1828.) The Police Report. 491 
vigilance, and intelligence with which they have conducted the difficult 
investigation that has been submitted to them. 
The importance of such inquiries is as obvious as is their frequent 
necessity. With all due veneration for police officers, we cannot forget 
that their avocation is one which exposes them to many evil influences— 
besides that of occasionally keeping bad company; and even police 
magistrates have so often shewn themselves not wholly exempt from the 
human weaknesses of caprice, ill-humour, and indolence, that we cannot 
bring ourselves to believe but that they are the better for the occasional 
application of that moral check which the certainty of their conduct being 
inquired into supplies. 
_ The Cominittee first direct their attention to an inquiry into the 
increase of crime in London and its neighbourhood, and into the causes 
of that increase. Taking two series of years (the one containing the 
period between 1811 and 1817, and the other that between 1821 and 
1827), in which, having ascertained the number of commitments and 
their results, and also the state of the population during the same periods 
respectively, and having made a proportionate deduction from the whole 
amount of crime in respect of the increase of population, they come to 
the conclusion—which we confess appears to us an undeniable one— 
that the total increase of crime may be stated to be as thirty-six per cent.* 
The Committee frankly avow their inability to suggest a specific remedy 
for this increase ; but they proceed to state the reasons which have been 
assigned for its existence by the witnesses they have examined. 
The first of these causes is the increased population, the effect of which, 
whatever it may be, is limited, and which, asit has been already allowed 
for in the calculation made by the Committee, may be considered as dis- 
posed of ; the others are the low price of spirituous liquors—a general want 
_ of employment—and neglect of children. On the cogency of each, or of 
any of these latter causes, the Committee offer no opinion ; and, indeed, 
_ it seems to us that little weight is to be attached to them (evils as they 
unquestionably are), for the purpose of explaining that enormous increase 
_ of crime which is made out to have taken place. 
The introduction of spirituous liquors at the cheap rate at which, since 
the late reduction of duties, they have been sold in the metropolis, is, no 
doubt, a cause of that demoralization of the lower classes which leads to: . 
crime of every description ; but its influence is not unchecked :—and 
the fact which is next mentioned by the Committee as a cause of crime 
—a general want of employment—the effect of which must be to excite 
_ the industry and to drive to exertion by “ the bare point of sharp neces- 
* As nothing has occurred since 1821 to check the progressive addition to the popula- 
tion, but, on the contrary, much in the erection and construction of new and extensive 
buildings, to stimulate and advance it, there is ground to suppose, that between 1821 and 
1828, the advance on the population, has not been proportionably less than it was between 
1811 and 1821 ; if so, the population may be considered to have again increased little less 
than 19 per cent, making a total increase sinte 1801, amounting to 504,500. 
The result then is, that the criminal calendar exhibits an increase in the annual average 
of commitals of 48 per cent. And in the annual average of convictions of 55 per cent ; 
but, as the population returns show an increase of 19 per cent, within the same period of 
_ time, 19 per cent of the increase of commitments and convictions may be accounted for by 
_ @ proportionate augmentation of population. f 
If the foregoing be a reasonable mode of accounting for 222 of the average increase of 
convictions being 19 per cent, there will remain to be accounted for 420, being the remain- 
ing 36 per cent.—-Report, page 7. 
3 R 2 
