1828. ] The Police Report. 497 
ing law is strong enough to repress a practice so repugnant to justice ; 
and they suggest that, in addition to the 7 and 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, s. 58, 
which makes the taking a reward under the pretence of helping any one 
to stolen goods a transportable offence, any party paying a reward for 
such purposes shall be guilty of a misdemeanour. 
The old law upon the subject was provided for the particular benefit 
of the hero of one of Fielding’s most admirable, though most neglected 
novels.* Jonathan Wild carried on a system very similar to that which 
the “ putters-up” and “fences” of our own times have so profitably 
brought into practice, but in which, for the skill and daring with which 
their schemes are executed, and the value of their booty, they far sur- 
pass that great man. Some doubts have been entertained whether Mr. 
Peel’s Act, which repeals the old law only to re-enact it, but reduces 
the penalty from death to transportation for life, includes money and 
bank notes in its description of “goods ;” but, notwithstanding the old 
decisions, we should like to see some of the worthy gentlemen men- 
tioned in this report waiting the opinions of the judges upon the point, 
having previously been found (as we have no doubt they would be) 
guilty by a jury. If, however, there be any question about the matter, 
as iti Such cases the safer is the better course, five words in an Act of 
Parliament will effectually provide for future offenders. 
One word, however, about the means that have hitherto been taken to 
repress this crime. The duty of the police, even if it were efficiently per- 
formed, hardly extends to prevent such robberies. They are not, as has 
been seen, effected by ordinary, every-day thieves—by men whose sphere 
of action is so limited, that it is easily watched, or whose intelligence and 
activity are so little superior to those of police officers, that the advan- 
fage of numbers and force which the latter possess enable them to coun- 
termine the “ putters-up.” Their plans are matured in secret, and long 
before they are intended for execution ; they lay wholly out of the course 
of the police; the report is not heard until after the blow has been 
struck, and the discovery is always after the fact. It can never be other-' 
wise, unless by the treachery of their agents ; and that the “ putters- 
fe. effectually prevent, by informing them of no part of the scheme until 
the moment for executing it has arrived. The detection is quite another 
matter, and one obviously within the duty of a police which possesses 
sufficient power, and the inclination to exercise it. They know the per- 
sons (for they are not many in number), some of whom must have been 
_ engaged in such robberies as soon as they have been committed. What 
__ is there that should prevent them from establishing a cordon of observa- 
_ tion around them? Why should they not immediately have the right of 
searching, under certain restrictions, and in the presence of proper’ 
officers, the dwellings and the persons of the parties suspected? If it is 
objected that this would be to invade the privileges of a free people, 
* Fielding relates the fact in his own exquisitely ironical manner.—“ Now, as the vast 
schemes of Wild when they were discovered, however great in their nature, seemed, - to 
some persons, like the projects of most other such persons, rather to be calculated for the. 
glory of the great man himself, than to redound to the general good of society, designs. 
began to be laid by several of those who thought it principally their duty to put a stop to 
oe future progress of our hero; and a learned judge particularly, a great enemy to this 
__ kind of greatness, procured a clause in an act of parliament as a trap for Wild, which he. 
_ soon after fell into. By this law it was made capital in a prig to steal with the hands of 
other people. A Jaw so plainly calculated for the destruction of all priggish greatness, that 
it was indeed impossible for our hero to avoid it.”"—Jonathan Wild the Great, vol. i. p. 204. 
M.M. New Series.—Vou. V1. No. 35. aS 
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