nine times out of ten, the guilt or innocence of the prisoner in any reasonable mind; how then, without more than Old Bailey practice hypocrisy, can he advocate the prisoner's cause, and do his duty to the public, the servant of which he is, and for which he is solemnly pledged to act uprightly! The prisoner should have his own counsel if he choose, or one should be appointed for him, but all fair means to get at the truth should be employed. If the prisoner make contradictory allegations, or criminate himself, it is his own affair-it is sufficient he is not obliged to do it. This spirit was carried into our old police system ; spare the prisoner," was the cry; and while we did not hesitate to hang a man upon the testimony of a King's evidence, who is always, honestly speaking, a more guilty man than the prisoner, we often hesitated about the testimony given by those employed in his apprehension. Now a police officer, who gains no advantage by the innocence or guilt of the individual he apprehends being established, having an unimpeachable character, is one of the best witnesses. In this respect the new police will have a great advantage over the old, and its alliance with incipient rogues not thought worthy of capture until well ripened in iniquity. The later reforms in the old police had done away with a portion of this, it is true; but complete purgation was required, and we trust Mr. Peel's measure has effected it. It was formerly a constant practice among the police to permit petty depredators to continue infesting society until they reached, step by step, a daring crime, for which it was worth the police officers' object to apprehend them, either from the reward offered for them, or the eclat attending the discovery, and the consequent increase of value they obtained in their calling. The slandered intellect of the present day has shown that there are better methods of protecting the public than by following the institutions of Jonathan Wild. The activity of an imposing and watchful power, honourably directed, and incessantly regardful of the interests of the public in this great metropolis, is the open, manly, straight-forward method of preventing and detecting crime; the only way worthy the character of Englishmen.

But the new system is charged with being one of espionnage, and Heaven knows what besides; and, curiously enough, these charges are principally brought by the ultra-Tory newspapers, and do not originate in any dislike to such a system were it really established, but in hatred to Mr. Peel. It is akin to their motives in other instances of their apparent anti-ultraism, as in their miraculous advocacy of Parliamentary Reform, despite the Duke of Newcastle's tyranny at Newark, and their attacks upon abuses they strenuously advocated when their party was in power. Mr. Peel's system is open and manly, not sneaking and cowardly, like that under Lord Sidmouth a few years ago, when starving villains were led on, step by step, furnished with money and arms, and, there is too much reason to fear, even with plots, by agents and policemen. When, too, this ultra-Tory Lord was so terrified, that the cannon along the coast were dismounted, and every pop-gun kept for a birth-day salute was seized upon and guarded, and spies were busy in every corner. The ultra-Tory papers found no fault with the system of espionnage then in vogue, for it was exclusively their masters', and posterity will give him the infamous glory of it; but now matters are changed. With a home-minister whom they vituperate, they dread a system of espionnage being established by a body of police, which is

quite the reverse in character; where every member of that body is known, and not a single Oliver, or Castles, or Reynolds, is employed incognito, to scrape acquaintance with marked individuals, or lead them, or pay them into crime. Mr. Peel has no objection that the name and description of his new men should be fully known to all the world. He relies upon the activity and watchfulness of his agents, exerted openly in conscious power, not in moral weakness and disguise, in darkness and dissimulation. Spy systems will not do in England; they must be discarded here, and left to the inventors of them, the Bourbon governments of Europe; though Napoleon used them, to the preceding governments of France they owed their perfection-to the hot-beds of continental ultraism.

The very nature of an Englishman's character would render a spypolice system inert and ridiculous here. In the great Continental cities, people are more social, and mingle more together. Many families dwell under the same roof. No liberty of the press prevails. There is no habeas corpus act. Here there can be no commitment without a public examination. There can be no secret imprisonment. No one wants to conceal his political opinions from his neighbours; or is afraid of his Majesty's ministers, who cannot avenge the open expression of any opinion respecting them, that reasonable men can hold. From any fear of espionnage for political purposes we are safe, by the constitution of the social institutes of the country. As to the secrets of families, the tattle of women, the economy of an household, except the sensual Bourbon princes, who allowed a little of it in former times to gratify their mistresses, it does not appear to have ever made, in a Continental police system, any object worth mentioning. Under Napoleon it certainly did not. The names, numbers, ages, and persons of individuals, in all houses, are known to the police by the passports. The very gensd'armerie has been altered since 1818, so as (in France) to do away with the worst part of its character. It formerly reported to the war minister, and the military commander, as well as to the police minister, and such reports were unknown but to the officer who made them. Thus the military officer might have had information of a different nature from that of the minister of police, and might communicate it secretly to the head of the Government. The gens-d'armerie of France is now, to all intents and purposes, a civil body. Its members always differed from the army in that their horses and accoutrements were their own property, and they had their own private stables and lodgings, not quartering with the soldiers. They have a sort of esprit de corps, are all picked men, of tried character, and enjoined by the laws to behave with kindness and civility to peaceable persons.

The mouchards, as some style them, are the real agents pensioned by the police. They mingle with the people and watch suspected characters, themselves unknown as police agents. They are engaged from every rank of persons, and paid accordingly; and there is always a good sprinkling of foreigners of every nation among them. The gens-d'armerie are always known; they are never disguised; and are, in fact, what we might call constables, patrols, and watchmen combined. The officers, denominated huissiers, rather answer to our bailiffs, and act under the instruction of the law courts: the gens-d'armes are the civil police. We would, therefore, rectify the common mistake as to the character of the gens-d'armes; they report what they openly observe, and obey the magistrates' orders; the police spies are a very different

body of men. The military character of a gendarme is the thing most obnoxious in a free country. In England, the military never has, and we hope never may, be combined with the civil power. When a force is wanted here to escort a criminal, or to guard a prison, the sheriff should arm a body of police for the purpose. Our jealousy of military interference in civil affairs is a just one, and, with proper precaution, it might always be dispensed with.

We are not advocates for extending the new plan of Mr. Peel to the country parts of England. It is obvious that some very different system must be adopted to prevent, as well as detect, crime in a city with a million and a half of souls, dwelling in nine or ten thousand streets, courts, and alleys, of all grades in moral and social life, compared to the insulated dwellings of the country, and the confined limits of provincial towns. For our own parts, we can see none which promises better than the present, when it shall have had the benefit of a little more experience. We would particularly inculcate civility on its agents; they are not superior to the peaceable citizen, but his servants, acting for his protection; and so acting, he, on the other hand, is bound to afford them every facility in attaining the end of their existence as a body. We think their efficacy will be soon universally acknowledged. While we respect a reasonable jealousy towards every apparent encroachment upon public liberty, we contemn unfounded alarm, and despise those persons who, uniformly the advocates of unlimited authority, sink even their real sentiments in pretended solicitude for public liberty, when, by so doing, they can convert the pen into an instrument of personal attack. Had the ex-Chancellor been the founder of the present police, or his Grace of Newcastle, and had they added passports and interrogatories, we believe all would have been "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." We should have had no cant about military spies ; no sallies about Gallic-like espionnage; no alarms about Napoleonism, (who we have shown was not the inventor nor the greatest user of the spy system); no railings at the "Peelers," as they style them. Personal "enmity, the motive fit only for the Devil," is at the bottom of these Jeremiades these lamentations of the "Morning Journal," et hoc genus omne. Very great advantages result from a combined system of action in a body like that at present under consideration; and it is difficult to conceive how such an end can be obtained without something like discipline. It was formerly impossible to get together, at a short notice, an effective number of the police to act at any given point: this advantage has been attained, and a limited force will be ready on a given emergency. The word "police" has been considered obnoxious, because it has often been abused in other countries; but it matters not here what term shall designate a body, the conduct and rules of which are unopposed to the principles of civil freedom. It is these rules, and the constitution of the present body, to which all observations should be confined; and we confess we see without the slightest alarm, nay, rather hail as a benefit, any substitution for the uncertain protection of parish watchmen and police officers, who must be paid well by the robbed to do justice on the thief. When the new system is in full action, and experience is attained as to the local haunts of thieves, the stratagems and combinations they adopt, and the times when they are most active, it will be found that the number of depredations will decrease if the system act well. A great mode of preventing robberies of shops and dwelling-houses, is an incertitude

as to the time or times when the police may patrol near them. The rounds should be gone at hours fixed upon only after the night parties have been set on. When there were regular watchmen, on the old system, it cost a housebreaker the observation of a night or two only to ascertain the habits of the guardian of the spot-whether he slept in his box, whether he left his beat, and what not, and he acted accordingly. These preliminary observations were almost always made by experienced burglars; and more than one visit, or two, was paid to the premises marked out for depredation, before any attempt was made to enter it. Some robberies were planned six months before the time was considered proper to effect them. We remember one man who entered a bank six times to obtain the whole of the models for making the keys necessary to complete his plan. The great and successful robberies are now committed by a few skilful hands. The pickpockets, who were formerly numerous, and a superior class of thieves, are at present the lowest; and, indeed, most of the depredators on the pockets of street passengers are boys under fourteen years of age. As in every thing else, so in thievery, the risk and profit to be made are evenly balanced by the professors of the trade. The cleverest, and those who possess most skill and foresight, will be found practising where combination and knowledge are most necessary, and the booty greatest. The vulgar thief will be the most daring and most easy of detection; the " gentlemen" of the art will always be abroad the longest, and keep the laws of the country farthest at bay. Were it not for the improvidence of those who thus live on the property of others, and the impossibility of their feeling the value of what they waste, they would often wholly escape detection by frugally living upon the great amount of plunder they obtain until it is expended. A noted thief, afterwards transported, said, that he moved to a remote quarter of the metropolis, after a successful theft; kept no company with any one who knew him before; rarely went out of his lodgings until after night-fall, and lived until his plunder was spent, which was nearly a twelvemonth, unmolested. It is, therefore, against thieves of this class that the system of prevention should most especially be directed, for detection is frequently impossible. Against such the late plan of watching was evidently ineffectual. Though it prevented burglaries from being more numerous, it did not hinder the more dexterous artistes, as the French would say, from reaping too often a rich booty, especially from jewellers' shops. We have often observed under the old plan, that there was little generalship displayed in placing the men. We have often found a watchman placed half-way up a street which had no lateral outgoing, while at the ends there were cross streets without a box in view. It is true that this admirably placed Charley was often stationed against the house of a great man in the parish vestry, which explained the badness of his position.

We could wish that people were in general more disposed to second the operations of the police than they are at present. We con, tend that no burglary could happen without discovery at the time, if proper precautions were taken by the inmates, unless some were confederates. Rogues will not risk breaking into a house where there is nothing worth stealing, and he who has goods to tempt the thief ought at least to use reasonable precautions against him. The best system of police cannot do every thing, but its object may be much furthered by the aid of those whom it is designed to protect. We have

never tried the preventive system, and the vermin that swarm under the appellation of attorneys, always hungry for prey, are ever ready to take up the cause of any character, however bad, against whom, perhaps, a praiseworthy zeal may have been too far exerted. Prevention is, therefore, as the law stands, a hazardous measure if carried too far. It had better, therefore, be of the passive than the active kind; but there can be no hesitation as to the police arresting the ragged boys that swarm in our crowded streets at midday, for their designs are never long concealed. A riddance of these to Sidney Cove, for fourteen years, together with every thief who appears a second time in a court of justice, would rapidly thin London of its furtive colonization, and be no injustice, but the contrary, to the individual. Surely the hulk system might well be exchanged for that of transportation for a double term. By the latter we should incur no greater expense; thin, though triflingly, our exuberant population; people a new world; extend the field of commerce, and our national glory, and reform the offender. We repeat it, without some such alteration the new police will not be fully effective. Our streets are deluged with thieves let loose from the hulks, ten times more mischievous than they entered them. We hang a man who imitates a note of twenty shillings, though it might be he was starving from want of employment when he was tempted to do it, the punishment being out of all measure of justice to the individual. By what reasoning, then, do we refrain from sending to our colonies the young thieves who infest our streets, upon a second offence, and thus almost prefer licensing their future depredations!

We have some doubts whether it would not be useful to have some portion of the new police, at times, dressed as other individuals; a pickpocket will be on his guard when a policeman is near, or pass into some street where he may not be observed. It is true this would not be consonant exactly to the preventive plan, but it would aid materially in the apprehension of such offenders. We think, too, that the pay of the men is too low. A guinea a week is too little to keep men above temptation to wrong-it should be thirty shillings at least; the money would be well bestowed.

On the whole there can be no doubt but the experiment will answer better than many persons expect. It must, however, be aided by the community at large, and if an impression that shall be effectual is expected to be made, the law courts, in the sentences of offenders who have been brought into a court of justice more than once, must lend their help. We do not think the task of diminishing public crimes in the metropolis so very difficult; as to the extent of the diminution, it is another affair. Mr. Peel has aimed well, and his disposition no one can doubt. He must see, however, that he must go a little farther in collateral measures, and evince that zeal in preventing the return upon the public of offenders destitute of all means of subsistence but from their depredations, which he has shown in his present innovation upon an old and ineffective institution. With luxury, crime increases, and the necessity for its remedy. With what the Home Secretary has done we are sure the public are satisfied; with what he may do, and of what it would be politic and just he should farther do, we trust we shall not be disappointed in our anticipations.