338 Police if the Metropolis. [APRIL 



parochial. And there is a little more matter, rather weaker still, about 

 the necessity of a " concurrent jurisdiction" as to police, between that 

 part of the town which lies in Westminster and Middlesex and that pecu- 

 liarly belonging to the City : which might be of consequence, if the 

 only matter of complaint were the troops of thieves and drabs who infest 

 Fleet- street (more certainly than any other part of the metropolis) ; but 

 which is of slight efficiency in considering the great questions of police 

 regulation and extent of crime, as applying to, or with a view to any 

 improvement in, the state of the country generally. And there are some 

 other comments about the incompetency of haberdashers, and such 

 trading people, as constables, and about the nation's having " outgrown 

 its police institutions ;" which we confess we don't perfectly understand, 

 because any outgrowing would seem rather likely to apply to the 

 extent of the police than its character and constitution. But we anti- 

 cipate our object : and, if we treat of results in the beginning, shall 

 have to tell our tale twice over. 



The question properly prefatory to any discussion upon the means of 

 reducing the crime with which the country abounds, is and as such 

 Mr. Peel has treated it the cause or causes by which that quantity of 

 crime has been produced ? And, on this question, a considerable number 

 of politicians have attempted, and hold themselves still prepared, to prove, 

 that the cause of the " crime" in the country is the " poverty." Now this 

 seems to us to be a very fallacious theory ; and we are quite sure that if 

 fallacious it is a very mischievous and dangerous one. No doubt, the 

 crime under which the country suffers proceeds from a variety of causes 

 of which poverty will be one. Part of it is inseparable from the con- 

 stitution of society : and it is difficult to say exactly what that particular 

 proportion may be. Another part will be attributable to an imperfect 

 police, or defective legislation. A third part will proceed from the temp- 

 tation to fraud, and facilities for its execution, which the peculiar circum- 

 stances of a rich and commercial country afford. And a fourth, from the 

 pressure of distress we speak here of national and general distress 

 not of cases of individual misfortune upon the lower classes. But, 

 practically, we believe that this last portion is the smallest of the whole ; 

 and we are sure that the very worst consequences are likely to arise from 

 any attempt to give too much importance to it. 



For, in the first place, it would sound oddly, we suspect, in the ears of 

 a foreigner, listening for the first time to a speech upon English statis- 

 tics, to hear the " distress" of the lower classes talked of as a necessary 

 cause or excuse for crime ; when he has heard also that, by a law which cost 

 the country many millions of pounds annually, every man without the 

 means of subsistence in England, was entitled to and received a mainte- 

 nance, assessed and levied upon the funds of his richer neighbour. It 

 would seem, we repeat, to such an individual, strange, that a farmer, who, 

 on Monday, had paid a tax of four shillings in the pound on his rental, 

 for the support of the poor of his district that tax liable to be raised to 

 eight shillings, if the necessity of the case had required it should be 

 referred to " distress" when his hay-loft or his hen-roost was robbed on 

 Tuesday for an explanation, if not an entire justification, of the trans- 

 action. But, even apart from this particular provision far less subject to 

 it, if we are to accept of poverty, as a general excuse for it is impossible 

 to talk of it as a cause, without treating it in some m asure also as an 

 excuse for crime, we admit a principle which strikes at once at the 

 very key-stone of order and civilization in every country. 



