a

policy was displayed in Ireland, where, in the year after the appointment of the general police, the union outrages were, according to Mr. M'Lennan, the biographer of Captain Drummond, reduced to tenth of what they had been previously. In dealing with them, the policy was to accumulate such strength at the point of the expected conflict as to put resistance out of the question.' On this point I may speak from practical experience, for on the introduction of the new Poor Law, when allowance in aid of wages became illegal, and when a reduction of nearly two millions per annum of expenditure was impending, the tradesmen and others agitated the agricultural labourers, told them that their wages (which the measure really augmented) would be reduced, and that they would be starved or shut up in Bastiles. Rioting was excited, widespread resistance was threatened, and messengers came up to London in alarm, demanding regiments to be sent for the safety of various localities. By my advice, small select bodies of the metropolitan police were sent, under able and dispassionate officers, who confronted large crowds, seized and imprisoned ringleaders, and put an end to disturbances, which, allowed to proceed, or dealt with in the ordinary way by the military, might have occasioned bloodshed and widespread conflagration. The agitators could measure the small local force, and count upon over-matching it. But they knew that the small force of metropolitan officers might, if resisted, bring upon them the large distant force which would be sure to over-match them, and they yielded.

But independently of extraordinary occasions, a power of concentrating a large police force is required for the common exigencies of life. It is needed, for instance, to encounter large fires. If the theory of the propagation of the

cattle plague, taken up by the commissioners of inquiry on that subject, be true, the great extent of the devastation occasioned by that pestilence is ascribable to the want of an efficient general police force. The first reports abound with instances of the inefficiency and the untrustworthiness of the direction of the borough constabulary. But at the time of our inquiry we found-what is the case now-that whilst police and protective forces were scattered, there were large masses of what may be termed criminal force, which were centralised; that these criminal classes migrate from town to town, and, as I have stated, that from the towns where they harbour-and where there are distinct houses maintained for their accommodation

they issue and commit depredations upon the surrounding rural districts, the metropolis being the chief centre from which they migrate; that they harbour in provincial towns in proportion to their magnitude, and in proportion to the facilities for plunder in them, or to the absence of protection in the surrounding districts.

The notions prevalent, and the inferences generally drawn on the number of crimes committed, from the number of crimes judicially pursued, are widely erroneous. Two or three convictions statistically represent the crimes of an habitual depredator; but on inquiring of such a man when he was last in honest employment, we found the duration of his career as a depredator had been several years, that for all this time he had lived by robbery, and that two or three accidental detections or pursuits represented hundreds of offences. I made inquiries myself, and we directed inquiries by others, into individual cases, from which it was clear that common depredators, on an average, had five or six years of free action, during which they had far higher gains than those obtainable by honest industry.

In the metropolis, I believe the duration of impunity has been reduced-how much I have not the means of judging-but elsewhere not much. Our barbarous penal procedure, which is substantially unchanged, extensively frustrates the action of the police even in the metropolis. On inquiring of depredators as to the cause of their extraordinary impunity, one common answer in the case of pickpockets was that, even if they were caught, there was not one gentleman in twenty who, if the handkerchief or other article were given up to him, would not, unless he were in a passion, let him go. It was proved, moreover, that there were few persons who, having been once robbed, and having been compelled to sustain the annoyance of a prosecution, would not put up with other robberies rather than inform the police, or again endure the annoyance and the expense of prosecuting. Before the assistant commissioners of inquiry into the practices of the Sheffield unionists, cases were stated of repeated outrages where the sufferers had given no information, as they feared that they would thereby only expose themselves to further annoyance, or to serious injury. A long exposition would be needed to display the extent of the large classes of habitual crime that continue to exist, from the dread of trouble, which would follow from the giving information to the policefear occasioned chiefly by the want of a proper form of procedure, and of a public prosecutor. Again, beyond the regular unionist crimes, there are secret murders, incendiarism, shipwrecks to defraud insurance offices, and criminal practices in trading. By this defect of public prosecution, the police do not receive that complete information of minor offences, which is needful to the prompt efficient action of the force. The metropolitan police returns give accounts of the amounts of property stolen, and of the

amounts of property recovered; but that which is lost would suffice for the maintenance of a very inconsiderable proportion of the great body of known habitual and notorious depredators, and numbers are apprehended of whom the police have had little or no previous knowledge. In the prisons of Great Britain there is under detention an army of delinquents of some 20,000 persons, mostly thieves, who have for several years lived by crime, and who are recruited from a much larger army of criminals at large. Of this predatory horde at large, and others, the proper objects of the guardianship of a police, the following is an imperfect enumeration, made for England and Wales, on one of our forms, for the last year, including the known prostitutes, many of whom combine depredation with their ostensible occupation :

Now it is to be observed, that all these people have to live, and it was proved, live at a much higher rate than is obtained by people of the lowest class by honest industry. The space occupied in the daily papers by reports of the proceedings of the police and the criminal courts, make us appear to foreigners to be living in an atmosphere reeking with crime; yet how small is that space compared with that which must be required for a full account of the individual crimes, for the day's subsistence, of the fourteen thousand of the above classes comprised in the metropolitan police district?

As against these masses, there is a disjointed and collectively ill organised police force of 23,708 men, with no proper combined principles of preventive action.

At present, a minimum of result

is obtained in this branch of administration, at a maximum of charge. In respect to two separate county police forces, it was proved that the expense was not greater than of the old and comparatively inefficient and in many cases the socalled 'unpaid' system of parochial constables, and if all the borough forces had been included, the expense would have been less, and the efficiency greater. It may be averred that, under a proper administration the services of a united and systematised force of twenty-five or twenty-six thousand men, including Scotland, may be had for nothing; that is to say, at no greater expense than the total expense of the existing disconnected forces; and two millions of expenditure now squandered on an ineffective system of repression would be largely economised. Of the present penal administration of the country it might be said, that it only serves to check the increase of the regular predatory population and to prevent it becoming too great for the regular and more quiet predatory subsistence.

Through the existing want of organisation, the public are deprived of one great effect of the system of compulsory relief; the extirpation of mendicity, and especially of that great mass of juvenile mendicity and vagrancy, which is the seed plot of juvenile delinquents, and matured criminal populations. One great object of a compulsory system of relief is to disarm the mendicant of his plea, that unless he receives doles he will perish. To refuse relief, and at the same time to punish mendicity when it cannot be proved that the mendicant could have obtained subsistence by labour, is repugnant to the common sentiments of mankind. It is repugnant to them to punish even depredation apparently committed as the only resource against want. By the unity of action contemplated between the police service

VOL, LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLVII.

and the public service for the relief of the destitute, this great object might be accomplished. Vice-Admiral M'Hardy, with the partial county force of Essex, has in great measure, accomplished this very object.

Our first report then, which experience will be found to have confirmed on every great topic, laid down the principles for the organisation of a general preventive police force. We had collected for a second report much evidence, and matured some important measures for the preventive action of such a body when organised. Of these, of primary importance was a plan for dealing with discharged prisoners (including ticket of leave men) in a manner consistent with public security, as well as of beneficence towards those who having undergone their punishment, it was necessary to restore to honest, productive occupation. We had complete confidence in that measure; but it could only be efficiently executed by a general police, competent to enforce conditions upon the discharged person, in any part of the country, to which he might be relegated, or to which he might repair.

I myself examined some delinquents as to their past careers. Through Mr. Chesterton, the very intelligent governor of Cold Bath Fields prison; through the late Rev. J. Clay, the chaplain of the prison at Preston, and Mr. Bagshaw, the chaplain of the Salford prison, we obtained the examinations of others. Instructive examples of the revelations thus attainable, may be found in the appendix to our report. Such examinations appeared to us to be so important for the guidance of administration, and for the information of the legislature, that we were prepared to recommend, that arrangements should be made for taking them systematically, by superior officers, to ascertain, in

the case of habitual delinquents, how for any period of time information had been withheld or failed to reach the police; how detection and pursuit had been escaped; and for taking measures for future prevention. Such measures for the protection of one district must often be taken in another and distant one. The revelations obtained at Sheffield by the protected examinations of culprits, are illustrative of the advantages of such examinations in giving, for superior direction, full light on criminal courses and practices, which is commonly only obtained by detectives and inferior officers, and kept to themselves for their own use.

The information obtained by us warrants the assertion, that all habitual delinquency,-all the great classes of individuals who rise in in the morning and go forth to obtain by criminal means the day's food, continue to exist solely by the defects of penal administration and legislation. Added to these are those outrages against the peace, by which the country is from time to time disgraced before Europe, including those by which the freedom of service, and individual liberty, and the progress of the working classes is compromised. In many districts they would, under a correct system of administration, be living as in a new country and under a new régime in which they breathed more freely. As against this great moral, social, and political improvement, the security and the real freedom of the great mass of the population, stands opposed simply the greed of local dominion, at the expense of the people whose name is falsely used against it. For example, in the centre of the metropolis, the

corporation, having jurisdiction over 120,000 of the three millions of the population, have been permitted to impose upon the residents there the protection of an inferior force,' at an expense of upwards of twenty thousand per annum beyond what would be incurred, if the city was placed under the general metropolitan police force. On the occasion of the passage of the Princess of Wales through the metropolis, in consequence of the weakened line of protection, from the mismanagement of the corporation force, some hundred people were maimed, and twenty killed. A body of volunteers left the jurisdiction of the corporation, on an excursion, but without due notice to the metropolitan police, and therefore without due preparation for the protection of the crowd collected to see them. Organised gangs, seeing the occasion, robbed the bystanders with impunity, in the face of officers and men with arms in their hands. Such scandalous instances of disorganisation are a censure on the public understanding.

A police force, as I have already shown, must owe its real efficiency to the sympathies and concurrent action of the great body of the people. It is therefore important, for its moral usefulness as well as on the score of economy, carefully to cultivate its beneficent services, and provide for its occupation on occasions of accident or calamity; and these, the subjects of coroners' inquests in England and Wales, amount to upwards of ten thousand annually. Police stations should be provided with stretchers for the removal of people maimed by accident, and the stations near rivers should be supplied with the appa

ratus of the Humane Society; and in populous districts the services of the police surgeon' or the 'officer of health' should be made readily available. Patrolling districts regularly, night as well as day, passing over every part of a beat once in a quarter of an hour, the policeman as a rule is the first to see a fire and alarm inmates or neighbourhoods. The policeman especially should be a fireman, and trained to take immediate precautions; and the police stations should be the places for fire-engines, and fire-escapes, and other apparatus. Properly constituted, the police force would be in effect a great fire brigade in the metropolis of the full force of seven thousand men, These collateral services, for which there should be the stimulus of distinct appreciation and reward, relieve the monotony of mere sentinel work for any one chief object. As the preventive service against crime prevails, the collateral beneficent

services will increase.

In consequence of the proverbial inefficiency of the service of fireengines under the management of parish vestries, and the inadequacy of that of the insurance companies, a move was made in Parliament to get something better; when, in compliance with the feeling of local cliques, amongst whom and not amongst the people the feeling for 'vestralisation' prevails, the service of a fire brigade was charged as a separate service, upon the representations of the vestries at the Metropolitan Board of Works. By this violation of correct principle of administrative organisation, and, as I deem, flagrant perversion of public means, an additional and unnecessary expense of some 40,000l. per annum for an inferior force of between two and three hundred men will be cast upon the ratepayers for the separate disjointed and far inferior service.

When I speak of the greed of

local dominion as standing in the way of the needed reform, it is not alone the desire of a mere status, the pride of office, and the salutes of policemen, with their personal attentions on occasions, though there is much in that; but any impartial person who will look at the revelations as to the direction of a number of the borough forces, who will make inquiries as to the licensing system, and on other questions examined before parlia mentary committees, will see the great extent to which the direction of those forces has been allowed to fall into the hands of brewers, distillers, publicans, owners of small tenements, and lodging-house keepers— Owners or occupiers of the very classes of houses which require the frequent intervention of the police. The audacity with which persons of known sinister interests, comprising trading interests in local expenditure, often obtain local office, and control over the local forces, is most discreditable to the inhabitants, and the lower classes of the electors are, as shown by the evidence before the Lords' Committee, scandalously bribed for their support of such persons.

The chief constable of a county has the appointment and absolute control of his force, subject to the court of quarter sessions; the head constable of a borough is subject to the watch committee, who appoint his force, and may, if they choose, meet weekly. Police officers from the county forces who have taken office in these borough forces, have often found the rule of these watch-committees so ignorant and so offensive that they have quitted them, or returned to the county forces at lower salaries. The frequent low character of the governing local authorities, as well as the inferior organisation of the force under their command, provoke the contempt of the rowdy population, and lead to such outrageous exercises of their power as