Appendix No. 10. ders the cottage in the absence of its owners, will escape detection, or at least be enabled to carry on their operations at a distance, with much greater chance of impunity, No doubt this would be an exaggerated feeling; but still it is too probable there would be some ground for it; indeed it is scarcely in human nature it should be otherwise. The attention of the magistrate would naturally be more awakened to the probability of crime, in which he or his neighbours would be sufferers, than to that of which he neither hears nor dreams until the deed has been perpetrated; and the policeman, partly to insure the favourable consideration of his patron, and partly because it is more easy to direct his attention to one or two classes of crime than to guard all the avenues by which it may assail the community, would as naturally be disposed to pay undue attention to them. Such crimes, too, would be more probably perpetrated by a resident than by an itinerant, and it would be much easier to ascertain the haunts and watch the proceedings of one residing in his district than to speculate on the conduct of a stranger, who was here to-day and gone to-morrow. The very circumstance of these trampers being strangers would be a serious objection to a police purely local. The old hand, though a tramper, ought not to be quite unknown to any part of a police force established on good principles, and embracing the whole country. They are known somewhere; a description of them might easily be transmitted from one police-station to another; their progress might thus be watched, and their route anticipated, while the lodging-houses they usually frequent would be under stricter supervision on account of such information. I apprehend a magistrate's police would generally lose in efficiency from two other causes connected with the foregoing considerations; it would not be in sufficient strength in point of numbers, and would not command that active co-operation an the part of the mass of the people, without which the best police force would be unable to exercise its duties with the greatest effect: admit its unpopularity, arising from real or supposed inefficiency, and these results would follow as matter of course; the outcry raised upon the subject of the incrsesed amount of county-rate would necessarily induce the magistrates to restrict the number, and consequently the expense, within the narrowest limits, and you would have to deplore a miserable parsimony, which, when applied to real public service, is the worst possible economy. Ascertained inefficiency in the prevention or detection of crime would as necessarily lead to the other. The weak and unprotected run great risks in the prosecution of offenders, unless the law is, in its exercise as well as its principles, strong enough to provide for their safety; and you would find, as now, numbers of outrages against property hushed up or concealed because it was dangerous to give information of them, or evidence against the known or suspected malefactor. A magistrate's police would be under no constant or effectual supervision; and needful as this is in towns, it is of much greater consequence in the country, where the force must necessarily act so much more independently of each other and of all authority. In this view of the case it becomes necessary to consider who would appoint the officers, by whom they would be paid, and by whom kept in order. I apprehend it would never do for the magistrates to appoint the privates of the police, and Government, or some other authority, the officers; the clashing of such a state of things would be endless: if the former are to be named by the magistrates, so must the latter. What would be the consequence? the appointment would be much sought after; there would be an active canvass, as for every other appointment so made; favouritism; the fitness of the office for the man, rather than of the man for the office; the compassion felt for an individual in the rank of a gentleman, but with too slender means; connexion with some magistrate of influence; to say nothing of party and local politics, the bane of all that is good, and the origin and apology for almost all that is bad, in such appointments;-these considerations would, in far the majority of cases, influence the election; and you would find that the person on whose intelligence, activity, and experience the entire working of a large and complicated machine depended, would, except by mere accident, be utterly unfit for the post. The remuneration, from the same cause which restricted the number of the police force, would be inadequate, and the control, except in gross cases of neglect or incompetency, without value. A good easy man, with some show of activity, who paid due regard to the suggestions of the magistrates, and looked narrowly after poachers, would be upheld at all risks; he might sleep over his other duties, and allow his time to be chiefly occupied in the pleasures of the table, or sports of the field, without a chance of having his tranquillity disturbed by any fear of dismissal. Another objection to such a police force would be, that it would be stationary and local, and being always employed in the same neighbourhood, would gradually form connexions and habits inimical to the active and impartial discharge of its duties. The well-known public-house, the conveniently-situated beer-house, would be too much frequented, and the owners would willingly purchase some relaxation from police regulations by accommodating the policeman with gratuitous supplies of liquor, or by abstaining from pressing inconvenient scores upon his attention; thereby not only causing one part of his duty to be neglected, but superinducing habits of intemperance, utterly at variance with the discharge of the rest. I am not sure that other and more flagrant instances of corruption might not exist,—the receiver of stolen goods, the more wealthy depredator, that is, the originator and planner of thefts, which are intrusted for their execution to others, might find means to propitiate the policeman, whose habits were intemperate, and whose resources, compared with his expenditure, were small. It would, in a word, be a situation of great temptation, and would require the utmost vigilance to prevent abuses in those occupying it. There is only one other point of view in which I will consider this force, and that is with reference to the peace of the country: nothing, I believe, is more effectual in its preservation, in preventing or repressing tumultuous assemblies with an unlawful object, than a well organized police, under proper discipline, well trained, accustomed to act in a body, known to and knowing their officers; it acts at the critical moment, that is, at the commencement of the Appendix No.10; riot, before the passions are fully inflamed and before the spectators have committed themselves with the leaders of the riot. Such a force at Bristol would have prevented the outrage which so much disgraced that city; such a force would have put down the Courtenay riot near Canterbury, and have prevented the incendiarism of the first, and the loss of life in both. But, effectual as such a force is when so organized, acting singly, on the contrary, without discipline or order, or as individuals, it would be useless, or even worse-worse, because it would probably be beaten, and it would afford just that triumph which rioters want to give them confidence and eclat. From all these considerations, I am clearly of opinion a new police force is needed; and that, to render it effectual, it ought to be part and parcel of that established in the metropolis, and which has there been productive of such good effects. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your obedient Servant, W. W. WHITmore. To the Constabulary Force Commissioners. No. 11. EXTRACT of a LETTER from T. P. KENYON, Esq., Acting Magistrate in the County of Salop, to Woolryche Whitmore, Esq. That there should be a new and organized police, that that police should act under one Appendix No. 11 superintendent, that they should communicate with him and with each other, that they should be removeable from one locality to another, or be liable all to be assembled together to one spot; upon all these points I think we are all agreed. But I, as a single magistrate, am ready to go much further. I have no wish for the patronage of a single policeman, and am perfectly ready to agree that Government shall name them all; but I think the magistrates ought to have a negative power; and I think they ought to have the power to fine, or even discharge, in the event of misconduct or want of attention. If the police were altogether and absolutely exempt from any sort of control of the magistrates, they would soon learn to treat that body with disrespect; and though for a time they might pretend to pay attention to their suggestions, they would very soon consider them of little moment, and obey them or not as best suited their object. There is also this great difference between a rural and city police: in the latter the superintendent is at hand, and the magistrates may with ease send to him, if necessary; in a county this is not possible, and two or three days may pass before such superintendent can be able to attend. In that case, unless the magistrate had the power upon the spur of the moment to give positive orders to the police, the time for action might have expired. I must entirely agree with all that you say upon the subject of poaching, and indeed could go even further than you seem to go: but upon that point I will speak when we meet. With regard to that odious subject, politics, I can only repeat what I have said in public a hundred times, that it ought never to be thought of in the duties of a magistrate; but then I must add, neither ought it to be thought of by Government in the appointment of a police force; neither should the recommendations of political partisans be taken in any one instance. I, for one, am ready to pledge myself not to recommend a single man. London: Printed by W. CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street, |