year 1839, when a permissive Act was passed by which justices at quarter sessions were empowered, if they thought fit, to appoint county and district constables, with the reservation that the constables so appointed were not to exceed one per thousand of the population.

This restriction was withdrawn in the following year, in an Act which gave greater facilities for the establishment of a borough and county constabulary. The new police was to differ from that which had preceded it in being paid a definite sum for its services, instead of casual fees for casual acts of constableship. The constables thus appointed were to be no longer men deriving their means of subsistence from other occupations, but devoting their whole time to the duties of their office.

Under these two Acts, and an Act passed in 1856, making that compulsory which had previously been only permissive, the county constabulary is still appointed. It was not until the Act of 1856 came fully into operation that there was any approach to uniformity in the police system throughout England and Wales, but from that time forward the principle of employing paid officials to prevent crime and to apprehend criminals has been everywhere put in practice.

This principle, however, had been developed in the boroughs, and above all, in the metropolis, some time before it was enforced throughout the country. The borough constabulary is now appointed under an Act passed in 1835, together with the Act of 1856. But the great model for the whole country has been the Metropolitan Police. One of the chief characteristics of this force, established by an Act passed in 1829, is its unity of organisation under commissioners responsible to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. A

number of local acts relating to metropolitan parishes without the city of London were then superseded. They had all been founded more or less upon the old principle of the peace-pledge, modified by the appointment of constables and other officers, upon whom was imposed the whole or a part of the duties and responsibilities which in earlier times had fallen upon the tithing or the hundred. The new guardians of the peace in the metropolis, retaining the comparatively ancient name of constable, were called police-constables, and were in a sense a development of the tithing-man of old; but they resembled him even less than a member for a metropolitan borough resembles the burgesses who appeared before the Chief Justice at Westminster with a statement of accounts in the reign of John. Yet the stages of growth are sufficiently well marked--from the responsibility of the tithing to the responsibility of its head, from the functions of the headborough or tithing-man to the functions of the constable, from the election of a constable to the election of a plurality of constables, and finally from a plurality of constables, deputy-constables, and watchmen, under parochial or other local authority, to a plurality of constables under the central authority of a Secretary of State.

Local traditions are not yet entirely extinct, and they have retained so much vitality even in the capital that the police of the city of London is under the management of the corporation, while the police of the rest of the metropolis is under a separate control. There is a great disparity (in some cases more apparent than real) in the proportion of constables to population in various districts. In the city of London there is nominally a constable to every 95 of the population, in the rest of the metropolis to every 412, in the boroughs I to

every 753, and in the counties outside the boroughs 1 to every 1,294. But a very obvious source of error exists in the fact that the population is computed in accordance with the sleeping-place, and not with the place where each individual pursues his calling. The city of London, which teems with human beings by day, is a desert at night; the suburbs of London and of many other great towns, comparatively well populated by night, are almost empty by day. Railways, too, carry every evening into the districts nominally rural a considerable number of the persons who earn their livelihood in the towns. But in its police, as in some other affairs, England has had the rare felicity of uniting at last most of the advantages of local government with most of the advantages of centralisation. Towards this happy result the Norman Conquest contributed something, the development of parliamentary institutions something more, and the facility of intercommunication, which is the growth of the nineteenth century, perhaps most of all. Great diversity of police arrangements, with a marked contrast between security of life and property in one place and insecurity in another, could not long be tolerated in a country in which multitudes are travelling every day. Thus it has come to pass that there is a much nearer approach to uniformity than is positively enforced by the laws relating to police and constabulary. By a sort of tacit consent the metropolitan system is everywhere imitated, though in some boroughs the imitation may be very bad the printing-press lends its aid to the general tendency, and every year there appears under the head of Judicial Statistics an account of the constables of all kinds throughout the whole of England and Wales.

Apart from the improvement of organisation which

Progressive increase of

proportion to

population.

has everywhere made rapid progress since the establishment of the metropolitan police, there has been police force in another gradual change, which is almost imperceptible if regarded from year to year, but which is considerable when observed throughout longer periods. The force of police and constabulary has increased not only in actual numbers, but in proportion to the population. Not only did its absolute increase amount to twenty-six per cent. throughout the country from 1862 to 1872, but the ratio had risen from I constable for every 902 of the population in 1858, to 1 for every 887 in 1862, to 1 for every 811 in 1872, and to 1 for every 795 in 1873. The necessity of maintaining so great a force of constables, whose chief occupation in life is to prevent crime or to apprehend criminals, must, without doubt, be carefully borne in mind in making any attempt to estimate the prevailing disposition to break the laws. It is the counterpoise to the practice of retaining in England the desperate characters who in former times were transported to America or Australia. We may regret that any such counterpoise should be needed, but on the other hand we may congratulate ourselves that we live in an age when the need is fairly recognised, and when a wellorganised police is an accepted institution.

If the account given by the police authorities of themselves is to be accepted literally, they have aided in Detective and effecting a most remarkable diminution in the most effectual numbers of the criminal classes. There were in diminishing

other police

habitual crimi

nals.

the number of in 1862 no less than 64,151 known or suspected criminals of all ages at large, including receivers of stolen goods; in 1872 there were only 45,201. During the whole period the returns were made on the same principle that 'persons known to have been living

honestly for one year at least subsequently to their discharge after any conviction' should not be counted. The Habitual Criminals Act of 1869 and the Prevention of Crime Act of 1871 probably contributed something towards this result, by giving the police more extended powers of supervision over convicts who had served their term of imprisonment; and the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies have, no doubt, been of great service in preventing many a relapse into crime. It should not, however, be forgotten that inclusion or exclusion under the head of suspected persons must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary, and that many habitual criminals may possibly be at large, and yet elude the vigilance of the police.

Still, after every allowance has been made for the natural desire of the police authorities to persuade themselves that they are restricting the criminal classes to ever narrowing limits, there is good reason to believe that their estimates are in the main approximately correct. It is upon the habitual criminals that a powerful organisation of police must have the greatest effect, rather than upon the persons who yield to an unforeseen temptation. or a sudden impulse of passion. To the one class an opposing army must be always present in idea, to the other, if present at all, it must necessarily appear more remote and must have a far less deterrent effect. If this is true as applied to the ordinary police-constables, it is still more true as applied to the detective police. Not only are the haunts and habits, the usual tricks and devices of the man who makes theft his profession well known in Scotland. Yard, but the thief is aware that they are known. He must lose heart from year to year, with the inevitable consciousness that he plays a losing game. While this