1828.] General Increase of Crime. 351. 



thief, is directed, from the picking of pockets, to horse stealing, or 

 coach robbing, or some more profitable branch of depredation. Apart, 

 however, from the fact of their efficiency for a fact may always be 

 disputed there appears to be no good reason why police watchmen 

 should be materially more effective than parish men. The complaint of 

 the physical inefficiency of parish watchmen is an error. The abuse 

 existed at one period ; and people go on talking about it, as if it had 

 never been corrected. It takes a long time to enlighten the public 

 mind upon any subject : the people in Yorkshire still think that the 

 devil lives in London : and, though the setting a spring gun is by law 

 a misdemeanor, the boards of notice " Spring guns and steel traps !" con- 

 tinue to live, and excite terror half over England. The parish watchmen 

 are not prize fighters, nor selected police thief takers ; they would be a 

 most expensive body of men if they were so ; but they are neither parish 

 paupers, as some people suppose, nor decrepid men. The men employed 

 are, in most instances, now, or at least in a great many instances, old 

 soldiers. And the best answer to the complaint of physical inefficiency, 

 is the fact that we often hear of their vigilance being eluded ; but never 

 of any contests in which rioters or thieves, by force, escape from them ! 

 parish watchmen may be bribed as police watchmen may be ; or they 

 may be apathetic and negligent as police watchmen, unless, by better 

 payment, their places are made of more value, would be just as likely 

 to be ; but certainly robberies are not committed because their strength 

 is ever physically overpowered ; and the fact is, that we want very 

 little physical force at any time in this country for the execution of the 

 law ; the name and the ensign of power are sufficient ; and we should 

 be very loth to take any measure which seemed to admit that they were 

 not so. 



In the same way, as to Mr. Peel's point of the " concurrent juris- 

 diction," between the authorities of the City properly so called and 

 those of Middlesex and Westminster. The one jurisdiction affords no 

 " sanctuary," we apprehend, to offenders from the other. And surely, 

 in the beginning, it would be enough for each party to commence by 

 curing itself? If two houses were on fire, one on each side of Fleet- 

 street, what nonsense it would seem to talk of waiting for a concurrent 

 stream of water, or the arrival of two engines, before we began to put 

 them out ! The state of the city police is infamous ; worse, no doubt, 

 than that of Westminster. But let Westminster and Middlesex reduce 

 themselves to something like order j and the heavy aldermen though 

 great bodies are prone to move slowly will get an impulse from parlia- 

 ment or public indignation which will assist them in their march. It 

 is a little premature, moreover, this scheme of getting rid of our parochial 

 watch, and setting all matters right by exchanging it for a public 

 police, when the incompetency of our public police itself, is a topic of 

 complaint all over the country. 



To us, however, we. confess it seems perfectly hopeless that any 

 change in the character of our nightly watch subject to the continu- 

 ance of its present amount in force and numbers can produce any 

 material effects in the prevention of crimes against property. Any 

 advantage which an extension of its strength might effect, would be con- 

 fined, it will be recollected, to the reduction of offence within the metro- 

 polis : a change in the state of the watch of London can have no opera- 



