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Patron: iiiiiiiiiiiii !!!!!!!!!!!! iiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiii Journal Title: Josephine Butler and the ODYSSEY ENABLED ~ prostitution campaigns : diseases of the body ~ !!!!!!!!!!!! politic/ Charge Maxcost: 50.00IFM ti'.)= Volume: V.3: The constitution violated Issue: ·-o=$-; =- MonthNear: 2003Pages: pp. 71 --> ? Shipping Address: (I.) == Interlibrary Loan • ....-4;;;,. iiiiiiiiiiiii - Article Author: Butler, Josephine University of San Diego - Copley Library ~ iiiiiiiiiiiii i,-1 iiiiiiiiiiiii 5998 Alcala Park !!!!!!!!!!!! Article Title: Government by Police San Diego, California 9211 O United States ~ N 0 Imprint: London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, ~ Fax: co 2003. Ariel: -~.. Email: z ILL Number: 207459296 1- 't, 111111111111111111111111111 IIIIIIIIII IIIII IIIII IIII IIII cu :J ..J 8 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE

Josephine E. Butler

Source: London, Dyer Brothers (1879)

It seems probable that one of the greatest questions of the future will be that of ascertaining the best means of effectually counteracting or holding in check the strongly bureaucratic tendencies which we see to be stealing over almost every civilized nation. On the one hand we see imperially-governed countries; and on the other democratic republics, with traditions and aspirations wholly different, but alike only in this,-that police rule in each has so established itself as to become a standing menace to liberty, and an embarrassment and even a rival to the Governments which aim at its reform, or at the restriction of its functions. The object of the present paper is to indicate the position of England in respect to this subject, to suggest certain lessons to be derived from the present struggle in France for decentralization and the curbing of the power of the police, and to point out briefly the dangers which a future liberal Government will incur in this respect, unless duly awakened to the danger of the threatening tyranny-a tyranny which may establish itself under the shelter of a liberal or democratic government, no less than under an autocracy or empire. It is not difficult to recognise the present abuses and dangers which have been allowed to establish themselves in this department of the Executive, as much by the short sightedness and busy over­ legislation of liberal administrations, as by the high hand of a des­ potic or reactionary minister. But to see the path which leads out of the actual complication is not so easy. To denounce the police, to pronounce what it ought not to be and do, is sufficiently easy, so palpable are the inconveniences and wrongs to which the public in various lands are daily subjected by the growing influence of the

71 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED ubiquitous and overshadowing Bureau; but to decide the question of what the police ought to be in a free nation, is a problem which will require for its solution the exercise of the wisest heads, and the firm­ est hands among those alike who govern, and those who influence that public opinion whose support is required for the maintenance of any Government. The principles which our forefathers held in regard to free gov­ ernment, however sound we may recognise them to be, have become less easy of application in these modem days of overgrown cities, crowded populations, perpetual locomotion, and complex social life. "Self-government," said Grattan, "is life." It is indeed life; life for the individual, for the family, for all organized communities, for muni­ cipalities, and for nations. The opposite is gradual death for each of these. Protests enough have been uttered against the evil influence of an absolute monarchy on the life of a people; but it is doubtful whether we have yet sufficiently considered, or whether our liberal leaders are at all adequately awake to the fact, that precisely the same evils are accumulating under a bureaucracy, (created it may be by the most liberal Parliament) which forces to act, and does not encourage and fructify the principle of self-action. De Tocqueville, alluding to a tyranny represented, not by one man, but by many, says-" For myself, when l feel the hand of power lie heavy upon me, I care little to know who oppresses me, and I am not the more disposed to pass under the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million of men." Modern Police Government in its worst forms combines the evil of extreme centralization with the activity, in every comer of the nation, of a vast and numerous agency of surveillance, whose very presence tends by slow degrees to enfeeble the sense of res­ ponsibility in the citizens in regard to the order and well-being of society. "It is necessary to have seen nations who have been forced for centuries to submit to constant and minute police interference, in order to have any conception of the degree to which manly action, self-dependence, and inventiveness of proper means, can be eradi­ cated from a whole community." 1 Personal security against bodily violence or harm, (the benefit above all others supposed to be guar­ anteed to the citizen by the ever-present police), is itself purchased at too great a cost, if it be obtained at the price of personal liberty. An extensive preventive police might, by fettering all free individual action, prevent many offences; but mere physical security is not the highest object of pursuit for society, although it is desirable in order that it may obtain its highest objects. There is something bordering on the ludicrous, in the unconscious condemnation of the system

72 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE

which they represent, contained in the often repeated, and somewhat sentimental lamentations of our metropolitan superintendents of police, over the growing dependence and carelessness of the popula­ tion of London. Superintendent Howard having reported the thou­ sands of doors and windows found unguarded or open at night, asks despondingly "When will the people of England ever learn to take care of themselves?" The answer is at hand, "never, so long as they are educated by the constant presence of persons delegated by Gov­ ernment to take care of them, even in the minutest particulars." Here is the fulfilment of Lieber's words,-inventiveness, self-protection, and manly self-dependence are being gradually driven out of the people by the delegation of the simplest and most primitive duties of citizens to the agents of the Government. In the old Anglo-Saxon times the whole community was called upon to aid in the protection of life and property, and for a long time the spirit of this system-though the system itself no longer applied-<:ontinued to characterize our administration. In those times the Sheriff of each county, who was elected by the free house­ holders, was the chief officer responsible for the preservation of peace, and the prevention of crime. The county was divided into hundreds; each hundred was again divided into ten divisions; in each division ten freeholders were mutually pledged to repress delinquen­ cies. The Sheriff paid a half-yearly visitation to the "hundred," mak­ ing enquiries as to whether there was any relaxation in the work and efficiency of the voluntary staff of peace officers. This species of self­ regulation answered its purpose extremely well in a country thinly populated; and the sense of responsibility and the spirit of self­ government thus nourished, tended to the favorable development of the moral character of the people. After the conquest, an innovation was made in the Anglo-Saxon system, when the Sheriff, instead of being the elect of the freehold­ ers, came to be appointed directly by the King. He was generally a Norman, and often indisposed to meet the people in their popular courts, and thus the Sheriff's periodical visitations through the coun­ try came to be neglected. Gradually, persons finding it inconvenient to exercise the responsibilities above described deputed others to take their place. The office of constable was then created; the con­ stable taking the place of the Anglo-Saxon hundred or tithing man. In every town and village the constables were to set a watch accord­ ing to the size of the place, every night from Ascension till Michael­ mas, from sunset to sunrise. The prevention of crime and the pursuit of criminals was one of their primary duties, and they were charged

73 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED to make a presentment at the Assizes, of all murders and affrays and other offences against the peace. Down to the reign of Elizabeth the spirit of the old system continued. A writer of that day remarked, "Every Englishman is a sergeant to take the thief, and whoso showeth negligence therein doth not only incur evil opinion, but hardly shall escape punishment." The Anglo-Saxon spirit of mutual protection and responsibility, however, gradually fell into decay after that time, and was proportionately replaced by the control and activ­ ity of the supreme executive. The same pleaded necessity which had called into being in the time of Charles 11,a standing army, in place of a militia, also produced a change from voluntary guardianship of the peace to a paid agency for that purpose. When any disturbance was apprehended, the power of the ordinary constables was found to be insufficient, and the aid of the military force was called in. The appearance of controlling a district by military force was felt, how­ ever, to be an evil. The magistrates of Cheshire, in 1829,were the first to make an attempt to improve the administration of the police in their county; they obtained an Act (10 George IV c. 97) which authorised them to appoint and direct a paid constabulary; other districts followed their example, and the idea thus quickly gained ground of employing a trained body of men, subjected to almost military discipline, to fulfil the duties formerly self-imposed by the citizens. This brings us to the period when the great change was effected in the police of the Metropolis, involving the rejection of the old, and the adoption of a wholly new principle. In 1800 a commission of enquiry had been appointed, in which a Mr. Colquhoun, a London magistrate and lawyer, took a prominent part. He published in that year, a book on the police, in which he strongly recommended an approach to Continental police systems, including the organization under police superintendance of the social evil.2 Up to this period the safety of the metropolis had been entrusted to the old night watch. This had been supplemented by a horse patrol, established by Sir Michael Ford in 1805, for the defence of the population by day as well as by night. There is no doubt that the old system had become insufficient, and wholly unable to meet the growing neces­ sities of a great city population; yet it is curious and instructive to observe that while officials in high place continually represented in forcible terms the sufferings and inconvenience of the population, through insufficient protection, the people themselves who were stated to be the victims of the existing system, manifested the strongest indisposition to change their night watchmen and patrols

74 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE for the centralized and military force with which they were threatened. The reports of debates in Parliament at this time, and other public documents, prove how strongly the instinct of the people, (whether reasonable or not) rose up against the proposed change. Sir Robert Peel obtained in 1828 the appointment of a committee of the House of Commons, to enquire into the expediency of establishing a uni­ form system of police in the metropolis. The Committee reported favorably of the scheme. Sir Robert Peel held the seals of the Home Department in 1829, and in that year the Act of 10th George IV. cap. 44, passed both Houses and became law. A great conflict of opinion concerning the introduction of a principle of police rule foreign to English habits, continued to prevail; in fact it came to be more than a conflict of opinion when in 1833 an actual collision took place between the new police force and a meeting of Chartists in Cold bath Fields. Directions had been given to the police to disperse the meet­ ing; in attempting to do so three police officers were stabbed, and one of them fell dead on the spot. A contemporary writer, favourable to the new system of police, remarked: "It might have been thought that such a resistance of a constituted authority ending in murder would have excited the indignation of the more respectable class of citizens; but precisely the contrary was the fact." A Coroner's jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide, a very significant sign of the feeling towards the new force of the class of citizens from which the jury was selected. Such an agitation was stirred up that a com­ mission was called for to enquire into the conduct of the police, in order to satisfy the public. The same special pleader for the new system, above quoted, says, "Thus we see that this essential change in this branch of criminal justice was not made without creating a deep sensation. That stalking-horse, the liberty of the subject, which in truth meant the liberty to rob and plunder, was immediately par­ aded before the public; and indeed for Englishmen, jealous of their personal liberty, the establishment of this new force might at first have created some well-founded alarm. It was no longer a question of a few constables under municipal or local direction, but of a standing army of nearly 6000 men drilled like soldiers, taught to act in masses, entirely independent of the control of the rate-payers, and solely under that of a minister of State. The fact of the appoint­ ment, as a commissioner, of Colonel Rowan, who had been employed in that quasi-military force the Irish constabulary, favoured the idea that the new police were to be a veritable gendarmerie."

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On April 15th, 1829, Sir Robert Peel introduced into Parliament his Metropolitan Police Act. In the course of a long speech he cited the reports of committees which had been held to investigate the subject in the years of I 770, 1793, 1818, 1822 and 1828; each of these committees had been appointed in consequence of some outrage or murder, when more or less of a panic prevailed. He pleaded in his speech for greater unity of action and centralized control as an abso­ lute necessity. He pleaded also for what he calls "greater responsibil­ ity in the police," saying that their responsibility to municipal and parochial authorities was not sufficient, and that there ought to be a uniform system, responsible alone to the Home Secretary; at the same time he urged in defence of his proposition the immensely greater amount of crime committed in London than in municipal towns in the provinces, apparently forgetting that these provincial towns possessed a police responsible alone to the constitutional authorities of each town. On the 19th of May, the discussion was resumed. Sir Robert Peel was opposed by a Mr. Bright, who would not agree to a project "for taking the local authority out of the hands of the persons who now possessed it, and placing it in the hands of the Secretary for the Home Department." The bill became law in that month. The police of the metropolis was by this Act, (10 Geo. IV.) com­ pletely centralised. Scotland Yard became the brain, or nervous centre, from which the whole system was directed. Fifteen years afterwards there was added that department which is now so celebrated-that of the detective force. The recruits for this office are drawn from various classes of society. When they offer them­ selves for the service they appear in very varied attire, shooting coats, old dress coats, smock frocks &c.-denoting various condi­ tions of life, and sometimes broken fortunes, indicative of the necessity to which some of them have been reduced. M. Lecler, writing of this special force in Paris, says: "In Paris a great many people enter the ranks of the secret police, impelled to do so by some misfortune or legal offence, which they have an interest in concealing. For example the Detective P--, a journalist, novel writer. and art-critic of some repute, did not enter the ranks of the secret police from any love for the service, but from motives arising from his past career." In all great gatherings these men are distributed among the crowd, dressed according to the character of the assembly; at an agricultural meeting smock frocks are worn; at a review, the dress of a decent mechanic in his Sunday best, and so on.

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The following is a description of this force, by an ardent admirer of the metropolitan police, writing in the Quarterly RevielV for 1856:-"Man is eminently a hunting animal, and there is no prey which he follows with such zest and perseverance, as his fellow man. Some policemen, directly they enter the force, show this taste so strongly, that they are at once marked off for this purpose. The detective stands in a different position to the ordinary policeman; his work, long and laborious though it may be, must-to succeed­ never see the light: although he may have followed up a case for years, all the public knows of it is summed up in the four words used in stating the charge at the police court-'From information I received.' Sometimes he finds it necessary to seem to pursue keenly a false scent, in order to divert attention from his real motive. The most trivial hint will sometimes suffice to put the detective on the right path; for like men accustomed to work in the dark, things which to other persons are invisible, to him appear as clear as noon­ day. The gossiping tendencies of neighbours is especially useful to him, in worming out secrets; to obtain a single link in a chain of facts, he will often hang about a house for months, interrogating the newspaper lad, waylaying the servant girl, and picking all he wants to know out of her as easily as a locksmith picks a lock, and with quite as little consciousness on the part of the person operated upon." Another quotation from a writer commenting on the changes in our Police system, some few years subsequently to the last quoted, shows not untruly the general character of English opinion at that time, on the subject of a highly centralized police exercising a secret surveillance, like the police of France and other countries. This writer says:-"It is evident that a police of this sort is incompatible with English liberty; the high police generally forms a department under the minister; their ends are greatly obtained by means of the secret police, that cancer which eats into the vitals of society, and the pollution of which Great Britain may be proud of having escaped. The deplorable consequences of an institution so destructive to all confidence and sense of security are obvious." There are moreover connected with every secret police numbers of informers, like the delatores in Rome, who depend for a livelihood upon their skill in revealing secrets. This institution of the secret police originated in France. The Marquis d'Argenson under Louis XIV was the first who organized it. He was Lieutenant General of police from 1697 till 1718. The secret police of France has from the first been used directly for polit­ ical purposes, in a way of which we have no experience as yet in

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England, although the facility with which our Government police force could be turned towards such a purpose is no small source of danger. This department of the French police was never in the hands of a more active and sagacious chief than Fouche. His secret police was organized to perfection, one might say, throughout the whole of Europe, and when the charge of the public police was taken from him, he instituted a police of his own to watch the movements of Savary, as Napoleon had had his counter police against Fouche, in which the Emperor, however, was always inferior to the minister. A most glaring instance of the abuse to which the secret police is always liable was the death of the Duke d'Enghien, who perished in consequence of the false reports of the secret police. The more absolute a government is, the more will the police be developed; whilst the freer the country is, the more it will follow the principle that everything which can possibly be left to take care of itself should be so left, and the more carefully restricted will be the functions of the police. It is a question, whether in free countries a secret police is allowable at all; its place ought to be supplied by public opinion, and the liberty of the press. It has been observed that in free countries a man needs to be quite as much on his guard in making statements or undertaking any doubtful transactions, as in absolute Governments, since the danger of his words and acts reach­ ing the press is as great as that of their detection by a secret police. It may be said that, for the purpose of the detection of crime, a dis­ guised force is indispensable; but the functions of such a force should be jealously defined and restricted. A critic reviewing in the Edin­ burgh Review, for 1837, the report of the Select Committee of that year on the metropolitan police, says: "The influence of police estab­ lishments upon the morals of society is generally admitted to be extensive, whether for good or for evil, and exceeds that which can ever be exercised immediately by judicial institutions, because it is the office of the police, rightly understood, not only to arrest crim­ inals, but to watch over morality and prevent offences from taking root in the social soil." If this be true, it is a grave question indeed whether, by the creation of a vast force, including the spies and informers above described, in order to watch over the morality of the public, we are really introducing an influence for good; that that influence is extensive cannot be doubted; but there is every reason to doubt its character, if we judge it, not only by the underlying prin­ ciple involved in it, but by its effects on the special agents employed, and on the population in general.

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A few words more will complete this account of the growth of the present police system in England. In October 1837, a commission was appointed under the Crown "to enquire into the best means of establishing an efficient constabulary force in the counties of England and Wales," and the commissioners having taken means to ascertain the opinions of the magistracy in each petty-sessional division in the country, it was found that out of four hundred and thirty-five divisions, the magistrates in a hundred and twenty-three of them recommended the appointment of a paid rural force; in thirteen divisions a proviso was added that the force should be placed under their own exclusive control; in a hundred and twenty­ two divisions, an opinion was given that no alteration was required. The local magistracy indeed showed considerable fear and jealousy of the interference of the supreme executive; yet notwithstanding, the balance of opinion was in favour of a reconstruction of the provincial constabulary. In 1839 an Act was passed (2 and 3 Victoria c. 93) enabling the magistrates to appoint county and district con­ stables, thus leaving the improvement of the police to their discre­ tion. The Act empowered magistrates, assembled in quarter sessions, to report to the Secretary of State the necessity of appointing addi­ tional police, but not in a greater proportion than one constable to each one thousand of the population. In August 1840, an Act was passed amending the Act of the previous session by removing the restriction which limited the appointment of constables to one to each one thousand of the inhabitants. When first formed the metropolitan police force consisted of some 3000 to 4000 of all ranks; in the year 1856, the force had increased as follows: one chief commissioner (Sir Richard Mayne), two assistant commissioners (Captain Labalmondiere and Captain Harris), 18 superintendents, 133 inspectors, 635 sergeants and 4,954 constables, making a total of all ranks, of 5,734. The latest official report, gives, for the year 1877, the following numbers: 29 superintendents, 279 inspectors, 1,078 sergeants, and 9,064 constables, making a total of all ranks of 10,446. The latter figure shows an increase over the preceding year, of 178 policemen of different ranks. Of this number, 8,122 are available for the metropolis, the remainder are employed under the Admiralty and War Office, in carrying out the contagious diseases Acts, or specially paid for services rendered to different departments of the Government or to public bodies. We turn now to France. Wherever municipal independence flour­ ishes, there a healthy spirit of self-government is found in a greater or less degree. A centralized system of bureaucracy is incompatible with

79 THE CONSTITUTION V 10 LATED the freedom and independent action of provincial authorities. The history of the rise and increase of our own centralized metropolitan police force, points to a corresponding decay of municipal indepen­ dence as a result to be sooner or later too surely and fully developed. The contest between free municipalities and despotic governments has been carried on from the earliest times, in Italy, France, the Netherlands and Britain, with varying results. In France where the des­ truction of municipal freedom was the earliest accomplished, we find, as might be expected, the system of centralized bureaucratic rule organized and standing firmly rooted through successive revol­ utions, through the rise and fall of monarchical and imperialistic regimes, and continuing at this day in spite of the prevalence and strength of republican principles, and of the attacks which have been continually directed against it in the last few years. A monarch may be deposed, or a dictator banished. It was comparatively easy to cut off the head of a Stuart king when his rule became intolerable; but it will require a force not yet developed, and perhaps itself too terrible to be invoked except as a last resort, to cut off the hydra-head of a vast bureaucracy whose thousand eyes and hands are in every place at every moment, and which, as in France it does at this day, defies the very power which created it. Whence this immense resistance? There are, in the first place, extensive vested interests involved in the creating of a bureaucracy. Its numerous paid staff, at least in the higher grades, have, in France, attained to such a height of insolence, as to refuse, (as the police des m(]Jurs has recently done in Paris), to account to the taxpayers and the municipal council-which still nominally retains there the control of the Police-for the use they make of the money voted for the service, and have gone so far as to say that there exists no authority which has the right to question them. Secondly, there is the deplorable result already pointed out, namely that a certain mental incompetence, languor, almost atrophy grows upon a people which has continued to be over-ridden by a bureaucracy. That people offers no adequate opposition to the determination of the bureaucracy to prolong its own existence. The spirit of independence and self-government has however begun to re­ assert itself with considerable strength at this day in the municipality of Paris. Of that we shall speak presently. Meanwhile we return to the earlier history of the progress of centralization in France. In the reign of Louis XI, if any town of France displayed a spirit of too much independence. it was immediately deprived of its muni­ cipal franchises, by a simple stroke of the pen on the part of the sovereign. Charles VII dealt with the great city of Bordeaux in this

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summary fashion. Louis XI placed the jurisdiction of most of the towns in the hands of his own lieutenants. In 1692, Louis XIV abol­ ished all municipal elections, and sold the right of governing the towns to any rich citizens who had gold enough to purchase it. This traffic in popular rights and liberties was simply a financial expedi­ ent, convenient for a profligate and extravagant king; for the mon­ archy was by this time far too strong to fear anything from municipal independence. The towns, uncontrolled by the people, and com­ pletely under the direction of officers of the Crown, were eventually effaced from the political constitution of France. From this period the spreading over the land of a network of police interference and tyranny was an easy and unopposed task. The provincial parlia­ ments, fourteen in number, had continued to be powerful within their own jurisdictions; but they were abolished by Louis XV in 1771. The monarchy now became absolute; but in acquiring a monopoly of power, it gradually lost its feudal character, and in time found in the power which it had itself created, a formidable rival which it was necessary to conciliate. The old local authorities had been super­ seded by officers of the Crown. Le Conseil du Roi combined the highest judicial, administrative and even legislative powers. The comptroller-general wielded almost all the executive power of the State. In every province was an intendant, in every town a prefect, who as agent of the Government, administered its affairs. These officers levied taxes, regulated the police and the militia, super­ intended all public works, administered the finances, and established octrois. Even the courts of law found their jurisdiction superseded by the administrative activity of the intendants. "It was a grievous blow to liberty and to public security, when power prevailed over justice, and the people could only protect themselves by force...... The central government thus withdrew from the provinces their activity and life; the provinces were depleted of their life blood by the capi- tal...... This concentration of power was fatal not only to the liberties, but to the material and social well-being of the country. "3 Thus public spirit in France became emasculated, a careless indif­ ference to the common weal took the place of the sense of responsi­ bility in local affairs, a degrading subserviency to the ruling powers of the day gradually took possession even of minds naturally firm and independent, and the instinct as well as the fact of individual freedom became enfeebled and shaken. This spirit of subserviency extended even to persons in power. There is a tendency in bureau­ cratic rule to develop a mutual suspicion and general distrust among those in authority. Everything is known, or supposed to be known,

81 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED to the secret agents of the powerful police; private life is not secure against their prying observation and the knowledge they accumulate of every flaw in the domestic relations or character of those in power or office is constantly held in reserve as a threat or check, not only to serve private ends in cases of personal rivalry, but for the suppression of any inconvenient protest against abuses, or of any attempt at social or political reform. The chiefs of the Government in France, one after another, down to the late president of the Republic, Marshal McMahon, were in the habit, it is said, of consulting the prefect of police first thing every morning, and of receiving his advice on every matter of public or local interest, fearing to act without the approval of that great authority. Public men of high place and character have, it is believed, sometimes refrained from righteous protest or vigorous action on behalf of urgently needed reforms, through a secret fear of the vast power possessed by the omniscient police, a power which may destroy by a breath the char­ acter and prospects of any individual who has had the misfortune to become offensive or dangerous to the bureaucratic rulers. Many unworthy compromises, it is feared, have been made, to conciliate the demon of bureaucracy. "If you will keep silence concerning what you unfortunately know of me, I will maintain the same reserve on what I have discovered concerning you,"-such are the compromises and cowardly agreements born of mutual suspicion. The records of pri­ vate and family life, gathered by espionage and treasured up in the secret cabinets of the police, constitute the instruments of an occult and immoral tyranny by which some of the first movements towards noble enterprise, and the earliest struggles towards freedom have again and again been quenched. To turn for a moment again to England. Where has the true prin­ ciple of self-government been developed with such success and with so wholesome an influence on the national character as among ourselves? yet our own Government has for some fifteen years past gradually assumed a more extreme and centralized control, both through its unconstitutional police system responsible to the minis­ ter alone, and by the modern fashion of the framing and issuing of orders or edicts independently of Parliament, in reference sometimes to Imperial matters and frequently to local objects, these orders being afterwards brought before Parliament for confirmation in the lump. Our Government has thus began to enter on a course of central­ ization, by usurping in fact the functions of Parliament while over­ riding the independence of municipal and local authorities. "It is

82 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE time that these questions should awaken serious consideration in the public mind, and that some check should be given to these insidious advances in the departmental and bureaucratic principle. It may not now be too late; but when the radiating lines from the circumference to the centre are completed and in working order, extrication may be impossible." 4 The system of espionage and mutual intimidation and comprom­ ise, described above as a result of the French bureaucratic system, may appear to us to be a danger still far enough from ourselves. But we shall certainly see this fruit also appear and ripen as time goes on, unless the present tendencies are controlled. That espionage for other purposes than the detection of crime has been and is allowed in our metropolitan police there is reliable evidence to prove. Reference will again be made to that subject bye and bye. The titles of the agents of the Government in the provinces and towns of France have undergone various changes, at different times, but the principle of this mode of governing has been constantly revived. After the great revolution, Napoleon I. established the pres­ ent system of prefects in the capital and in the provincial towns. The Prefecture of police in Paris is nominally and constitutionally under the control of the Paris municipal council; but as a matter of fact it has long freed itself from that control, and has assumed the position of proud independence and irresponsibility which make it at this day so great an embarrassment to the municipal authorities of the capital. Of the twenty-two millions of francs annually spent on the police of Paris, the State only gives seven millions; the rest is fur­ nished by the municipal council. Taking his stand upon these seven millions, the Paris prefect of police professes to be responsible to no one but to the Minister of the Interior, whom he in general too easily manages; for he himself is a "permanent official," and is able to boast of much experience and of the possession of all the secrets of public and private life in Paris, while the minister is removable, and generally enters office a novice in the arcana of police government. The Prefect of the Seine has, in his character as Mayor of Paris, the right to attend all the sittings of the municipal council. The Prefect of Police of Paris also claims this right, and pretends to the office of Mayor of Paris, thus introducing a duality in the office of chief magistrate. The Prefect of police has hitherto arrogated to himself the control of the markets; great abuses have arisen therefrom; the influx of country people and others to the markets having been made use of as an agency in the vast system of espionage and counter­ espionage for political and other purposes. The municipal council is

83 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED however, little by little, destroying these pretensions of the Prefect of police, and the control of the markets will shortly rest solely with the Prefect of the Seine, as Mayor of Paris, and with the municipal council. 5 "If what the Prefect of police claims as his rights were valid, and if he dared to put in practice to the full what he declares to be his rightful functions, no one would be able to move or speak without his permission, and his rule would be a veritable autocracy, extend­ ing to every detail of life."6 For the rest of France, in every muni­ cipality which is above a certain figure of inhabitants, the police is under the single control of the prefect. In the small communes it is under the control of the mayor. The personnel of all the prefectures of the towns is under the direction of the "bureau of general secur­ ity," an office responsible only to the Government. The prefects in the tow11s have the nomination of the schoolmasters of each town, in which they are supposed to consult the "departmental council of public instruction," a body generally very badly composed. The pre­ fects of the towns have not the right of attending the sittings of the municipal councils, nor have they the control of the markets. Throughout all his functions the prefect is identified with the police, whose head he is and who are entirely dependent on him, in­ so-much that it is impossible to separate the two-the police system and the system of prefects. The two are parts of the same system, necessary for one another and bound up inseparably together. No public meeting can be held without the authorization of the prefect, and his representative is present at every such meeting, and at many private meetings, with power to stop these whenever he pleases, and to indicate to the speakers when they are trespassing on ground on which he may consider it undesirable for them to enter. He has of course the control of the police des m

84 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE

Now however, the more thoughtful among the republicans are beginning to see that it is the police system itself which is inimical to liberty, and that the mere change from imperialist to republican prefects is not sufficient,-that what is required is to remove the pre­ fects, to limit the functions of the police, and to substitute municipal for personal authority. 7 Distinct action in this direction was first taken by the municipality of Paris. The Municipal Council of Paris has been slowly reclaiming its constitutional rights during the last few years. Its powers are some­ what indefinitely curtailed, as we have seen, by the almost unlimited powers of the Prefect of Police. In November, 1876, a motion was brought forward in the Municipal Council for stopping the supplies required for carrying on the police des maurs, (the department for the regulation of immorality). This was opposed by the Prefect of Police, who denied the right of the Municipal Council to criticise the administration, or to demand the particular items of the police expenditure. Under these circumstances the notice was withdrawn, and after a debate of much vigour, and lasting over several days, in which the whole question of the police des maurs was fully discussed on its merits, the following important resolution was passed:- "Considering that the Municipal Council cannot turn away from the question of the police des maurs, so important for the security of the Parisian population; considering that it has the right to control those services for which it pays, and to study the reforms which they require; considering that the acts of the police des maurs are not authorised by any law, and that they give rise daily to the perpetra­ tion of actions punishable under the penal code; considering that if at present it is difficult to propose to the Municipal Council to refuse the funds necessary for the police des maurs, it is on the other hand indispensable that that service should be reformed; "Resolved-That a Commission of twelve members be nominated by the Municipal Council at its next sitting to study the question of the police des maurs, and to propose either its abolition or such reforms as it requires." It is clear that thus an important constitutional question was raised, and the municipality, in the resolution just quoted, had def­ initely asserted their right to criticise the acts of the administration, and to control its expenditure. The Prefect gave notice that he would appeal against the legality of this resolution to the President of the Republic, which he accordingly did; and the resolution was an­ nulled by Marshal McMahon, on the grounds of its introductory paragraphs.

85 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED

The Municipal Council were determined, however, not to be beaten, nor to be silenced by the prosecution of one of their mem­ bers, which had just taken place; but, indeed rather stimulated by these things to pursue the path on which they had entered, they passed immediately another resolution simply appointing the com­ mission, and omitting the reasons for its appointment. The Prefect of Police again objected to the right of the municipality even to enquire into the question, and signified his intention of preferring a second appeal to the President of the Republic. But the appeal, if made, seems to have been unsuccessful, inasmuch as the com­ mission was duly constituted, and proceeded with its enquiries. The appointment of this commission indicated the first successful step of the municipality of Paris, the representative of French local self­ government, in curbing the power, hitherto almost unlimited and irresponsible, of the Prefect of Police, the typical representative of centralized police authority; while it inaugurated a step of great moment in the development of constitutional freedom in France. The Municipal Council of Paris judged well in selecting as their first point of attack that department of the police called the Bureau des mmurs, the institution which served as the model for the English contagious diseases acts, (ivomen) of 1866-69. For in this department are gathered together and intensified all the evils incidental to the bureaucratic system in general, such as intimidation by the police, bribery, perpetual spying and eaves-dropping. Added to these, there exists in this department the issuing of general warrants, or rather the permission to arrest without any warrant at all; arrest on sus­ picion only, or on a "belief' or impression formed by the policeman; the union in one person of the offices of accuser, witness, prosecutor, judge and jailor; the absence of any form of just legal trial, the accused being bound to prove her own innocence, (for the regula­ tions of this department apply to women only) instead of being held to be innocent until proved guilty; the absence of the right of appeal; illegal detention before trial; no bail; forcible detention of minors, in defiance of article 34 I of the penal code, and other illegalities. It has been already said that the existence of a vast bureaucracy educates a nation to political incapacity; but this special department of the police which exists for the regulation of vice does more; it educates the nation in moral obliquity; its educational influence is directly subversive of individual and public morality. It establishes a double standard of morality for the sexes. It is glaringly unequal as between man and woman. It places woman in the position of an outlaw, and creates for her a system of slavery worse than that of the negroes

86 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE in America, inasmuch as it involves servitude, not to labour, but to vice. Injustice is immoral; oppression is immoral; the sacrifice of the interests of the weaker to the stronger is immoral; and all these immoralities are embodied in all systems of legalized prostitution in whatever part of the world or under whatever title they exist. For that portion of the police who are directly engaged in working this system, it constitutes a demoralizing influence of the most deadly character, as has been abundantly proved by late revelations in Paris, and by the report of the Commission of enquiry on this system in Hong Kong. But it is not those alone directly concerned with this illegal and unjust institution who are harmed by it; its corrupting influence spreads through the whole of society; for, let it be observed, that the essential element of guilt is, by these authoritative regula­ tions transferred from the vice itself to the infringement of the police regulations in regard to the vice. Men and women, the youth of both sexes, are taught that to be impure in accordance with the police rules is not an offence, and that the only offence is in the infringe­ ment of those rules. Indeed in the various reports which are in our hands on the police des mawrs of various continental cities, the terms "immorality" and "disorder" are applied emphatically alone to unlicensed and unregulated vice; while the order and hygienic well-being of the licensed and regulated resorts of debauchery are described in terms almost of approval in congratulatory periods introduced into the reports, addressed to governments or chiefs of police. The moral obliquity thus introduced into public opinion, is here introduced at a point in social relationship where its introduc­ tion is more calculated than at any other to undermine the whole moral code of the nations where legalized vice exists. Striking at the root of family life by the encouragement of vicious relations, it introduces a complete confusion of the sense of right and wrong, with respect to a vice more typical than any other, and is calculated to reproduce itself in unmentionable moral enormities through the whole fabric of social life. The Municipal Council of Paris did wisely then to direct its first great attack upon this stronghold, taking its stand upon the illegality of the system. The work of the commission appointed by the Municipal Council was suspended by the events following the 16th of May, and the attempt then made to establish a reactionary regime. This attempt included the curbing of the rising power of local self-government among the municipalities. The President of the Paris Municipal Council was thrown into prison on a frivolous pretext. After the

87 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED defeat of this attempt, there followed a time of inactivity in regard to this subject, lasting for about a year. M. Yves Guyot had been prosecuted at the instance of the Prefect of Police, and imprisoned for six months, on account of his statements as to the actions of the police de m

88 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE system generally. The evidence which had been brought forward by the "ex-agent" had shewn that the same corruption penetrated throughout the whole police system. It is indeed impossible that one part of a system can be exposed to continually corrupting tendencies without the whole becoming poisoned; and as M. Guyot wrote, "when we show the public that the liberties of men are sure to be attacked and are attacked by the same machinery which attacks those of women, they will more readily see the truth of our warn­ ings." A series of letters now appeared in the Lanterne signed by a "vieux petit employe," from December 13th, 1878, to January 25th, 1879. These letters revealed startling facts, and proved to demonstra­ tion that the same oppression, though in a minor degree, was being extended by the police to men which had been so long and violently imposed on women. In consequence of these letters a prosecution was commenced against the Lanterne by the Prefect of police; and a trial took place, beginning January 23rd, in which the gerant of the Lanterne was condemned to a fine and imprisonment; but the facts brought out at the trial fully acquitted him in public opinion. The accusations indeed were so well substantiated by dates, by the names, as well of the individual police as of the sufferers, and by the personal evidence given at the trial, that M. Gigot the Prefect, who was present throughout the trial, and who seems to have been really shocked at the abuses existing in the department over which he had been lately placed, requested M. Marcere to grant a commission of enquiry into the whole subject of the police. This commission was nominated; but it very soon tendered its resignation, being unable to obtain evidence from the superior officials. The subordinates, some of them honest men, expressed their disinclination to give evidence from fear of the personal consequences, and the superiors haughtily refused to do so, on the plea of "official secrecy." A serious lesson is here taught by the fact of the powerlessness of Government itself against an abuse which it has too long nourished. At the same time the Prefect, M. Gigot, feeling unable longer to cope with the matter, resigned, and some faint echoes of this agitation began to reach the London news­ papers, when the Minister of the Interior, M. Marcere, in attempting to defend the police, made such a poor appearance that he was obliged to retire from the ministry. A new prefect, M. Andrieux, was appointed in place of M. Gigot, and a considerable alteration took place in the personnel of the police; but its powers and functions remain practically unlimited. Under these circumstances the muni­ cipal council of Paris immediately resumed its contest with the

89 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED police, initiating this renewal by the re-appointment of the commis­ sion which had been in abeyance for nearly two years for investigat­ ing and reporting on the police des m

90 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE criminal code, the repeal of Dissenters disabilities, Catholic emanci­ pation, civil liberty to the Jews, and Parliamentary reform." 9 At the date of the passing of Sir Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act, a somewhat angry discussion was excited, by the fact that the City of London was excluded, and held itself aloof from the new system. Protests were made in Parliament against this failure in Peel's scheme for perfect unity of action, and complete centraliza­ tion. The City continues to the present day its independence of action; it has its own police, under the control of its own municipal­ ity, and in no sense whatever responsible to the Minister of State. The extraordinary fact is probably not very generally realized among us, that the Metropolis of London, containing about one seventh of the people of England and Wales, and including seven parliamentary boroughs, possesses no self government; it is not a municipality; the whole of its government is indeed a usurpation of popular rights. Government by a Prefect of Police, by a Board of Works, or by Parochial Vestries, is unrecognized by the Constitution of England. The perpetuation of such a system of rule as that existing in the Metropolis is not only enervating to the manly independence of the Englishmen who reside there, but is fraught with danger to our constitutional freedom. In London we have in fact all the materials existing for the same despotic government which we have been contemplating as existing in Paris; the same irresponsible head of the police; the same vast police machinery which, though it may not hitherto have been so used, stands a power­ ful engine for political purposes, ready to the hand of any future autocrat or political party who may yield to the strong temptation of making such a use of it. We have been familiar with the idea of espionage in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna; but we shrink from the approach of this system in England. We now see however that paid employes are becoming more and more the fashion of the day, for purposes, if not political, yet somewhat approaching to it, and that spies can be hired by any body of persons or private person at will. We see the tunic and helmet superseding the civil hat and coat introduced by Sir Robert Peel, and attempts made from time to time to arm the police with swords or revolvers; we see the Police Commissioner, riding at the head of the divisional police cavalry in Hyde Park and elsewhere, and the old distinctions between the magistrate and the military officer, between the civil constable and soldier, well nigh obliterated. The thief-takers are being transformed into a division of the House­ hold Brigade, and the infection is spreading from the Metropolis to

91 Tl-IE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED the provinces. '0 We read in provincial papers of Colonel so-and-so, Government Inspector of Constabulary, parading his men in "battalion order, and putting them through a variety of military movements." We have in fact a standing army of ten thousand well drilled soldiers, entirely independent of any annual vote of Parlia­ ment, not subject to the Mutiny Act, but practically in the pay, and under the control of the Home Secretary. Contemplating these things, many among us can feelingly endorse the words of the present Chamberlain of the City of London in saying, "If the flagrant departures from constitutional principles involved in our recent police development be not followed by social and political evil, then all past history has been written in vain." In the matter of police reform for purposes of security and the prevention of crime, the municipality of London first led the way to improvement. Until between fifty and sixty years ago, the ancient system of "watch and ward" exercised by all the male inhabitants, existed in the City, as in the Metropolis and principal towns of England. The Corporation of the City was the first to move towards an improvement, by obtaining the Act I 0. George II., under which they established the night watch, and appointed watchmen for the whole city. Their next step was the appointment under their corpor­ ate powers of a day police, consisting of a hundred men dressed in uniform. It was from these rudimentary elements of a police force that Sir Robert Peel derived his plan of a more efficient police for the Metropolis, his plan however differing essentially from that of the City in being under no constitutional control, and tending towards a service of a military character. The report of the committee of the House of Commons in 1828, on which Sir Robert Peel's measure was based, contained the following: "Your committee are not prepared to recommend any interference with the powers at present exercised by the municipal authorities of the City of London, over the police and watch establishments of the City. They have reason to believe that material improvements have been recently made in the general man­ agement of these establishments." Sir Robert Peel said in the House in 1829, that his bill "did not include the City of London, because it was already under an efficient police." (Times, May 20th). The Morning Chronicle, the Advertiser, and the Globe, reported more fully that "Mr. Peel said if the City had not been included, it was because the committee had reported that the state of the nightly police was much superior to that of Westminster." The Hon. Fox Maule confirmed this opinion some years afterwards, when he said in Parliament, "This measure having been considered by a

92 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE committee of the House, the members of that committee have come almost to a unanimous decision in favour of the opinion which has been so strongly expressed that the control over the police in the City of London ought to be left in the hands of those who now exercise that power. They are convinced that a good and efficient police would be kept up under their superintendence." Sir George Grey as Home Secretary, strongly confirmed this opinion in 1856. But not­ withstanding the repeated testimonies made to the efficiency of the City police, frequent angry allusions continued to be made in Par­ liament and among those in authority, to the exemption claimed and maintained by the City from the control of the Metropolitan Prefect of police and of the Home Secretary. Sir Richard Mayne addressed a letter to Sir George Grey in which he represented in glowing colours, the supposed horrible state of the City as regards crime. The object of Sir Richard and his friends seems to have been to force the con­ clusion that the Metropolitan police system must be extended to the City. Attempts were made by the Whig party in 1839, and again in 1863, to wrest from the citizens of London the control over their own police force. "These attacks made by Government, upon so efficient a force afford a striking illustration of the jealousy with which the Executive regards the independent action of municipal bodies." 11 Probably this jealousy will continue, and efforts will be renewed on the part of the Government to absorb into itself the police management of the City, so long as the Metropolis remains municipally unenfranchised. The future of the Metropolis in this respect does not appear very bright, inasmuch as the desire for self-government has not up to the present time shown itself to have any vigorous existence in the minds of Londoners. It cannot however be said that the inhabitants of that vast Metropolis are incapable of self-government or unworthy of being entrusted with the powers exercised by the City, by Edinburgh, Birmingham, and other free towns. The Londoner is not inferior to his provincial brethren in intelligence and capacity for business; and who would dare to say that he is unworthy to be entrusted with the powers of self-government? It would be well if the inhabitants of the Metropolis, being freemen by inheritance, would determine to become freemen defacto. Municipal freedom, however, will not be offered to them by any Government; it will more probably have to be extorted by the citizens themselves when they shall have determined to possess themselves of an equality of rights with the citizens of other great towns. It must be asked, not as a favour, but as a consti­ tutional right, which cannot and ought not to be withheld by any

93 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED power or government professing to legislate and rule in the spirit of our constitution. If our great Metropolis were enfranchised, being divided into several municipalities, the police being, as in other towns, under the constitutional control of those municipalities, it can scarcely be doubted that the present dangers involved in the principle of central­ ization, would be averted, while sufficient unity of action for any legitimate purpose could be attained. The consequences would be disastrous should the opposite tendency prevail. The Government has lately taken under its control the Prisons throughout the country. This is a step of greater significance and gravity than is generally understood; it is rumoured moreover that it is but a preparation for a much graver inroad on municipal liberties and constitutional government. The Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights describes the above encroachment on popular and constitutional rights in the following manner-"By the Prisons' Act, 1877, the entire control of every gaol in the country and of every person attached to them, from the governor to the warders, is placed in the hands of the Home Secretary, to whom that Act transfers the prisons and their furniture, the control and safe custody of the prisoners and all the powers and jurisdictions at common law, or by Act of Parlia­ ment, or by charter, vested hitherto in prison authorities, or justices in session assembled. "The Home Secretary, thus constituted autocrat of the prisons, is empowered, if he chooses, to recommend to the Queen the appoint­ ment of one or more, not exceeding five, persons of his own selec­ tion, to be "Prison Commissioners," to carry out the instructions which he from time to time may think fit to give them. The justices are directed still to go through the form of appointing, in each dis­ trict, a Visiting Committee, which is to visit the prisons as of old, but is no longer to have any power of control, and is to conform to any rules made by the Secretary of State; who is empowered "to make and publish hereafter, from time to time, repeal, alter, or add to rules, with respect to the duties of a Visiting Committee;" so that at any time the things they may see and the facts they may enquire into, may be limited by the Secretary of State. It will thus be seen that the control of the prisons and, to a great extent, the treatment of the prisoners, has become a matter of personal government, and that the Home Secretary is practically irresponsible, that a serious inroad has been made on the area of local government, and also that by the transfer of the whole personnel of the prisons to his control, an

94 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE immense addition has been made to the number of persons in the direct pay of the Central Government and to the patronage at its disposal. "Considering, therefore, the despotic nature of the powers con­ ferred on the Secretary of State by the Prisons' Act, and the despotic manner in which he has already shown himself disposed to exercise those powers; viewing the Act also in relation to other recent and impending laws-such as the Public Prosecutor's Bill now before Parliament, which will enable a nominee of the Ministry to decide who shall and shall not be charged with any offence, and to employ the public money without limit in promoting the conviction of any person whom he orders to be prosecuted,-it will be seen that it is a link in a chain of tyrannical power being steadily forged, which will enable a Ministry to exercise great oppression over those who may be opposed to it; it is not only creating a great power for oppressing individuals, but it is paying the way to the possibility of coups d'etat. "The people no longer have any guarantee either, on the one hand, that a lawful sentence is duly carried out, or, on the other, that unlaw­ ful oppression and cruelty are not exercised towards the prisoners; while, when any servant of the people, either in the gaols or the police, abuses the power entrusted to him and causes unlawful injury to anyone, he is screened from the public accusation and trial which any private citizen would have to undergo, escapes entirely the pen­ alty which the law assigns to his offence, and is praised, reproved, or dismissed at the good pleasure of the Minister. Manslaughter is no longer manslaughter if committed by a policeman, a gaoler or a gaol doctor." 12 It has been said,-it is to be hoped without any solid foundation of truth,-that it is contemplated by Government to proceed from the above measure to take under its control the entire police of the country. This will certainly not be accomplished without a struggle. The municipalities of the Kingdom will not suffer their ancient char­ ters and liberties thus to be obliterated by the stroke of the pen of a Secretary of State, nor even by the vote of a misguided Parliament. Yet if there be any truth in this rumour there is deep cause for anxiety, considering the silent concessions which have been, and are made, year by year, to such encroachments, owing to the want of an awakened sense of the consequences of such advances towards centralization. The very fact of the absence of any demand in the metropolis for equality of rights with other cities, and of the sur­ render which they have already long ago made of constitutional freedom in this respect, may be-and there is much reason to fear-

95 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED will be, the signal, the precedent, and the excuse for the withdrawal of the same freedom from other cities. The radiating lines from the circumference to the centre will then be securely laid, after the fash­ ion of a great telegraphic system, and the necessarily increasing lan­ guor which will be developed in the action of local authorities, in regard to their own affairs, will quickly afford a pretext for tightening the grasp of the central authority; and, as has been said, extrication from this position may then be impossible. May Heaven avert from us such a calamity, which would prove to be the beginning of the end of England's true greatness! The history of France proves that one of the results of such cen­ tralization would be the crushing out of all life and vigour in the conduct of local affairs; leaving our hitherto active provincial func­ tionaries as mere puppets in the hands of Government officials. It would be a death-blow to English independence of character, and to that strength and self-reliance of which we have hitherto been accus­ tomed to boast as characteristics of our country men. A full-blown system of espionage, both for private and political purposes, would quickly follow such a state of things. Already inhabitants of the metropolis begin to complain of the unpleasantness of being "placed on the list of suspects, and being dogged by strangers six feet high, and of military aspect, while pursuing one's lawful calling." These things remind us that we have already fallen upon degenerate days, but above all we are reminded of it by the efforts continually made for the extension throughout the country of that portion of police rule, in which, as I have said, are intensified and stereotyped all the evils of the worst form of bureaucracy, together with the systematic violation of the most ancient and generally acknowledged legal and natural rights. The present Chief Commissioner of the metropolitan police, Sir Edmund Henderson, being a man of high principle, and acknowl­ edged prudence in the control of the immense machine over which he presides, we have had for some years past comparatively few of those outrages which a Government police is so constantly liable to commit, owing to the extensive and unconstitutional powers placed in their hands. But under a less prudent or conscientious chief the scene will change. In Paris and every bureaucratically-governed cap­ ital we have the fullest proofs that not only is a State police apt to fail in its duty of protecting the persons of the citizens, but that its agents become themselves the violators of personal liberties, the assailants of the modesty and chastity of women, and the cause, frequently, of public disorders. M. Engelhard, a member of the Municipal Council

96 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE of Paris, in a public discourse Feb. I st, 1879, in the presence of that council and of the Prefect of Police, said, addressing the Prefect: "You must render to us an account not only of the employment of municipal funds, but of the actions of that immense army which is under your orders. It is impossible for us to admit that the persons destined to be the guardians of public safety and the auxiliaries of justice, should themselves continue to give the example of violent assaults upon personal liberty, of immorality, and of an arbitrary despotism." The danger of this growing tyranny on the part of the police is so much the greater now for us in England, because of the introduction of that very element which has so rapidly and so deeply corrupted the personnel of the police in many other capitals, i.e. the constituting of a portion of the metropolitan force, as an organized body of women-hunters, with the most frightfully arbitrary and irresponsible powers, to pursue, to accuse, to condemn, and to hurry off to the most horrible and unnatural form of punishment, any woman who may be an immoral person or not, or to whom they may have a personal enmity. To devote a certain number of the police force, acting under Government, to such an education as this, and for the exercise of such powers and functions, is a sure method of introducing into the whole force an arbitrary spirit, and immoral traditions and modes of action, which must exercise a deteriorating influence on the principles and personal character of the whole of the official staff under Government rule. The people of England will endure for a long time, and with tolerable patience, the tyranny and abuses thus brought in; they will endure them, until perhaps some great scandal occurs which will agitate the public mind and bring about, not, probably, the abolition of the system, but the mere transfer of the unconstitutional power into more trusted hands. Such a transfer will not essentially mend matters, and the same abuses will again spring up and flourish. I am permitted by Mr. Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of the City of London, to quote the following instances of an approach to the political espionage of foreign countries which we deprecate, having found a place in the metropolis. "You ask me for my personal experience of the unconstitutional action of the Metropolitan Police, as alluded to at p. 155 and at the head of p. 170 in my Statistical Vindication of the City of London. The facts were as follows. "In the year 1848, the Government, (a liberal one I regret to say), brought in a Health of Towns Bill, containing clauses which would,

97 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED

if passed into law, have deprived the City of its popularly elected Commission of Sewers, substituting for it a Government Board. I was instructed to assist in opposing those clauses and in passing a Bill, promoted by the Corporation, for conferring greater sanitary powers upon the City commissioners. While thus engaged, I became aware that a barrister who acted with me, also a secretary of a sani­ tary association, and myself, were, as I have stated while pursuing our lawful calling, dogged by strangers, six feet high of military aspect. In other words we were, although not of the criminal class, under police supervision for political objects. "We thereupon laid a trap to satisfy ourselves that we were sub­ jected to political espionage. A placard announcing a public meeting was, in the hearing of one of these suspected police spies, directed to be issued without the printer's name upon it. This, being an offence at law, had the desired effect of inducing the spy to arrest the bill­ sticker, who was lodged the same night in Walworth police station. This blunder on the part of an over zealous official, was instantly corrected by the authorities at Scotland Yard, who before morning ordered his discharge. This was the most serious part of the incident, showing as it did that the metropolitan police of that day were in such collusion with the magistrates appointed by the Home Office, that a criminal charge could be made, and erased from the charge­ sheet in order that a matter might be hushed up. Such a course is simply impossible in the City, where if a charge is made, even under a total misapprehension, it must be dealt with magisterially. "I will only add that at the very time that a bill-sticker was so arrested, for an undoubted violation of the law, a placard was on the wall of Kingsland turnpike, issued and signed by the head of the metropolitan police, ivithout the printer's name; this bill would have appeared before the magistrate at Walworth, had not the police so cleverly but so unconstitutionally shut the door upon enquiry into their doings. "I give you another instance of the tendency of a police, irrespon­ sible to popular control, to exceed their powers, and interfere with the lawful and beneficial action of the public. "In 1853 I undertook the management of an experiment for pro­ viding elevating amusement for the working classes in London, in connection with the Working Men's Educational Union, under the patronage of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Mr Cowper-Temple, and other philanthropists. The premises then lately occupied by the Oratorian fathers, in King William Street, Strand, were engaged and were adapted to combine lecture hall, free library and a coffee tavern. I

98 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE carried on the work for a year; the coffee tavern became self­ supporting until the death of the lessee some years after; but the lectures, although beautifully illustrated by dioramas, did not pay their expenses, and after devoting twelve months of my time gratuit­ ously, and as much money as 1 could afford, they were abandoned. These beneficial intentions, at a cost of some thousands of pounds, were mainly frustrated by the persistent and, at that time unintelli­ gible, opposition of the metropolitan police. Bills on boards were not permitted to occupy one inch of standing room in front of the prem­ ises and elsewhere, although it was pointed out that similar means of advertisement were permitted at theatres in the crowded thorough­ fare of the Strand. But the principal hindrance to the work arose from an order from Scotland Yard to tear down and deface every placard on the walls of the metropolis announcing the dioramas. This was done until the printer (Harrild of Shoe Lane) gave up the contract in despair-£ 140 having been expended in bills posted over night, but defaced before morning, in an area of 200 square miles, by the ubiquitous action of the police. The placards had upon them a picture of a North American Indian in his war paint, and the first reason given for police interference, was that they did not approve of pictures; and when it was rejoined that other pictures adorned the walls, the size of the bills-3-ft. by 4-ft.-was alleged as the offence. That this was not the true reason became apparent when Mr. Woodin, the polyphonist took the rooms in the succeeding year; for he was allowed a pictorial placard four times as large; and pictures of theatrical incidents ten times as large, enliven at this moment the dead walls of the metropolis. These statements will hardly be credited; but they can be corroborated by gentlemen and persons in my employ in 1853-4, who are now living. "Certain facts, public and private, which have since then come to my knowledge, convince me that corruption lay at the base of all this unaccountable and unfortunate hindrance to a work, which after twenty-five years is being again attempted, but which might have been successful, with the happiest results to the welfare of the work­ ing classes, as many years since. It is right that I should add that all this took place before Colonel Henderson became Commissioner of metropolitan police, and I doubt not that any complaint of corrup­ tion or of unconstitutional stretch of power on the part of his force would meet with his prompt attention. The system, however, with which he is connected will always be liable to abuse, even under the most careful and conscientious administrator. Under a careless or unscrupulous head it must become an engine of oppression. As in

99 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED the City of London and the corporate towns of England, there should always be a controlling Watch Committee to whom com­ plaint and appeal could be made, custodire custodes." What reforms do we propose? it will be asked. What measures shall we adopt in order to counteract the prevailing tendency? The following suggestions are offered. First.-The placing of all police under municipal control. Secondly.-lts decentralisation, not only by removing it from the direct control of the central government, but by relegating certain duties now combined under one great organization to other persons and offices, and by inviting and encouraging as much as possible the action of the citizens themselves, in the guardianship of their own persons and property, and in the maintenance of order. Thirdly.-The restriction of the functions of the police to what is essentially legal and constitutional, and the guarding against that needless and mischievous multiplication of laws enacted year by year, whereby the police service and staff are necessarily greatly increased, and its functions enormously enlarged beyond what is good or safe for the public. The opinions already expressed on this entire subject are certainly not shared by everyone. In a still less degree probably will sympathy be accorded to the expression of a conviction, that the social organ­ ization under which we live is itself deeply at fault, and that therefore any reformation in any particular department which may seem to be called for cannot be accomplished alone, or as an isolated reform; but that it must be a part of a more thorough and general reforma­ tion. No society has within it the permanent elements of self­ preservation which is dominated by particular interests or by a privileged class. Any suggestion therefore for reform in the matter of our police system cannot for the present be considered as expressing more than a transition; modifications and partial reforms may be brought about, and a check may be given to downward tendencies; but not until a deeper reformation takes place in society, can we hope that the true principles of self-government, the respect of individual rights, and the responsibility of all citizens in the maintenance of order will be restored and made to apply to our modern institutions. The police in France, as we have seen, is a military and a governing body, such as it is in a more developed state in Russia, and such as it will soon be in England if the nation does not prevent it. A military police immediately under the control of Government, produces as we have seen, a double evil, by placing in the hands of the executive Government which already possesses the army, another power more

100 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE formidable than the army itself-a power which in France has not only to a great extent ceased to preserve order, but has been made itself the engine of disturbing the public peace, of establishing tyr­ anny, of consolidating misrule, and of provoking riots and revolu­ tions. This has been the case in Lyons, Paris and Marseilles. In the capital itself a military State police is more especially dangerous; it is a Damocles' sword constantly suspended over the city; it is a force of 10,000 men with its detectives, both men and women, watching every household, and with its "agents provocateurs." "Such a force is more terrible in Paris for a coup d'etat than twenty regiments of infantry; it disperses itself among the masses, lays traps for them, and by excit­ ing the people's anger, eventually drives them to violence. The army may be won over to a just popular cause; but not so the police; whilst the one is seen, the other remains invisible. During the coup d'etat of 1851, eighty commissaires of police, it is said, did more work than the whole army put together." 13 The police in a free country must therefore be placed under the strict control of a body of distinctly popular constitution, indepen­ dent of the central executive; for all history teaches that as soon as it becomes the agent of a central power, its mission gradually becomes political, and its activities being diverted into other channels, it soon loses its efficiency for the very object for which it was instituted, namely, that of watching over the security of the citizens. The police must in future be civil servants, under local control, and not a semi-military force acting under Government. With regard to the second suggestion; the multiplication of the duties and functions to be performed by one great machine appears to be an error, and one which could be without difficulty corrected. To glance again at the Paris police. In the protests which have recently appeared in the public journals this evil is thus commented upon. "As for the Prefecture of Police, that huge, unwiedly, dark and costly machine, when one examines it closely one may see that a great number of the services included in it are either dangerous inutilities or duplicate services which might be dispensed with. For example, taking the first division; amongst its functions we find political matters, and matters of general safety; safety of the President of the Republic; collection and study of political documents; secret associ­ ations; plots; assaults; and judicial prosecutions connected with them. In the second division we find, measures to be taken on occa­ sion of public ceremonies; fetes; reviews; horse races, &c.; fire bri­ gade; service in public establishments and shops; theatres and balls;

IOI THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED cafe concerts; assaults of arms; evening parties; reunions; societies; clubs; meetings concerning public instruction; public worship; the carrying out of laws and rules relating to printing, and circulating libraries; placards and bill-stickers; the sale of newspapers; col­ portage; and the circulation of tracts, handbills, and other writings." In regard to this multitude of duties the Paris critic remarks: "A bureaucracy will be no longer necessary for these things when the Government and police cease to believe that nothing can be done in life without their aid. For a long time past we have demanded free­ dom of public meetings and of association; as soon as these are granted, many of the above duties of the police will naturally become needless." "As for public worship, what have the police to do with that? and as regards printing and publishing, when we have liberty of the press, this office of the police may be dispensed with. In regard to placards and public announcements, the control of these may be a proper attribute for a despotic government, but is out of place in a free country. In times when a bureaucratic government imagined that it was its duty to pry into, and direct, not only the acts, but also the words and the thoughts of citizens, incapable themselves of acting or thinkingjustly, the luxury of this vast mass of functions was perhaps allowable; in our days and under a free government, they are both inexplicable and improper." The above criticisms are not wholly inapplicable to the state of things in our metropolis, and it is not clear that a frank and satisfac­ tory answer has ever been given to the question, why, for example, those men, who do us so great a service in superintending the traffic in our crowded London streets, and directing the movements of the long lines of vehicles, should form a part of the metropolitan police, directed from Scotland Yard, and under the control of the Home Secretary. It seems scarcely necessary that the semi-military attrib­ utes belonging to the police should be assumed by such persons. The next step would not unnaturally be, that all pew-openers in the churches and chapels, and all shop-walkers in the great shops should be included in the same force, with the helmet and baton to inspire the proper amount of awe in worshippers and customers. 14 A decentralization in this sense indicated, would be a great advan­ tage, as it would subdivide and make less dangerous "the present huge, unwieldy, dark and costly machine." In connection with the third suggestion, it is not out of place to sound a warning for a future Parliament, and more especially for a possible future liberal Parliament, against the multiplication of

102 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE enactments which involve of necessity a continual expansion of police powers and constant additions to the force which is already sufficiently vast. Under the late Government, laws upon laws were enacted with a rapidity and almost a recklessness unparalleled per­ haps in our past parliamentary history. No doubt these laws were all instigated by excellent motives. Every benevolent person who had a hobby, or some panacea for putting right an evil which he saw in society, took his complaint to Parliament and got a law passed to meet his special view of the case. During that period of meddling legislation the fact seems to have been altogether over-looked that by the multiplication of laws you necessarily multiply offences, though those offences may be only of a technical kind, and that you thus necessarily multiply also the agents whose duty it is to see that these laws are obeyed, and to bring up for punishment those who infringe them. A law is quietly passed, for example, which is to be enforced throughout the whole of the kingdom, and in certain clauses of which we find it stated, that the police must act in such and such a manner, entering houses, night and day; and watching the inhabit­ ants. A few harmless words these may appear, but what a machinery, and what a vexatious amount of interference with our social and domestic affairs do these few words call into being? Much of this recent legislation of which I speak, has been found to be exceedingly clumsy, involving the necessity of amendment upon amendment in succeeding sessions of Parliament; but besides that, it has been found to be very despotic, although it may not have been the intention of the framers that it should be so. Very much of this domestic legislation tends unfortunately to the steady increase of the criminal class, by the rapid creation of new offences, followed by new pains and penalties. In some cases moreover it tends to cut off from the offender the means and the hope of rising again from the stage of criminality to that of a reinstated member of society; it involves much espionage and a grievous amount of domiciliary visit­ ation. The broad principles of our Constitution, recognizing as they do in so happy a manner the necessity of individual freedom and responsibility, cannot be made to bend to this species of legislation; so that a considerable portion of these modern enactments, are obliged to be put into force, outside, so to speak, of the Constitution. Sometimes indeed they are a direct violation of its principles. Others of these laws run counter to the great economic principle of the freedom of industry; such are those clauses of the Factory Acts bearing upon the work of women. Others, such as the Habitual

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Criminals' bill, tend to fill our streets still more with spies, and to drive to despair those lapsed classes of men and women whom it is so much in the interests of the State to save, by restoring them to freedom when once their legal punishment has been endured; for without such freedom that self-respect cannot be regained which is the necessary foundation for good character and conduct. How many a sad recital have we not heard from men and women, boys and girls, who, having been discharged from prison, have been prevented from standing upright again among their fellows, and hampered in the effort to gain an honest livelihood by the constant espionage and watchful guardianship of the ever present policeman. There is again the Pedlars' Licensing bill which forbids any poor creature to get a license to sell anything, who may have formerly been committed for a legal offence, and which requires of those who are licensed the constant renewal of the license, and attention to a var­ iety of rules which honest persons feel to be needlessly imposed upon them. Is there no danger of increasing by this means that proletariate class which has been found in some modern States, as well as in ancient Rome, so heavy a weight as almost to break down the com­ monwealth? Is there no danger by such interference with industry of breeding a spirit of despondency and sullenness in the people, and of a want of respect for Law? It should be the aim of wise legislation to throw wide open the door of recovery to the lapsed classes, and to create, as little as possible, new offences, which though legal offences, are not morally criminal, yet which bring the offender under the ban of social dis­ grace. It should also be the aim of wise legislation as much as possible to prevent these great evils which our law-makers show themselves so ready to regulate. It would appear that Parliament has assumed that we are to continue for ever to have amongst us so many thousands of paupers, so many thousands of habitual crim­ inals, of outcast women, of drunkards, &c., and on this assump­ tion it frames measure upon measure for the regulation of these evils, and for compulsory dealing with the victims of them when they have reached a certain stage of hopeless depravity. The law which was passed under the late Government for licensing baby­ farming, and another law to be applicable to habitual drunkards, both provided for the expected continuance of a frightful evil, but neither of them had in them a particle of prevention. Above all, in sanitary legislation the increase of police agency and the extension of police powers is to be deprecated: the hygienic aims of such laws may be in general, and on the whole are, most excellent; yet to

104 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE some extent they are grounded upon opinion only, and that, the opinion of a mere clique; an opinion which has in it nothing of the authority of those great principles of right and wrong which are written upon the human conscience. The forcible doctoring of the people, whether they will or no, is, as a matter of mere policy, a most dangerous experiment: the magisterial powers now granted to State doctors, and the amount of domiciliary visitation and con­ trol already legalized for the sanitary police, to which the families of the poor have to submit, are not likely to make the people in love with the laws, or to induce in them a readiness to help their operation. These multiplied enactments, clumsy and heavy-handed as they often are, are beginning to be applied to matters which too nearly concern our consciences and feelings; it appears sometimes that we shall have to fight, not only for our civil rights, but for the freedom of our hearths and homes, our persons and our thoughts. I have pointed out the evils resulting from the multiplication of police agencies and the extension of police powers which are bound up with that other evil of over-legislation; but if we can imagine that much-to-be-dreaded measure as carried out, of the centralization of the police of the whole country, its withdrawal from local control, and its direction from Scotland Yard or Westminster, what a picture is then presented to the mind, of the tyranny and consequent anarchy which must ensue in our social and even our domestic affairs. Local control having been then withdrawn, errors and wrongs committed and inflicted by the agents of the supreme and central authority, will accumulate and increase, and no adequate redress will be possible; for we know well by the history of other centralized countries how hopeless is the idea of appeal for the redress of a wrong (proffered by any person not in a position of influence) where the appeal can only be made to, and the redress sought from the hand itself which has inflicted the wrong. The single or united force of local authorities which can now be called into action will then have perished, and those who have allowed or invited the creation of this central and paternal rule will be obliged to sub­ mit in silence; for the father whom they have elected over their heads will become indifferent to their wishes and wrongs, or like the ruler described in the Proverbs may prove to be "a roaring lion and a ranging bear." It will not be found to have been amiss that the persons now out of office should have experienced a severe and a prolonged season of adversity in respect to their political position, if only they learn the

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lessons during this time of waiting which they so sorely need to learn; for as already intimated, the late liberal Government was undoubtedly leading us into a dangerous path, a path which, though starting from a very different point, will land us, if far enough fol­ lowed, at the very point to which some of us dread that the present reactionary tendency should lead us; a point at which we should find our liberties sorely crippled, if not gone; constitutional guarantees thrown down or destroyed, and a tyranny set up in our midst the approach of which is as yet too little suspected. The dimensions of this article will not allow me to dwell upon the changes which have been gradually taking place in the relations of provincial authorities to the central Government, to enter into the question of Provisional orders and Local Government Bills, nor yet to point out the significant tendency of some of those proposals and overtures, having in them something of the character of a bribe made by the Executive to a local bodies, whereby for financial help granted by the State the provincial body yields up a portion of its authority and responsibility. State aid means of course, just so far, State interference and State control. No doubt there is much inducement for municipal bodies to accept such aid; but to yield to this temptation is to weaken the power and authority of the local government for the whole of the future. It is urged on all hands, and sometimes with much exaggeration, that town councils are apathetic in managing their local affairs, that public spirit is on the wane amongst them, that egotism and party interests, rather than the pub­ lic good, are their governing motives, and that a less honourable class of citizens now fill this post than was formerly the case. Be this as it may, what ground is there for supposing that the same characteristics should not be found to be developing in those who represent us in the State as in those who represent us locally? They belong to the same race, and they are subject to the same influences. If public spirit decays in the one set of men, we may expect to see it do the same in the other; if egotism and the spirit of faction prevail in the one, we may be sure they will be seen in the other; and if a less honourable class of men covet civic functions, it is probable that the higher offices in political life will also begin to cease to be coveted by men of the highest character. Among the many disadvantages which we already reap from the character and tendencies of our metropolitan police system, not the least is the fact of the contempt, if not the hatred, with which the agents of that system come to be regarded by the people. This is greatly to be regretted, both on account of the public in general, and

106 GOVERNMENT BY POLICE on account of those men, for whom, as representatives of the law, we should feel nothing but sentiments of respect. The life of the ordin­ ary police agent is not altogether an easy or an enviable one. The French writer, already quoted, says, in a letter to a Republican jour­ nal of Paris, of the date of December 18th, 1878, on this subject: "The policeman himself, in Paris, is watched and spied upon. Each man doubts his comrade; he is obliged to keep his thoughts to him­ self; he never has a free day; when all Paris in en fete, the police constable is at work; sometimes the directions given to him are not clear, and he must interpret them occasionally at his own risk; he must be at once polite and firm. Drenched with rain, tramping through the mud, and through fogs, in the midst of crowds of vehicles, in dangerous places, sometimes exposed to personal assaults and violence, obliged always to remain passive under insults,-one may almost say, as Figaro said of servants,-'how many masters would be found worthy to play the part of valets, if one required of them all the virtues which masters require of their servants?' " In looking over the pages of the annual police reports, and observ­ ing how many members of the force are prematurely laid aside by rheumatism and other effects of exposure, one cannot but seriously regret that these poor men, to whom we owe so much of our per­ sonal safety and comfort, should be placed in a position which deteriorates the character, while it produces a dangerous antagonism between the officials of Government and the rest of society. It is not a pleasant task to look into the next few years; but we must not shrink from this duty, any more than from the study of present events; for we may draw thence profound and solemn lessons. The Almighty Law-giver has planted in the breast of man the love of justice, of order, and of freedom; and these principles form the basis of what is called Natural Jurisprudence, "a code of relative duty deriving its authority from impressions which form a primary and essential part of our moral constitution;" 15 and it is from this that the Common Law of our country is derived; by this it is that that law is rendered sacred and dear to the hearts of a wise and understand­ ing people; only so long as it continues to be based on these prin­ ciples can it be called a law; "a law whose foundations are laid broad and deep in nature and reason, and therefore are not to be removed from these foundations by any power upon earth." 16 But when these inflexible rules of justice begin to be violated, confusion and anarchy will ensue; and in the great tempest which will follow, many precious things will be destroyed, the loyalty of the

107 THE CONSTITUTION VIOLATED people towards the Government will be changed to hatred, and their homage to scorn; gloom and factious disorder will prevail by turns; the nation will lose its relish for peace and self-restraint; a class of men to whom a state of order is a sentence of obscurity, will, as so often in previous history, be brought into a dangerous prominence by intestine disturbances. Superficial observers consider such per­ sons to be the cause of public unquiet; but in truth they are nothing but the effect of it. It is impossible for the patriot to look forward to the future of England from the present time without misgiving. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance; and never was that vigilance more called for than now. Thousands and tens of thousands of well-meaning persons are ignorantly or feebly acquiescing in the gradual loss of their liberties. It is only the few, who, looking beneath the surface, and having read history aright, are able to see the inevitable connec­ tion between the present seed-time and the harvest of the future. It was by "high sacrifice of labour, without pause, even to the death," that the preservation of our best liberties in the past was purchased. Let us hope that, though we may have fallen upon the eve of gloomy times, great spirits will again arise amongst us, such as many of those in the past who willingly suffered and died for the maintenance of liberty; who underwent toils and penalties, not for themselves, but for those sacred principles, the maintenance of which was vital for the happiness of future generations. We shall have to pass through storms and tempests. Governments and authorities will be shaken to the dust. But there is "a voice in the groves of Dodona which is not of the wind." Let us listen to its teachings. It is true that "the wrath of man worketh not the right­ eousness of God;" yet powers and qualities are called forth during any stern conflict with evil, which bring, even here, their own exceed­ ing great reward. No men need to be slaves to bad laws who desire to be free; no nation needs to submit to injustice or to bad government; the very expression denotes a voluntary act. That alone is good for us which Heaven permits to be permanent; and nothing endures which is founded upon injustice. The true Commonwealth is that which is built upon a faithful observance of the great contract which unites together the various orders of the State; on personal freedom granted to all, and personal responsibility exercised by all; on the loyal fulfilment of reciprocal obligations; on civil and religious liberty, and the pure and equal administration of the laws. Such a Commonwealth alone will endure, because it has for its ground-work the sanction of the All-Wise and the Ever-Just.

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Notes I Lieber, Political Ethics. 2 Dr. Colquhoun in recommending the introduction into the new Police system of London of the Police regulation and licensing of Prostitution says-"ln adopting the proposed measure the example of Holland may be quoted, where, under its former Government, the morals of the people in general were supposed the purest of any in Europe, while the Police system for regulating prostitution was considered as among the best. Italy has also long shown an example, where prostitutes were actually licensed, with a view to secure chastity against the inroads of violence, and to prevent the public eye from being insulted by scenes of lewdness and indecorum."-A Treatise 011the Police of the Metropolis, by P. Colq11hou11,LL. D.• Ja11.1800. 3 Democracy in Europe, vol. 11.Sir T. Erskine May. 4 Self-Government in Towns, J. A. Picton. 5 Communicated by a municipal councillor of Paris. 6 Ibid. 7 The exchange of a centralized bureaucracy for local self-government would not however necessarily exclude the institution for the regulation of vice, if the inhabitants of the country were desirous to have it. In Belgium, and in some other parts of Europe, the system of organised prostitution is under the control of the municipalities and communes of the different towns. Great complaint is made by the supporters of this institution in Belgium of the difficulties arising from the want of a more powerful central control, showing that this arbitrary system for the pro­ tection of profligacy does not harmonize or work well with free institu­ tions, and that it succeeds best under an imperial or bureaucratic rule. Its upholders invariably demand, sooner or later, in order to ensure success, universality of application, and a strongly centralized administration. These things they cannot always obtain in countries like Belgium where one commune may adopt the system and another reject it, and where the authority of the Burgomestres of each municipality extends no further than the limit of their own commune. 8 Revelations of an ex-agent of the police of morals in Paris. To be obtained of F. C. Banks, 2, Westminster Chambers, London, S. W. 9 Statistical Vindication of the City of London. IO Statistical Vindication. 11 Statistical Vindication of the City of London, p. 116. 12 Several instances have lately occurred showing the way in which power thus conferred on a single Minister is likely to be used by him. John Nolan, a respectable and industrious youth of 18, convicted of the crime of being found in an unoccupied house, and sentenced to three months' hard labour, (the heaviest sentence permitted by the law), entered Clerkenwell Prison strong and healthy, and was carried out of it a corpse at the end of the three months. It was proved that he had been subject to continual punishment of bread and water and "plank bed," in severely cold weather, and he died of inflammation of the lungs, caused, as the coroner's jury stated, by the treatment he had received in prison from the Governor and Surgeon. Instead of sending these men for open

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trial, Mr. Cross appointed three doctors of his own choosing to enquire into the circumstances and make a private report to himself, which they did, entirely exonerating his servants, the accused men, from all blame. A cab-driver, named Edward Harris, was thrown off his cab by a collision in the street, and stunned. A Policeman, who saw him fall, arrested him, locked him up at the station all night without help, and charged him before the magistrate next morning with being drunk, suppressing the facr of the fall. The magistrate sent him to prison for a month, but, before he was removed, the serious nature of his injuries became more apparent, and he was recalled and the punishment can­ celled. He was then left to go home alone, where he almost immediately died. Questioned about this story in the House of Commons, Mr. Cross stated that it was evident that the policeman was to blame, and as soon as he was acquainted with the facts. he gave orders to rhe Inspector of police to deal with rhe case. Again there is no trial, no vindication of justice. and the public is not allowed to know how the case has been dealt with. On February 17th, Mr. Cross was asked in Parliament whether he was aware that printed Rules were sent to the Lancashire County Gaol, stating that female prisoners should be put to the treadmill, and whether hard labour of that kind had not for many years been held to be unfit for women. Mr. Cross explained that, by a mistake, identical rules were prepared for male and female prisoners, and, by another mistake, a copy of the rules was sent by a clerk to the prison in question before it had been revised by the Commissioners. The public has not been informed whether the persons who made these two serious "mistakes" have even been "dealt with by an Inspector." On no pretext whatever ought the complete control of the prisons, which are maintained by the people, to be placed in the hands of one practically irresponsible man, who can order a private enquiry by his own nominees into the conduct of others of his nominees who have acted under his instructions, and direct them to make a confidential report to himself. 13 Adhemard Lecler. 14 The Fire Brigade of London, a noble and efficient force, seems likely to be before long included in the army of Scotland Yard, if one may judge from the tone of certain paragraphs is the annual reports of the different metropolitan superintendents of police to their chief. These record the gallantry (of which we entertain no doubt) of members of the metro­ politan force, in extinguishing certain fires, before the firemen had arrived; and there seems, in the reports made, a side glance at these firemen, acting under the Board of Works, as at a rival force which it would be well to absorb into the great central machine. The Humane Society may perhaps become similarly absorbed, and the saving of per­ sons from drowning, with the measures to be taken for their restoration, will be another item added to the already vast and multifarious duties of the Home Secretary's great corps. The Metropolitan Police Report for 1878 states that 18,259 dogs had been arrested by the police in London in the previous year; Superintendent Thos. Butt of the P. Division pleads with his chief, in this report, for the favour to be granted to the police

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who take up dogs, of wearing plain clothes; for, he says, the police carry­ ing off dogs "are frequently subject to derision, and sometimes followed a long distance by hordes of children, commiserating the unfortunate dog. I do not hesitate to say it is a very disagreeable duty to carry out in uniform, and objectionable to most men." Here then we shall have, if this request be granted, an addition to the ranks of the "plain clothes" men, of whose increasing number and unusual functions we have already some reason to complain. The reason given for this centralization and uniformity of rule, of dress and of drill, is that it "ensures unity of action." But what unity of action can you want or have among persons whose functions differ so widely as those of the regulators of street traffic, and the thief-takers for example? This unity of action pleaded for, and the machine-like response to a given signal from the State could only be called for in matters which are better let alone. 15 Abercrombie on the Moral Feelings. 16 Coke's Institutes, p. 56.

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