commissioners of supply of each county shall, at meetings duly convened, proceed to establish, from the 15th March 1858, a sufficient police force for such county; (2.) That the commissioners shall, from their own number, appoint certain persons, not more than fifteen nor fewer than three, who with the queen's lieutenant and the sheriff, shall form the police committee of the county. (3.) That the secretary of state shall from time to time make the needful rules for the government and pay of the force determined on by the commissioners of supply. (4.) That the police committee shall appoint a chief constable, who, with the approval of the committee, shall appoint or dismiss the other constables and superintendents to be appointed for such county; and shall choose a deputy from among them, and who shall have power to appoint additional constables at the charge of the persons applying for them, and for such periods, under due notice, as the applicants may desire. Power is also given to the sheriff to appoint additional constables to keep the peace on public works, at the cost of their respective promoters. (5.) Provisions are made respecting the powers and duties of constables, and for the mutual validity of warrants granted in any of the border counties of Scotland and England; constables are empowered in certain cases to accept bail or deposit; are prohibited from receiving fees to their own use; are disqualified to vote at elections, and are exempted from jury and militia services. (6.) The commissioners are empowered to levy a police assessment upon all lands and heritages, according to the valuation rolls in force under the act of the 17th and 18th Vict., c. 91, "for the Valuation of Lands and Heritages in Scotland;" and to levy it either on the proprietor or the tenant,—the latter being authorized to deduct the amount from his rent, and an exemption provided in respect of all houses and tenements which shall have been wholly unoccupied during the whole period to which the assessment refers. (7.) Provisions are made for the appointment and payment of collectors; for the keeping and accessibility (to ratepayers and other persons concerned) of accounts, and for their annual audit; for three commissioners to be a quorum, and for the preses, in case of equality of votes, to have the casting-vote in addition to his own vote. (8.) Powers are given to the commissioners to grant gratuities and superannuations; to provide station-houses and strong rooms; to form police districts, either at their own discretion, and with the approval of the secretary of state, or in obedience to an order in council. (9.) The commissioners of supply of any county, and the magistrates and town council of any burgh situated in or adjacent to such county are empowered to agree together for the consolidation of their respective police forces; or Her Majesty in council may, on representations from burghs, arrange such terms of consolidation; and the chief constable shall have the general control of the consolidated police. (10.) Annual returns of offences and proceedings are to be sent to the secretary of state; Her Majesty is empowered to appoint an inspector of police; and on certificate of the secretary of state that an efficient police has been established in any county or burgh, one-fourth of the charge for pay and clothing shall be paid by the Treasury,—no such payment being made in the case of any unconsolidated burgh having a population at the last census of less than 5000 persons. (11.) Provisions are made with respect to the recovery and application of penalties duly prosecuted for, within six months of the commission of the offence for which such penalties were incurred. (12.) If within six months after the date of this act (25th August 1857) the inspector shall have reported to the secretary of state that any burgh maintains, out of its common good or from any funds other than assessment, an efficient police force, shall be considered as maintaining a separate police force under a local act. (13.) This act shall not affect any police force maintained in respect of any railway, canal, or navigable river under private or local acts of Parliament. The rules and regulations made by the home secretary in pursuance of this act were laid before Parliament on the 22nd February 1858.

In 1852 the amount of police force in the city of Edinburgh was 312, who were under the immediate control of a superintendent (appointed and removable by the lord provost and sheriff of Mid-Lothian, with appeal to the lord advocate in case of difference), at a salary of L.350 a year, and under the general supervision of the police commission, composed of 32 members, annually elected by the different wards. The amount of police assessment, which includes the cleansing, lighting, and suppression of nuisance departments, as well as that of watching, was L.35,963, 19s. 5d. In addition to the direct management of the city police, the superintendent is public prosecutor in police cases; on him, therefore, devolves the duty of preparing the charges which are to be determined by the judges of police. The subjoined tables show the number of charges brought before those judges, and the result, in each of the years 1854, 1855, and 1856:

| Year | Total number of charges | Number dismissed | Number punished | Number admonished | Imprisoned | Whipped | Sent to Ragged School | To find securities | |------|-------------------------|------------------|-----------------|-------------------|-----------|--------|---------------------|------------------| | 1854 | 1046 | 253 | 582 | 211 | 400 | 114 | | 68 | | 1855 | 949 | 229 | 584 | 135 | 405 | 70 | 20 | 89 | | 1856 | 882 | 154 | 645 | 83 | 501 | 54 | 22 | 68 | | Total of 3 years | 2877 | 636 | 1811 | 430 | 1306 | 238 | 42 | 225 |

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1 Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Police (1853), Q. 2128-2227, 3875-4237; First Report, pp. 129-135; Second Report, 100-125; and the several acts of Parliament cited.

2 Sessional Papers of 1858, No. 92. II. Edinburgh Police.—Minor Offences and Contraventions of Police and Local Acts, 1854–6.

| Year | Total Number of Charges | Number Dismissed | Number Punished | Number Admonished | Imprisoned | Whipped | Fined | To Send Security | |------|------------------------|------------------|-----------------|-------------------|-----------|--------|-------|-----------------| | 1854 | 8,769 | 225 | 5,786 | 2,758 | 1,118 | 26 | 3,769 | 873 | | 1855 | 8,663 | 386 | 6,312 | 1,965 | 1,114 | 18 | 4,333 | 847 | | 1856 | 7,677 | 270 | 5,748 | 1,659 | 998 | 10 | 3,817 | 923 | | Total of 3 years | 25,109 | 881 | 17,846 | 6,382 | 3,230 | 54 | 11,919 | 2,643 |

III. Edinburgh Police.—Abstract of Charges of all kinds, 1854–6.

| Offences | Year | Total of Three Years | |----------|------|----------------------| | Theft, attempted theft, and fraud Minor offences and contraventions | 1854 | 1,045 | | | 1855 | 949 | | | 1856 | 882 | | | Total | 2,877 | | Graver offences remitted to higher courts | 1854 | 8769 | | | 1855 | 8063 | | | 1856 | 7677 | | | Total | 25,109 | | Total number of charges before judges of police | 1854 | 10,403 | | | 1855 | 10,179 | | | 1856 | 9,260 | | | Total | 29,842 |

The reformatory system was introduced into Scotland by the 17th and 18th Vict., c. 74 (Dunlop's Act), under the provisions of which fifteen reformatories have been certified; three others have been certified, both under it and under the 17th and 18th Vict., c. 86, and four under the provisions of the last-named statute only. The aggregate number of inmates on the 31st March 1858 was 813, of whom 537 were boys and 276 girls. The Glasgow industrial schools, certified on the 10th March 1855, contained, in March 1858, 129 children under detention (70 boys and 59 girls), and 70 other children attending school (42 boys and 28 girls). These schools are reported by the inspector as "conducted with great earnestness and ability," but exception is taken to the admixture of day scholars with the convicted children. Mr Turner also adds, "It is to be regretted that the provisions for compelling parents to contribute have remained hitherto a dead letter in Scotland; many of the inmates of the houses of refuge are the children of parents in the receipt of considerable wages. The schools certified under Mr Dunlop's act are in fact industrial feeding-schools of a superior description. Scarcely any of the children in them are committed under the act; the clause enabling the parochial boards to withdraw such children on giving security for their better protection having almost neutralized the direct operation of the statute altogether. But the indirect operation of the law appears to be considerable and very advantageous, large numbers of children coming voluntarily, or being sent by their parents—from the knowledge that if found idling and begging in the streets, they can and will be sentenced to the school, and compelled to attend it. I think the value of these certified industrial schools in Scotland can scarcely be exaggerated."

It would appear that the interval, short as it is, between the date of this report and that of the latest return of inmates in reformatories (31st March 1858) has brought with it considerable change in the relative numbers of detained and free scholars. The number of the former, detained under Dunlop's Act, is stated to be 287 (137 boys and 150 girls), besides 526 (400 boys and 126 girls) detained under 17 and 18 Vict., c. 86, as against 515 voluntary scholars (337 boys and 178 girls). The Glasgow "houses of refuge" alone contain 456 detained inmates, in addition to the 129 in the industrial schools.

The police of public health in Scotland has been largely invigorated by the powers conferred on police commissions, Removal town councils, and parochial boards by the act of the 19th (1841), 19 and 20th Vict., c. 103: "An Act to make better provision and for the Removal of Nuisances, Regulation of Lodging-Houses, and the Health of Towns in Scotland." This act 103 (July consists of five distinct parts, the enactments of which are 1856), briefly as follows:—(1.) Power of entry, on reasonable belief of the existence of a nuisance, is granted to the local authority (whether commission, council, or board, as above mentioned, a committee thereof, or an inspector appointed thereby); and, on certificate, summary proceedings for abatement of such nuisance may be taken before any resident magistrate, and may be followed up by interdict, penalty, order of remedy at expense of the offending party, or other like procedure, requisite for such abatement. The term nuisance extends to the sale of unwholesome meat, and to the corruption of water; and, after due notice, daily and cumulative penalties may be inflicted. (2.) Orders in council may be issued, on fear of epidemic, endemic, or contagious diseases, for providing the boards of supervision of poor relief with proper medical officers (to be paid by Treasury), with power to make all due regulations for the removal or mitigation of such diseases; and, in case of the over-crowding of houses affected, may enforce against such houses the provisions hereafter mentioned for the regulation of common lodging-houses. (3.) The local authority shall cause a register to be kept of all common lodging-houses (such as lodge persons at a charge not exceeding threepence per night, whether paid nightly or weekly), and may refuse to register any such without a satisfactory certificate of character from three inhabitant rate-payers; may, with the approval of the secretary of state, make binding regulations for such houses; may cause additional water supply to be provided therein; may inspect such houses from time to time, and cause them to be properly cleansed and drained; may inflict penalties for infraction of the rules; and may, on a third conviction, refuse further license. (4.) Provision is also made for the enforcement of the act by the sheriff, in the event of neglect on the part of the local authority, or of nuisance occurring in which the local authority has any specific interest; penalties are inflicted for obstruction of the act; provision is made for the partition of costs and penalties in matters in which two or more owners are concerned. The police and constabulary are, within their respective jurisdictions, to assist in the execution of the act; and all rights of action at common law in respect of nuisances are preserved unimpaired. (5.) The 74th section of the "Burgh Police Act" (13 and 14 Vict., c. 33) is repealed, and in lieu thereof power is given to the com-

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1 Miscellaneous Statistics of the United Kingdom, presented to both Houses of Parliament, 1857, p. 98–100. These Tables have been abridged and re-arranged in simpler form than the original returns.

2 First Report of Inspector of Reformatory Schools, ut supra. missioners to levy special sewer rates; powers are also given to borrow money for construction of sewers, and to repay the same by a sinking fund. The 213th section is also repealed, and power given to the commissioners to enforce the paving and flagging of streets by the owners of the property abutting thereon; and provision is made for the amendment of the "Burial Act" (Scotland), 18 and 19 Vict., c. 68, by defining several parishes, or parts of parishes, when comprehended within the limits of any burgh, as in the purview of such act, one united parish.

IV. THE POLICE OF IRELAND.

Until the year 1814, the police of Ireland was in a state even more chaotic than that of England or of Scotland. The force that existed was capriciously administered, and not unfrequently grossly abused. Nor can it be matter of surprise that in days when political partizanship of a very emphatic sort was held to be no disqualification even for the judicial bench, the control of police, and the functions of the inferior magistracy, were often turned to factious purposes. The act of 1814 (54 Geo. III., c. 131) did not remedy these evils; but it led to improvements of detail, by the appointment of superintending magistrates, as well as to an increase of the constabulary force. Other acts followed of similar tendency, all of which were consolidated by the 6th Will. IV., c. 13. This act (passed in 1836) empowered the lord-lieutenant to appoint officers and constables in the several towns, baronies, and counties of Ireland, and in the proportions prescribed by the act; with an inspector-general at L.1500 per annum, and two deputy inspectors-general; and also to appoint fifty stipendiary magistrates at salaries ranging from L.400 to L.1000 per annum. The power already vested in the lord-lieutenant to appoint a special police force in any county or district proclaimed to be in a state of disturbance was to continue as before.

The force established under this act consisted of 42 inspectors and sub-inspectors, 465 chief and head constables, 7687 constables and sub-constables, 1 receiver, and 18 paymasters. Its total cost (in 1838) was, including the salaries of the stipendiary magistrates, L.380,268; of which sum, L.152,561 was paid by the counties and towns, and L.227,606 was borne by the Consolidated Fund.

The law of 1826 was amended in 1848 by the act of the 11th and 12th Vict., c. 72 ("An Act to amend the Acts relating to the Constabulary Force in Ireland, and to amend the provisions for the Payment of Special Constables"); and again by the 20th and 21st Vict., c. 17 ("An Act to amend the Act of the 11th and 12th years of Her Majesty, c. 72, so far as relates to the Distribution of the Constabulary Force in Ireland"). Passed in July 1857. By this latter act the number of county inspectors was fixed at 35, that of sub-inspectors at 262, that of head constables at 375, and that of constables and sub-constables at 9591, for the whole of Ireland; making a total force, according to the statutory schedule, of 10,263 in 1857, as against 8194 in 1838; and a total cost of L.644,820, as against L.380,268. Both sums include the salaries of stipendiary magistrates, the number of whom is now 72 (1 at L.610, 17 at L.500, 42 at L.400, and 12 at L.300 per annum).

In the speech which Sir Robert Peel made on proposing Change in the abolition of the corn laws (27th January 1846), after the recommendation that the whole expenses of criminal prosecutions, and of maintaining convicts (part of which were then borne by local rates), should be defrayed by the public treasury, he proceeded to say—"At present you have made a great police force in Ireland. The expense of a portion of that force is borne by the land in Ireland; the expense of the remainder is borne by the public treasury; and it certainly is a most anomalous system for one portion to be borne by the treasury and the other portion by the land. I believe that it will be an immense advantage to place the police force directly under the control of the executive; to prevent the possibility of all interference by local bodies; to make it as perfect a system as you can, excluding all power of local nomination or local interference, taking the whole control on the executive government; and in order that you may make that control complete, paying the expense out of the public treasury."

It is curious to notice in this famous speech so direct an attack on the two principles which have so largely and so long prevailed in our police arrangements,—namely, the joint support and the joint control of constabulary, as matters of common interest to the nation and to the locality. Nor will the special circumstances of Ireland suffice to bear out in its full breadth the policy thus enunciated. But no exception seems to have been taken by Irish members to any part of Sir Robert Peel's doctrine. "The whole ordinary charge of the Irish constabulary force has been borne by the treasury, in addition to a grant in aid of the Dublin police, and the salaries of the Dublin police justices. The only charge now made to the counties and towns is the cost of the extra force employed in proclaimed counties and districts, that of men employed on railways and in boroughs, and that of revenue men, added to the constabulary force on the abolition of the revenue police in December 1857.

The effective strength and the pay of the constabulary stood thus on the 1st January 1858:

I. Constabulary Force of Ireland.—Strength and Pay, January 1858.

| Rank | Pay. | No. in General Force | No. in Reserve Force | |-----------------------------|------|----------------------|---------------------| | Inspector-general | L. | 1 | | | Deputy inspector-general | | 2 | | | Assistant inspector-general | | 2 | | | Receiver | | 1 | | | Surgeon | | 1 | | | Veterinary surgeon | | 1 | | | Paymaster | | 1 | | | County inspectors | | 5 | | | Extra sub-inspectors | | 6 | | | Sub-inspectors | | 7 | |

Total: 11,847

Magistrates: 72

1 Estimates of Civil Services—General Abstract of Grants, &c. (26th March 1858), p. 3. The sum stated to be borne by the public in a subsequent return is L.651,408. The total cost of this force is stated, in the receiver's return of 15th July 1858 to be £668,700 (including £29,546 for the salaries of magistrates, and other sums for various allowances, for ages, etc., and also the cost of clerks); and of this sum £651,406, 10s. 10d. is stated to be borne by the public, and £17,293, 11s. 2d. by counties, cities, and towns.

The Irish constabulary is organized on military principles, and is especially remarkable for the judicious plans by which Major-General Sir Duncan MacGregor, the inspector-general, has combined competitive examination for cadetships with promotion from the ranks for good service and proved efficiency. Two-thirds of the vacant cadetships are filled up by the lord-lieutenant, and one-third by the inspector-general, who appoints alternately the son of an old constabulary officer and a head constable to his vacancies, thus filling every sixth vacancy from the ranks. The government candidates and the sons of officers are examined on the combined principle of nomination and competition in use in the civil service, four candidates being nominated for each vacancy, of whom the best is chosen. In the examination of head constables, every year's service, and every chevron or other mark of past merit, counts after a prescribed ratio, and unsuccessful head constables of a certain efficiency are permitted to undergo a second competitive examination. "The Irish constabulary force," it is stated, was already "remarkable for admitting no recruit who could not read and write and keep accounts, and for the entire trustworthiness of the men; so that they are sent by ones, twos, or threes to any place, however distant, where there is any duty to be performed, without an officer or non-commissioned officer being in charge of the party; and these competitive examinations have given an increased stimulus to the education of the force. Even the sub-constables in the remote country hamlets are employing schoolmasters in the evenings to instruct them in their barracks."

The metropolitan police of Dublin was established under the 6th and 7th Will. IV., c. 29, in 1836. It is controlled by two commissioners; is supported partly by police rate, fees, and penalties, and partly by the parliamentary grant already mentioned. Its effective strength and pay in July 1858 were respectively as follows:

### II. Dublin Metropolitan Police.—Strength and Pay, July 1858.

| Rank | No. | Pay | |-----------------------|-----|-----| | Chief superintendent | 1 | £286 10 s. | | Superintendents | 4 | £214 0 to 205 0 | | Chief inspectors | 1 | £160 0 | | Inspectors | 25 | £105 0 to 121 0 | | Acting inspectors | 38 | £67 15 | | Sergeants | 66 | £54 0 to 65 0 | | Acting sergeants | 100 | £50 0 to 62 0 | | First-class constables| 238 | £48 0 | | Second-class | 570 | £39 0 to 44 0 | | Third-class | 24 | £30 0 | | Supernumeraries | 20 | £18 5 | | **Total** | | **1087** |

The income and expenditure of the Dublin police establishment for the year 1856-7 were respectively as follows:

### III. Dublin Metropolitan Police.—Income and Expenditure, 1856-7.

#### INCOME

| Description | Amount | |--------------------------------------|--------| | Parliamentary grant | £38,000 | | Police tax | £21,715 | | Carriage duties, pawnbrokers' and publicans' licenses, &c. | £15,334 | | Fines and penalties | £2,000 | | **Total** | **£77,049** |

#### EXPENDITURE

| Description | Amount | |--------------------------------------|--------| | Police courts | £9,481 | | Salaries of commissioners, office establishment, &c. | £2,218 | | Pay of the force | £8,953 | | Pensions | £652 | | Rent, taxes, repairs, and other incidental expenses | £721 | | **Total** | **£77,026** | | Excess of income over expenditure | **£23** |

The Dublin police district is nearly 40 square miles in extent, and contains nearly 400,000 inhabitants. The subjoined table shows the number of persons taken into custody, and the results of the hearing of their cases before the magistrates, in each of the years 1854, 1855, and 1856:

### IV. Dublin Metropolitan Police.—Apprehensions and their Results, 1854-56.

| Year | Total Number of Apprehensions | Summary Procedure | Committed for Trial | Results of Commital | |------|------------------------------|-------------------|--------------------|---------------------| | | | Discharged | Convicted | No Bill, &c. | Convicted | Acquitted | | 1854 | 43,108 | 11,810 | 30,066 | 1232 | 184 | 741 | 307 | | 1855 | 35,634 | 10,667 | 24,188 | 779 | 114 | 478 | 187 | | 1856 | 38,876 | 14,506 | 23,692 | 678 | 115 | 413 | 150 | | **Total of 3 years** | **117,618** | **36,983** | **77,946** | **2689** | **413** | **1632** | **644** |

Both committals and convictions, it will be seen, show a decrease in each year as compared with the preceding year. This decrease, too, continued to maintain itself in 1857. But in the last-named year it was characterized by a special feature, sufficiently exceptional to claim a word of notice, although bearing on the sexual proportions of crime—a point of detail which we have excluded from these tables in order to confine them within narrow limits. During the three years 1854-56, the decrease in male crime throughout Ireland was relatively greater than that in female crime. In 1857, on the contrary, the decrease in female crime was ten times as great as that in male crime. The classification of the offences comprised in the preceding table is as follows:

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1 Statement of the Amount of Constabulary Force in Ireland, pursuant to 6 Will. IV., c. 13, 24th July 1858, parsim. 2 Papers relating to the Purchase and Sale of Commissions in the Army, 30th July 1858, 92-95. 3 Returns relating to the Dublin Metropolitan Police, 14th July 1858 (S. P. 430, parsim). The subjoined table shows the degree of instruction of the whole number of persons taken into custody during the three years now under review:

VI. Dublin Metropolitan Police.—Degree of Instruction of Persons Apprehended, 1854–6.

| Degree of Instruction | 1854 | 1855 | 1856 | |-----------------------|------|------|------| | | Males | Females | Total | Males | Females | Total | Males | Females | Total | | Could neither read nor write | 9,913 | 13,975 | 23,918 | 7,716 | 11,309 | 19,025 | 7,406 | 13,344 | 20,750 | | Could read only, or read and write imperfectly | 12,095 | 6,278 | 18,374 | 10,312 | 5,882 | 16,194 | 11,109 | 6,097 | 17,206 | | Could read and write well | 695 | 42 | 737 | 625 | 19 | 644 | 645 | 31 | 676 | | Of superior instruction | 78 | 1 | 79 | 71 | ... | 71 | 153 | 1 | 154 | | Total | 22,812 | 20,296 | 43,108 | 18,724 | 16,910 | 35,634 | 19,403 | 19,473 | 38,876 |

An act of the 21st and 22nd Vict., c. 103, entitled "An Act to Promote and Regulate Reformatory Schools for Juvenile Offenders in Ireland," which became law on the 2d August 1858, makes provision for the training of juvenile criminals into habits of honest industry, similar to those which had been for some years in operation in England and Scotland. Grand juries and town councils are empowered to make grants of money in aid of such reformatory schools, duly certified under the act, if they shall think fit; the powers of justices to commit youthful offenders, for periods not more than five years nor less than one year, resemble those accorded by the English law,—Provided that no such offender shall be liable or directed to be sent to any such reformatory, except to some one reformatory under the exclusive management of persons of the same religious persuasion as that professed by the parents or guardians of such juvenile offenders; and in all cases in which the religion of the parents or guardians is unknown, the said offender shall be considered as belonging to that religious persuasion in which he or she shall appear to have been baptized, or of which he or she shall profess to be a follower. Provisions are also made for the enforcement of due contributions by parents, if of sufficient ability, towards the maintenance of such offenders in the reformatory school.

Many years must pass before the full value of reformatory schools can broadly evince itself in their results. But it is already beyond question that no other measures of police have struck so directly at the roots of crime; nor is any recent legislation more pregnant with encouragement to solitary thinkers and obscure workers in the field of social reform. During the century which has elapsed since Fielding aroused public attention to the growing number of criminals who at that time were "once in six weeks carried to slaughter," and to the "dreadful consideration that, with proper care and proper regulations, much the greater part of these wretches might have been made not only happy in themselves, but very useful members of the society which they now so greatly dishonour in the sight of all Christendom," the best portions of many lives have been devoted to the discovery and application of the wisest methods for the abatement of that scandal. Every step in the process has been one of difficulty and struggle, but the good work has been urged onward in the face, not of opposition alone, but sometimes of obloquy. Efforts for the recovery of the criminal have been represented as injuries to the honest. The labours of John Howard have been deprecated as the expression of morbid sensibilities. And there was something in the doctrine, when clothed in brilliant rhetoric, which looked to some minds like profundity; but the workers worked on.

As respects the ordinary duties of police within the United Kingdom, recent legislation seems to have provided an effective machinery, the further improvement of which is but matter of experience and detail. There are still towns so inadequately provided as to be a source of danger to their neighbours; but the County Constabulary Act will in time provide a remedy. Meanwhile the union of local management with government inspection and publicity insures the general combination of efficiency and economy. But as regards the direct repression of crime there is yet a serious deficiency,—the absence of any adequate register of offences, irrespectively of their detection or pursuit.

Registration of this kind presents many difficulties. It ought not to be under the entire control of police functionaries. It cannot be obtained independently of them. It will require at every step the scrutiny of men familiar with the tricks and subterfuges of the "dangerous classes" of society. As it is, police returns include crimes that were never committed; although, of course, their most