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THE POLICE.*

SIR ROBERT PEEL'S Act, organising our present Police Force, was one of the many executive Reforms which entitle his memory to the gratitude of the community. On the whole, it has worked well; but those fears which at the time of its introduction were so broadly expressed, that it would open opportunities for petty oppression, and trench on that personal liberty which is an Englishman's peculiar boast, have proved to be not entirely without foundation. The upper and middle classes are excessively unwilling to listen to any animadversions on the Police; they derive all the benefits of the institution, and its defects very rarely touch them. Their property and their persons are protected, and they owe to the Policeman freedom from a thousand anxieties. To them he is the well-attired respectful officer, ever ready to assist them in little difficulties; temperate though steady in his opposition to venial infringements of the law; is sensible enough to wink at a little excess in well-dressed men ; is a name of terror to importunate beggars and insolent cabmen; and even if he be a little too familiar down-stairs, the good housekeeper tolerates his constant attendance as the best protection from burglars, just as she keeps a cat, though he too may now and then make free in the larder.

Yet there is a class to whom the Policeman does not appear to fulfil simply the functions of a Guardian Angel. It is a class who never want him to clear the way to a carriage; whom he very inadequately protects from any

* Published in The Inquirer of Saturday, Feb. 26, 1853.

but the last extremes of violence; whom sometimes his duties and sometimes his temper require him to coerce ; to whom he does not feel bound to be polite; and whom if drunk he takes not home, but to the station-house. Among this class there is a soreness of feeling about the Police, which is a very unpleasant symptom. It arises less from the inconvenience endured from a vigorous execution of real duties (the thieves don't feel it) than from petty acts of oppression and injustice. That arbitrary power, even within a very narrow range, cannot be entrusted to men, especially uneducated men, without some degree of abuse, is a truth that should only make us the more anxious to limit so inevitable an evil, and neither indolence nor cowardice ought to prevent us from steadily repressing it within the very narrowest boundaries. The Policeman is protected in the discharge of his duty by a special severity of the law, and rightly so; but, on the other hand, a breach of the law by its appointed guardians constitutes, and ought to be visited as a double offence. Several incidents lately have tended to show that our Police are growing too sensible of the power and immunity of their office, and not sufficiently so of its responsibilities. Some of the Metropolitan parishes have laid formal complaints of them before the Secretary of State. The temporary deification they received at the time of the Great Exhibition, when they were felt doubly necessary, and therefore doubly adored by all old ladies and feeble persons generally, has, we fear, done something permanently to impair their character. A Policeman on duty considers himself taboo, a sacred vessel; to "interfere with a Policeman in the discharge of his duty" is a recognised expression for the worst form of lèse-majesté now known; and the holy man himself thinks it no less a crime to interpose where he is acting in excess of his duty, or even when culpably departing from it. The great flaw in the working of the system, and the practical point to which we wish to draw attention, is the extreme

difficulty of obtaining redress in case of any infraction of the Law by the Police.

The poorer classes never attempt it; a brief experience has proved to them its fruitlessness, and the hopelessness of attaining to the truth; they bear the insolence of office in silence, but not without heart-burning; and when the higher classes on some rare occasions are brought into collision with the Police, they are astonished, petrified to find that even for one of them justice is difficult. That a coalheaver should have his head broken and himself be imprisoned for the assault; well, that is an accident that will sometimes occur, good order must be kept, the Police are a praiseworthy body of men, it is not only troublesome, it is ungrateful, to inquire too closely into these matters: but that a clergyman should thus have the tables turned on him, and find himself charged on solemn oath with being drunk and violently assaulting an officer with a stick, this naturally amazes an innocent clergyman, it astonishes his friends, it excites the Morning Chronicle, the Secretary of State is stirred up, and the matter inquired into and redressed.

The main difficulties arise from the esprit de corps that must always exist in an organised body, and still more from the tendency that frequent appearance in the Courts of Justice as a witness has to blunt a nice sense of the obligation of an oath. It is a sense of the dangers attending an esprit de corps that has made the civilians of England so excessively, and yet so justly, sensitive to any encroachment on the part of the army. It is a feeling remarkably strong in the Police Force, and we regret to observe occasional symptoms that even the Police Magistrates do not always rise above it. Officials must bear one another out; it is a mutual service which saves much inconvenience. The system might be illustrated by some awkward cases of hard swearing, and one or two in which a Policeman having been proved guilty of a serious crime, it was found impossible to apprehend him. Had he been any

body else, no corner in the world could have concealed him; but being a Policeman-his face, his habits, and his haunts, all familiar to his brothers-they quietly pronounce him 'non est inventus,' and he is not heard of again.

As to the other point, it is usual, in a Police-court especially, to prefer the oath of an officer to that of another man, and, doubtless, a magistrate who, when oath is opposed to oath, can judge only by deportment, will often decide justly in his favour; but this ought not to be because he is a Policeman, as some of our Justices seem to think; on the contrary, this fact is certainly something against his entire truthfulness. It may seem harsh to say so; but, in a case of difficulty, it is undoubtedly true. that, other things being equal, the oath of a Policeman is entitled to less credence than that of a private man. He is more callous. Let any one go into a Criminal Court and contrast the evidence of a man newly admitted to the force with that of a veteran. The former swears like a common man, is not always sure, may make trifling discrepancies, does not remember exactly, may be confused by the opposite counsel, and descends with shaken nerves among the contemptuous smiles of his companions. Observe the "experienced officer," who takes his place; he is thoroughly honest, and would be bona fide hurt and astonished at any imputation of perjury; but he feels that the case depends on him-he knows the man at the bar for an old thief-he has not a doubt he is guilty, and he has no notion of letting him escape. Observe how well he knows the "pinch" of the case-how clear, how irresistible his evidence is on that point-how exactly he recollects every fact-how perfectly free he is from doubt or hesitation; his evidence has no hazy margin, every line is sharp and distinct; he tells you the exact words used, the exact hour, the exact amount of light, never varies, never forgets, and all with a steady leaning, whose value only the experienced can appreciate. Are there two

witnesses, one for the prosecution, and one for the defence, and both drunk; listen to his way of putting it. "Was the prosecutor drunk?-A little fresh, sir." "Was John Smith, for the defence, drunk?—Far gone in liquor, sir," with a shake of the head worthy of Lord Burleigh; "far gone in liquor." If part of a truth come out, it gives him no anxiety that the remainder is in favour of the prisoner. Cross-examination falls off him like rain from oilskin. He descends happy in his own self-approval and in that of his superiors. He is more than ever a valuable officer; and though the judge estimates him exactly and the bar too to the back benches, they know the man is guilty, and the jury who don't know have great confidence in Sergeant A 45. And he has told the truth in the main; but the truth stuffed a little at the chest, and padded a little at the sides, and squeezed in the waist, and made presentable. There is little or no harm done in such a case as this, except to the Policeman himself; but his conscience gets blunted by a long experience of this sort, the limits between truth and falsehood grow less clear to him; and where his own character, or even his own reputation for sagacity and accuracy are involved, he will not always shrink from a direct lie. He requires a strong check; and the punishment for perjury in a Policeman, replete, as the crime is, with mischief to the community, ought always to be administered with the fullest severity of the Law. It has a frightfully demoralizing effect, if a man of the lower classes finds himself confronted with a Policeman, the latter swearing falsely, and believed, and his own true statement scouted.