* dent, 2 inspectors, 9 sergeants, and 33 con- | to which they are subject, as might be exstables were so severely injured as to be pected, are of the lungs and air-passages, the rendered unfit for duty, many for life. Sir results of their constant exposure to vicissiRichard Mayne himself was several times tudes of temperature. Out of about 800 hit, by stones, receiving a severe contusion men who are on the sick-list monthly, from on the side of the head, and a cut on the 300 to 400, during the winter months, suffer temple which blackened his eye. Each of from catarrh, bronchitis, sore throat, and the Assistant-Commissioners was also rheumatism; while of the 63 deaths in 1868, several times hit by stones. Such was the 27 were from consumption. But, besides moderation of the people' so loudly lauded these diseases of exposure, the police are exby many of our Liberal statesmen ! posed to risks of wounds and injuries, which tend greatly to swell the list of disabled men. Thus, in 1868, not fewer than 1130 suffered from fractures, dislocations, wounds, and miscellaneous injuries in the execution of their duty, or an average of about 100 cases a month. Perhaps in no country but England would a powerful body of men standing forward in defence of the law, have so long and so patiently submitted to be pelted, bruised, and battered by a howling mob without being provoked into retaliation. Yet, to the honour of the police be it said, not a single case of ill-treatment of any person, or unnecessary interference, was proved against them throughout the whole course of these deplorable transactions. But it is not in riots of this sort-which, happily, are of rare occurrence in Londonthat the policeman is exposed to the greatest peril, but in the ordinary execution of his duty in his solitary beats by night in all weathers, when he is liable to the various diseases incident to exposure, and more particularly in the danger to which he is subject in dealing with criminals of the most desperate and abandoned character. As the greatest possible care is taken in the first place to select only healthy, strong men for police duty, their average of ordinary sickness is moderate, being far less than that of the Household troops. The principal diseases The efficiency of the force was in no small degree due to the unremitting care and attention which Sir Richard Mayne devoted to its organisation and working during a period of nearly forty years; in the course of which he performed his duty with unflinching fidelity, and in the face of much vituperation and abuse. It was a most graceful and generous act on the part of Her Majesty to make acknowledgment of Sir Richard's services a few days after his death last year, in the following letter addressed by her private Secretary to the Secretary of State for the Home Department : The Queen desires me to say how grieved and concerned she is to hear of Sir Richard Mayne's death. Notwithstanding the attacks lately made upon him, Her Majesty believes him to have been a most efficient head of the police, and to have discharged the duties of his important situation most ably and satisfactorily in very difficult times.' It would have been well if the government of the day had followed up Her Majesty's graceful and deserved recognition of such valuable services, by making some provision for Sir Richard Mayne's widow; but in these days of economy in small things such an act of generosity, not to say of justice, was perhaps scarcely to be looked for. The mere cost to the public of those ruffianly attacks on the police which have come to be so common, and which are often so leniently dealt with by the magistrates, judges, and juries, before whom the offenders are brought,* may possibly appeal to some minds that are insensible to other considerations. At the present time, 188 men, permanently disabled by having been stabbed, assaulted, jumped upon, or otherwise injured by prisoners, are in the receipt of pensions amounting to 56641. yearly; the widows and children of 15 men, who died in consequence of wounds or injuries received by them from prisoners, receive pensions amounting to 2127. yearly; 79 men, permanently disabled by injuries accidentally received in the execution of their duty, receive pensions amounting to 24851. yearly; and the widows and children of four men, who died in consequence of like injuries, receive 807. yearly. We have thus a total of 286 men permanently disabled by wounds or injuries received while in the execution of their duty, to whose widows and children pensions are paid amounting to 84431. per annum. The greater number of the men thus wounded and disabled received their injuries while apprehending criminals, or in the at One of the latest illustrations of this leniency to roughs was exhibited in a recent trial at the Central Criminal Court, when five persons were indicted for interfering with a constable in the execution of his duty, throwing him into the Regent's Canal, and pelting him with stones and mud during the twenty minutes that they kept him there. The jury acquitted all the prisoners but one, who was found guilty. The Common Serjeant, in passing sentence upon him, characterized the offence as a very small affair, which would be fully met by a sentence of three days' imprisonment, dating from the commencement of the sessions; and as those three days had already expired, he was, together with the other prisoners, forthwith released from confine ment. way. months; and the drunken prisoner who assaulted and kicked Este, who also died, was fined 20s., or a month's imprisonment. tempts made by criminals to escape and of bystanders to rescue them by force. Not fewer than eighty men were disabled in this Forty-two were knocked down, kick- The perils which these valuable public ed, and otherwise maltreated. Eighteen servants thus encounter in the protection of were permanently injured by drunken per- life and property, and the serious injuries sons; nine by riotous or disorderly roughs; which they so often receive in the discharge seven by burglars; six by Irish mobs; five of their duty, entitle them to a degree of by miscellaneous mobs; five by drunken sol- consideration and sympathy on the part of diers and militiamen. Six were stabbed by the public, which, however, is rarely extended prisoners, one of them a convicted thief. to them. They are pelted by mobs when Three were severely injured by falling while the people' are in sufficiently overpowering in the pursuit of thieves, one from a roof, numbers to do so with impunity; and with another from a wall, and a third by being equally safe courage they are pelted by the tripped-up to enable a thief to escape. One lower organs of the press, which find no constable was shot by a highwayman, and subject so agreeable to their readers in the another by a criminal he had brought to dull season as pitching into the police.' justice. One had his leg broken when ap- They are targets for the witlings of the prehending a prisoner, another had his wrist dreary Comic' papers; while caricatures dislocated, and a third his knee-cap. Among of them are exhibited on the stage at the remaining cases, we find several injured Christmas for the recreation of 'the gods,' by being jumped upon by ruffians, kicked the feeble play-writer never considering by prostitutes, knocked down by runaway horses which they were trying to stop, ridden over by cabs and vans, injured at fires by falling from ladders, and so on. The punishments of those guilty of maltreating and disabling the officers of justice in the execution of their duty are often ridiculously lenient in proportion to the offence. For instance, the assailant of policeconstable Mackintosh, who was disabled for life, was fined 57., or four months' imprisonment; the prisoner who stabbed constable Mosely got three months; the two prisoners who threw down Gardiner and disabled him by kicks got six months; the thieves who as saulted and crippled Luetchford for life, two months; the drunken prisoner who kicked Sandys, twenty-one days; the prisoners who twice assaulted and permanently disabled Ledger were fined 67., or six months. The gross inequality of the sentences in certain cases strikingly illustrated the glorious uncertainty of law and justice. Thus, the two prisoners who assaulted and maimed Shickell were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, while the prisoner who similarly maltreated Smart was imprisoned only seven days; the prisoner who assaulted Sparkes got fifteen years, and the one who similarly assaulted Blakebough was sentenced to pay a fine of 20s., or fourteen days. All these constables were permanently disabled by their injuries, and are now in the receipt of pensions. In the cases of those who died in consequence of their injuries, the murderer of Davey was executed; the discharged convict who fatally assaulted Jackson was imprisoned for two years; the drunken man who inflicted the injuries on Hawes, of which he died, was imprisoned for nine his pantomime complete without dragging in the unfailing policeman as a target for the missiles of the clown, pantaloon, and other stage rabble. At the same time it must be acknowledged that the respectable organs of the press are free from that indiscriminate censure of the police which was so common forty years ago. The altered state of public opinion with regard to the force is in no respect more marked than in the comments which from time to time appear upon their conduct in the daily newspapers, compared with the abuse which was so liberally showered upon them during the Reform Bill period. Then the complaint was that they did too much; now it is that they do too little. If they then took a drunken man to the station, or cleared the footways of loiterers, or apprehended a suspected thief hanging about an area, or prevented a husband assaulting his wife, they were charged with unduly interfering with the liberty of the subject. But now, if beggars get into Kensington Gardens, or a block occurs in Bond Street, or cabs 'crawl' in the Strand, or Sunday traders crowd the New Cut, or indecent boys wash themselves in the Thames mud, or street Arabs tumble like animated wheels in the way of foot-passengers, or roughs lark' along the new Embankment, or noises occur in the streets at night, or prostitutes annoy passers-by with their importunity, or area sneaks enter an open door and contrive to run away with the spoons, or liberated burglars are allowed to be at large without at once being caught again, the police are called upon to interfere, to act, to exert themselves, and they are blamed, not because they interfere with the liberty of these sub whole is laid before the Chief Commissioner for his consideration and judgment. Thus all ascertained defects in the working of the system are corrected; inefficient and unworthy men are cautioned or discharged; and the whole force becomes improved in quality and efficiency. For this, among other reasons, the number of men discharged for misconduct has been steadily decreasing year by year. Of the 8883 men in the force last year, 232 were pensioned off; 34 were discharged with gratuities; 261 voluntarily resigned, because the service did not agree with them, or for other causes; 144 were compelled to resign on account of misconduct, or because of illness, not having completed five years' service; 263 were dismissed for misconduct; and 45 died; a total of 979 men, or an average of 11.02 per cent. of removals to the entire strength, being a smaller proportion of changes than in any preceding year. jects, but because they do not. They are expected to be omniscient, if not omnipotent; and because they are neither the one nor the other, solemn deputations of vestrymen wait upon the Home Secretary, and complain of the inefficiency of the police.' One of the most popular complaints recently made against them is, that too much of their time is occupied in drill, notwithstanding the distinct assurance of the Home Secretary that but one hour in the week is devoted to the purpose, and that only in certain seasons, -there having been twenty-eight weeks last year in which no drill whatever was given.* Although indiscriminate censures of this sort are provoking and useless, because undeserved and unfounded, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that the intelligent vigilance of the press has been of much service in improving the quality and efficiency of the entire force. The whole population of the metropolis are reporters for the newspapers; and where an act of undue interfeIn short, in the Metropolitan Police, and rence on the part of the police occurs on the in the police of the country generally, for one hand, or flagrant neglect of duty on the which it has served as the model, we have a other, there is always some correspondent at sober, vigilant, and intelligent body of men, hand ready to give it publicity in the columns-a splendid, useful, and living monument of the press. There are, it is true, one or two of the lower class penny papers, the conductors of which, with a greater regard for 'circulation' than truthfulness, are too ready to open their columns to any amount of trash and slander relating to the police, and to found sensational articles upon the often baseless and usually distorted statements of their correspondents; but on the whole, the spirit of the public press in this, as in other respects, is fair, honest, and truthful. And although in the majority of instances in which blame is found to be due, the matter has been previously brought under the notice of the Commissioner and dealt with, yet the vigilance of the press is also of material service in maintaining the general vigilance of the force. Every communication which appears in the newspapers, reflecting on the conduct of the police, where specific facts are stated, is made the subject of careful inquiry and special report by the superintendent of division: and the result of the to the late Sir Robert Peel,-a civic force arrayed in defence of law, order, and honest industry, the like of which, perhaps, does not exist in any other country, and of which England, and London especially, has reason to be proud. ART. V.-An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent. By John Henry Newman, D.D. THOSE who open this book with the expecta- *As only the men on night duty, or about two-formal and technical logic. assembled, a mere disorganised mob, incapable of acting together or managing the crowds they sometimes have to oppose.' it seizes the conclusion in the premiss, and combines by a rapid survey, and by an instinctive estimate, the various points of the case in one nucleus, which the individual carries about him, and which constitutes at once his reasons and his belief. He gathers all into a point, instead of drawing it out into divisions and compartments; and the work is done almost intuitively. "To this conclusion he comes, as is plain, not by any possible verbal enumeration of all the considerations, minute but abundant, delicate but effective, which unite to bring him to it; but by a mental comprehension of the whole case, and a discernment of its upshot, sometimes after much deliberation, but, it may be, by a clear and rapid act of the intellect, always, however, by an unwritten summing-up, something like the summation of the terms of an algebraical series. Such a process of reasoning is more or less implicit, and without the direct and full advertence of the mind exercising it. As by the use of our eyesight we recognize two brothers, yet without being able to express what it is by which we distinguish them; as at first sight we perhaps confuse them together, but on better knowledge, we see no likeness between them at all; as it requires an artist's eye to determine what lines and shades make a countenance look young or old, amiable, thoughtful, angry or conceited, the principle of discrimination being in each case real, but implicit; so is the mind unequal to a complete analysis of the motives which carry it on to a particular conclusion, and is swayed and determined by a body of proof, which it recognizes only as a body, and not in its constituent parts.' This is the aim, then, with which this treatise is penetrated-to bring out the reality of reasoning, as it actually goes on within us; its natural and instinctive and intuitive kind of action, which contains all the pith and truth of it, in a more genuine and powerful shape, in consequence of its very condensation, than technical statements and argumentative formulæ do; in which the pungent point of actual nature is drawn out, and weakened by its very extension and its connexion with outside casing, and all the leathern apparatus of verbal logic. The mode in which this appeal to nature assists the Christian argument will appear shortly; but, in the first place, Dr. Newman has to meet and deal with some curious problems which attach to the foundation of human belief, and especially the question,-what right have we to found upon only probable evidence unconditional assent? All assent, says the Pyrrhonist, must be proportioned to the evidence; and, therefore, when there is room for greater proof, assent can only be provisional and conditional: unconditional assent is in its very nature an excess—an advance beyond the evidence. A hasty faith is logically forbidden, and a suspense of judgment is imposed. Dr. Newman meets this difficulty with practical answers, but also with a philosophical one of remarkable subtlety and ingenuity. He separates inference' from 'assent,' and throws all the burden of obligation to provisional and conditional limits upon inferences,' liberating assent' from it. While you are reasoning and weighing evidence, while you are deducing from your premisses, you must keep you infer close to your premisses, and what from them must exactly reflect them in degree: but when reasoning is over, the assent which is the consequence of it shakes off the trammels of the subterranean process out of which it has emerged, and the mind having got to the top of the edifice of reasoning, kicks down the ladder by which it ascended. This hardly appears to us a satis factory explanation of this difficulty-the difficulty that as a matter of fact we do believe with practical certainty upon grounds which theoretically are only grounds of probability. It is quite true that when we obtain our conclusion, we often forget the process of inference and argument by which we reached it; we are lifted up, by a happy act of oblivion, out of the region of comparison and estimate; still our conclusion is based upon this process, and must be always ready to obey the logical command to recall it when circumstances require. But while we cannot agree with Dr. Newman's solution of this crux, perhaps any other definite rationale for it would equally fail. The truth is, Nature takes this matter out of our hands, and upon every plain probability appearing to be on the side of some conclusion in practical life, or history, enables us to proceed upon that conclusion as if it were thoroughly ascertained. The pure reasonabstract and unqualified reason-is insatiable and ever hungry for additions to proof; even when gorged with arguments, if it sees but a hollow corner anywhere, it clamours for a supplement; nay, and so ungrateful is its appetite, that it will forget and expunge out of its tablet all past proof, in the eager craving for the further addition, discontented with any amount of actual evidence, so long as it is not all the evidence which is conceivable. The pure reason is thus morbid reason, it weakens while it informs; it paralyses action, and just steps in after all the premisses it has gathered to prevent the person from making any use of them. It wants the balance of some other element in our nature, which is not so much an intellectual principle as salutary impulse. The conditions of life and the necessities of action are such, that we must be content with, and accept as practical certainty, a large amount of probability; and we are enabled in some way, by some machinery in our nature, which is perhaps out of the reach of all analysis, to do this, and to supply by our own confidence the void in the ground of pure reason. It should not be lost sight of that there is besides the reason, a large, we will not call it irrational, so much as non-rational, department in the constitution of the human being; which is essential to the success of the rational. We see men who are defective in this supplement to the reason, and who consequently fail in the use of their reason. No evidence gives them strength to act; however massive a body of premisses they have collected, upon the casual glimpse of an unanswered objection, they drop in an instant their conclusion, as if it burnt their fingers, and would expose them to total annihilation at the hand of some master of logic, whose blow would in fact be as light as a feather, did not his antagonist fall down flat on the ground before he gave it. Supposing, then, a certain amount of probable evidence exists for the truth of revelation, we have not got to prove our right to a positive belief in revelation. That is given us by the constitution of our nature, and the only question which we have to decide is, whether there is or not that amount of probable evidence. Upon this question, then, Dr. Newman first observes the plain fact that what is evidence to one man is not evidence to another. How is this? It is that judgment upon facts, inference from facts, interpretation of premisses, extraction of conclusions, is after all a personal operation. It depends upon the antecedent as sumptions, the knowledge, the disposition of mind, and certain fundamental modes of looking on things, which exist in the mind of the reasoner. Dr. Newman sums up all this in the personal and individual character of what he calls the Illative sense: another above it, so it is that men, taken at random, differ widely from each other in their perception of the first elements of religion, duty, philosophy, the science of life, and taste, not to speak here of the differences in quality and vigour of the Illative Sense itself, comparing man with man. Every one, in the ultimate resolution of his intellectual faculties, stands by himself, whatever he may have in common with others.' It The Illative sense then is the same, as regards its own functions, in all cases; but it differs in its conclusions according to the special training and previous experience of the individual, and the subjects with which life has made him conversant. It receives its direction from the particular knowledge, taste, and sentiment of the reasoner. acts well in the individual's special department of art or science, or in his trade and profession, because there he knows the province of his inferences, and starts from correct principles; when it leaves the area of his knowledge it makes mistakes. And when it acts correctly it often acts instinctively and intuitively. The chapter on Natural Infcrence' particularly brings out this point. Dr. Newman illustrates this whole subject with all the fertility and vivacity which immense information and a rich imagination impart. He brings his analogies, instances, and parallel cases from all quarters of the philosophical, social, and historical heaveus; the reader has a perpetual change, and never knows what fact may turn up next; it may be one at first sight the most utterly removed from the field of discussion. The detection of resemblances amid staring incrongruities is one of the most popular and happy gifts of an author; it produces the effect of a constant surprise upon the reader, and something of that gratification which a good puzzle gives. So far, however, Dr. Newman's vindication of an instinctive and intuitive reason, and of a reasoning faculty which only acts correctly, or obtains sound and true conclusions in the area of the individual's special knowledge, does not come into collision with the position 'It is in fact attached to definite subject-mat- of the religious sceptic. The philosopher ters, so that a given individual may possess it, will readily admit that reason does act in in one department of thought, for instance, this instinctive way; and he will also admit history, and not in another, for instance, phi-that previous experience and special know losophy 'Hence it is, that nothing I have been saying about the instrumental character or the range of the Illative Sense, interferes with its being, as I have considered it, a personal gift or habit: for, being in fact ever embodied in some definite subject-matter, it is personal because the discernment of the principles connected with that subject-matter is personal also. Certainly, however we account for it, whether we say that one man is below the level of nature, or ledge must make all the difference in the correctness of the conclusions which a person draws from any data which are placed before him. What he objects to is, the application of this general position to the religious question. He will not allow to the believer in revelation the right to say that he is in possession of any special knowledge or principles of thought and feeling, any |