72 Xoles for the Month. [JAN. 



It matters little that any thing is known in this country here is the 

 difficulty which cannot be proved. The police magistrates know the 

 names and characters of twenty individuals, living in London, and carry- 

 ing on extensive and apparently reputable trade, who are dealers to a 

 great extent in stolen property ; but the magistrates can take no steps 

 against them. We ourselves could point out instances, and numerous 

 instances, of the same description ; but we should be liable to prosecu- 

 tion (and we are not prepared to say that it is unfit that we should be 

 so), if we were to name the parties we allude to. 



The only course, then, out of which security is to be expected, is in 

 the encouraging, as far as possible, the exertions of the police officers, 

 to check the commission of robbery or to discover the perpetrators of, 

 or dealers in, it: and the mode of doing this is hardly less pro- 

 blematical than the rest of the questions that we have been discussing. 

 A resort to the strong hand or the strong argument gets rid of the 

 difficulty instantly. We have only to raise sufficiently high the pecu- 

 niary interest of police officers in taking robbers ; and to take care to raise 

 the robbers themselves sufficiently high, the first time we lay hold of 

 them; and the number of offences, for a given period, would, un- 

 doubtedly, decrease : but this policy, the taste of the age will not allow 

 us to resort to. The means that are open to us of exciting the vigi- 

 lance of our police officers are two. We have our choice. We may pay 

 them a fixed salary, or we may pay them, by the amount of their 

 seizures as we pay our officers of customs, or excise. We do not enter 

 here into the question of the competency of the existing weekly pay ; 

 this is, p3rhaps, too little twenty-five shillings a- week is a low stipend 

 for such a man as an active sober officer is, and ought to be. But that fact 

 does not touch our present object : a man who has twenty-five shillings 

 a-week, is not so poor that want can be an excuse for his committing 

 frauds : if he has two guineas, he will not be so rich as to have no 

 temptation to them. The mode, more than the extent, of an officer's pay- 

 ment, will determine his exertion ; and here it is that we are placed in the 

 position of difficulty : if we pay him by a fixed salary, he has no induce- 

 ment to use any more exertion in his office than such as will be just 

 enough to enable him to retain it : if we pay him a sum for every offender 

 that he convicts then his evidence before a jury is not worth a rush ; 

 for he has always a direct interest in taking the life of the man against 

 whom he is swearing. 



Perhaps the plan at present in practice (though this may seem 

 rather an " impotent conclusion") with some slight alteration 

 is the best that could be acted upon. The officers should be retained 

 upon a salary which will enable them to live; and the hope of selec- 

 tion for profitable private jobs will induce them, in their ordinary 

 course, to endeavour to distinguish themselves. It would be well to add, 

 still further, the power to the magistrate or in the Secretary of State the 

 habit of rewarding officers liberally, for any meritorious piece of ser- 

 vice ; and to grant the claim to a pension the amount to be judged of by 

 the higher authorities to those men who had served a given number of 

 years with zeal and reputation. A more obvious encouragement, and a far 

 more efficient one than any here, would be the allowing officers a claim 

 to a proportion say to one-fourth upon the recovery of all stolen pro- 

 perty ; but the difficulty is, that such a law must be binding upon all 

 parties. There would be cases as for instance, in the loss of bank- 

 notes, or bills where persons would rather take the risk of total loss, 

 than pay so large a fine for t'ie recovery. 



