police-men, nor the endowing them with inquisitorial powers, will add to the public security.

One of the objects of this essay is brevity. A lengthened disquisition upon police, therefore, will not be held; but the following propositions are submitted without further preface:

There ought to be a corps of police-men for the metropolis and its vicinity divisible into sections of eight men each, every section to be under the superintendence of an inspector.

The town and its suburbs ought to be divided into as many police divisions, with defined limits, as there are police offices.

The sections should be distributed in the different divisions, in proportion to the wants of each; leaving always a considerable reserve at the central or head office, to assist any division that may stand in need of it upon an emergency, and to yield detachments for fairs, fights, races, and other popular meetings at a distance. The police-men to be occasionally changed in their divisions.

There should be a day patrole, from 9 in the morning till 9 in the evening.

One half of the police-men in each division should be on patrole at a time in pairs, every two men haying their assigned walk; the other half should remain at or near the police office, to be forthcoming for any special service. If an occasion should be anticipated in any division for a force beyond its own party, the officer thereof should send to the head office for aid. When any general excitement in the metropolis should call for a greater force than the regular police affords, extra men should be employed, for the occasion.

ཕྱིན་ང

The inspector of each section should make it his business to inform himself of the haunts of all the bad and suspicious characters in his division, and, as far as he is able, ascertain their connexions in guilt, and particularly of all receivers. Upon the expectation of a crowd or other occasion likely to encourage thieves or disorderly persons to assemble in any part of his division, he ought to provide some additional men for the occasion, without waiting for the application of any individuals for protection. He ought to go through his division at least once a day, in order to see that his men are on their walks. He ought to notice such as are absent; to minute the same in a book; also their excuses, and to examine into the truth of their excuses;

to attend to complaints of their conduct, and to report to the magistrates such complaints as appear to be well founded. If an inspector be negligent he should be reduced to the station of an ordinary police-man, or be discharged altogether.

Police-men ought to wear a hat-band of a peculiar form, that they may be known and appealed to by sufferers from, or observers of depredators or offenders, a mark which they may easily remove when they have occasion to divest themselves of their distinguishing dress. They ought to move constantly about their walks in pairs, or one within call of another, during their prescribed hours; they ought to notice and watch the movements of all bad characters, to make up to all crowds, and if people are quarrelling or fighting, to separate them, or take them before a magistrate if refractory; to warn persons from committing any breach of the regulations of police, or other slight offence, who appear about to commit any such offence, or who have committed a slight offence through ignorance or thoughtlessness; to apply for summonses of other offenders against regulations of police, whose abodes are known, and to take into custody offenders whose fixed abode is unknown to them. They are to clear the streets, and liquor shops, and inns, of all persons who are drunk, of all beggars, vagabonds,convicted cheats or thieves, and common prostitutes, and take them before a magistrate, also to enter other victualling houses, and in like manner take into custody such bad characters as may have been harboured therein beyond the space of one hour. They are also to seek for information of private houses, which are resorted to by dishonest persons, and to notice the parties who enter and quit the same, and make a report thereon to their inspector. They are to follow the lawful directions of their inspectors, and of all magistrates in authority over them. They are not to ask for or accept any reward from any one for discharging their duty beyond their stated pay and their share of penalties; nor are they to accept of any reward, bribe, or treat to forego their duty, or from persons who ought to be the objects of complaint.

It is conceived that the recent addition made to the police-men of the metropolis affords a numerical force sufficient to do the police business of the metropolis properly; but something more is necessary to be done before that force can be effective. The police-men ought to be subject to the immediate authority of the police magisVOL. XIX. Pam. NO. XXXVII.

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trates; but the magistrates cannot have an e autho rity over them unless they have the power to select them, and if negligent to discharge them. At present these apa pointments are in the gift of the Secretary of State. Great interest is made to obtain them. They are chiefly valued for the sums which the men are suffered to demand of individuals who have occasion for the assistance of the police, This is very wrong; the public pay largely for the maintenance of the police. Individuals of that public, who suffer outrage owing to the insufficiency of police protection, ought not to be called on to pay police-men again to repair the defect; but it is said the pay of the men (1 guinea per week) is not enough for them, and that they must mend their incomes by levies on individuals who have the misfortune to stand in need of police aid, I question both positions: more intelligence, courage, and good behaviour, are not required of these men than is required of non-commissioned officers in service; the pay of the latter is still less; and when it is considered that the employment of the police-men is constant (so long as they do their duty); that their pay, or part of it, will go on while under sickness infirmity; that a provision is made for them when superannuated; and in addition, that they have opportunities of mending their incomes, if vigilant, by a portion of the penal ties arising out of informations, and a probability of becoming inspectors, (who it is proposed should have double pay,) there is no doubt that an abundance of fit men would be found ready and willing to perform the duties of police men, for the regular pay alone. But if their regular pay be insufficient, sufferers from, and witnesses of misdoing, ought not to be saddled with the expense of supplying the deficiency. Whether their wages be high or low, however, It is only by good rules, good looking after, and off hand discharge, if found wanting, that police-men will be kept pure and steady to their daily work.

HUE AND CRY.

Generally, when a crime is committed, it is expedient that the public should be informed of the particulars of it, as widely and quickly as possible. Thieves are by such means exposed to detection in getting rid of their plunder, and delinquents of every class to discovery. There are some cases in which privacy is for a time useful, but such cases are rare.

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At present, our “HUE AND CRY" is most defective. If

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information be lodged at a police office, instead of pro claiming the offence and the offender in the most public form, as required by law, or of "pursuing the offender with horn and voice from town to town to the sea side," according to the custom of our ancestors, it is the known practice, for the officer who gets the information to keep it to himself, that he may have the credit of taking the felon if he can, and not one offence in twenty reaches the public ear. But if the complainant be determined on publicly proclaiming a robbery, he is told that he must get some bills printed and posted, and that he must advertise in the newspapers, and in the Hue and Cry." A person unused to these operations encounters much difficulty and delay in getting through them. He is besides put to a considerable expense, and in that way is frequently deterred from proceeding; for as there is no particular daily newspaper indicated for police intelligence, he has to advertise in every paper, to give a general notice even to persons connected with the police of the country. It is true that there is a police newspaper called the "Hue and Cry," but it is only published ONCE in three weeks, and now that the communication all over the kingdom is so rapid, no one would think of giving three weeks start to a criminal before a hue and cry were raised. That paper is of no use excepting for giving information of deserters, and for that purpose it is a very tardy vehicle,

To produce a really effective "Hue and Cry," it is therefore proposed for all informations of robberies, frauds, and other great offences in and about the metropolis, to be taken on oath at the police offices, free of expense to the informants, and together with discoveries made of property found on suspected persons, to be abstracted and transmitted every day at noon to a central office, say the Bow Street office. The informations it is proposed to divide into three classes.

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The first and principal class to be immediately inserted in a Police Gazette, published every afternoon and sent to every police office, and to gaolers, and the principal postmasters throughout England, to be by them filed.

The second class to consist of informations withheld from their uncertainty, grossness, or unimportance to the public. These it is proposed to enter in a book, open at all times for the inspection of magistrates and police officers.

The third class it is proposed should comprise informa

tions of a secret nature, and discoveries which for a while it may be conducive to the ends of justice not to publish. These it is proposed to enter in a book accessible only to the Secretaries of State, and the police magistrates.

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It is proposed that accounts of offences of magnitude, in other parts of the country, should be sent up to the central police office and be arranged in a similar manner.

Upon this plan, a complete history of all the depredations committed in and about the metropolis, and the principal ones in the country, would be brought to a focus daily, and with similar facility (as far as might be deemed expedient) be made known throughout the kingdom. Information being given any morning at a police office, of the commission of a murder, forgery, theft, cheat, escape from prison, breach of trust, desertion from the army, or other offence, and on the discovery of property supposed to be stolen; within a few hours afterward, that is, in the afternoon of the same day, an account of the fact, together with a description of the delinquent's person, if he be ascertained and not in custody, would be circulated at every police office, and in a great number of public and private houses in the metropolis, and be on its way by the post to every town of note in the kingdom. It is proposed, that as well as the notifications above alluded to, each police office should send for insertion a brief epitome of the examinations of the preceding day, particularly marking such as as are likely to be useful to the public, as for instance, the description and acts of apprehended cheats and robbers, detained for further examination. Information of this kind is doubly useful, by bringing forward witnesses against the culprits, and putting the unwary on their guard.

An authentic and comprehensive registry of offences, upon the above plan, would be very interesting and generally read. On account of this attraction, it is conceived that the proprietor of a newspaper would find his account in contracting to publish the police reports without any charge, and the registry of informations at prime cost only; then supposing that Government would forego or allow a drawback on the stamp duty, on the issue of such papers as were sent to the accredited agents of Government, and that they amounted to 400, such a number of newspapers, at threepence each, issued daily (Sundays excepted) for a year, would amount to 1565/.; and supposing that the informations in the whole averaged 200 lines daily, the printing at 2d, a line, would not exceed 2621. a year. The whole expen