of peace in England, or commissioners of supply in Scotland-both of which bodies are thoroughly imbued with, and fairly represent, the general voice of the community. In all cases, whether in the metropolis or in the provinces, a police imposes an immediate and heavy burden on all householders. In London £40,000 a-year is given by Government to aid in the support of the police; but the whole remainder of the cost, amounting to four times as much, falls on the ratepayers. In the provinces the whole cost of every police force falls on the householders; and our readers need not be told how heavy it sometimes is, and how universally it is everywhere complained of. Now, if there is any one peculiarity more than another by which this generation is distinguished, it is aversion to assessment. People may differ in other respects as to the designation by which the age should be characterised; but we believe all will agree that it is a tax-hating age. What did this nation first do on being liberated from danger by the battle of Waterloo? Throw off the income-tax. What alone induced them to submit to it again on the modified scale of three per cent? The disasters in Affghanistaun; the perils of our Indian empire; the rocking of Britain to its foundation. When therefore, in such a country and in such an age, we see numerous bodies of men-popularly elected in some cases, in all swayed by the popular voiceconcurring, in a great many places, in the taxation of themselves for the establishment of a police, we may rely upon it that some very general and grinding sense of necessity has been at work to produce the effect. Nothing but this could overcome, in men really and practically invested in this particular with the power of self-government, the universal and almost invincible repugnance to assessments. Rely upon it, for every crime which is brought to light, and made the subject of commitment and trial by the institution of a police force, ten previously existed, undetected and unpunished, before men were driven to the flebile remedium, the ultimum malum, of taxing themselves for the establishmen of a force to repress them. To illustrate the strength of this resistance, and the important bearing it has upon the present question, we shall refer only to two instances-one in England, and one in Scotland. It is well known what a scene of confusion * and disorder South Wales was for some years. The bloodshed at Merthyr-Tydvil, the strikes in Glamorganshire, the attack on Newport, and the Rebecca riots, had for a series of years fixed the attention of all parts of the empire upon this, as one of the most inflammable and dangerous portions of the community. Nor did these disorders appear surprising to those who were practically acquainted with the state of the country, overrun as it is in many places by vast iron-works, which have brought together a great and reckless population, and inhabited in all by a discontented and ill-instructed peasantry. Population had advanced with unexampled rapidity-having increased, from 1831 to 1841, thirty-six and a tenth per cent in Monmouthshire ; the greatest increase during the same period of any county in the British empire. Here then, if anywhere, it might have been expected that a general feeling of insecurity, the sense of an overbearing necessity, would have overcome the general repugnance of men towards local assessment, and led to the establishment of a police force in all the counties of South Wales, on a scale adequate to the magnitude of the danger with which they were threatened. Was it so? Had the counties taken the requisite steps to avoid the calamity? Quite the reverse; the aversion to a police assessment was so strong, that nothing whatever had been done. Glamorganshire had only established one on a small scale, after repeated and earnest efforts on the part of its able and public-spirited lord-lieutenant, the Marquis of Bute; and the Rebecca riots surprised the adjoining counties without any preparation whatever. And even after those disgraceful disorders had continued several weeks, and rendered South Wales the scandal of the empire, and the astonishment of Europe; still the repugnance to assessment was such, that it was only after a severe struggle, and by no small exertions, that it was at length carried; and the public-spirited member for the county, who to his infinite credit brought forward the measure, stated at the county meeting on the subject, that he was aware he endangered his seat by so doing! The Scotch have shown themselves not a whit behind * Census of 1841. their southern compatriots in repugnance to a police assessment. In Lanarkshire, as it is well known, the iron and coal trades have made unexampled progress of late years. Its population, in consequence, has enormously increased; having risen from 316,000 to 434,000 in ten years, from 1831 to 1841-an increase of thirty-six per cent in that short time-the next to Monmouthshire of the whole empire. Crime had, of course, immensely increased. In 1835, the committals for serious offences were 401; in 1842, they had risen to 696-being an increase of seventyfive per cent in seven years.* Serious crime, therefore, so far as it has been detected, was doubling in ten years, while population was doubling in thirty-in other words, detected crime was increasing three times as fast as the numbers of the people. Disturbances, as a matter of course, of a very serious nature had arisen. In 1837, the great cottonspinners' conspiracy, which led to the memorable trial, had kept above 20,000 persons in Lanarkshire, for four months, in a state of compulsory destitution. In 1842, the colliers' strike threw a still greater number into a state of idleness for five months, which led to a general system of plunder, and forcible seizure of the farmers' produce in the fields; only repressed, with infinite difficulty, by the introduction of a large military force, aided by the yeomanry of the county, who were on permanent duty for six weeks, and the establishment for a few months, by subscription, of a powerful police. In October 1842, twenty policemen, who had some prisoners in charge for combination offences, were assaulted by a furious mob of 2000 persons on the streets of Airdrie, in the centre of the mining district of the county, the house in which they had taken refuge set on fire, and the prisoners by main force rescued from the hands of the law. These facts were known to the whole county, and the terror which, in consequence, pervaded the agricultural inhabitants of the mining districts was so great, that, in a petition to Government praying for protection, they stated, that they would be better if law were altogether abolished, and every man were allowed to defend himself by firearms, * PORTER'S Parliamentary Tables. +These facts were all proved in the subsequent trial of the leaders of the riot, at Edinburgh. than they were now; for that, if they used lethal weapons in defence of their property, they ran the risk of being transported for culpable homicide-if they did not, they were certain of being plundered by the combined workmen. And what did the county do to arrest this disgraceful and perilous system of outrage and plunder? Why, in the full knowledge of all these facts, they adhered to their oftexpressed determination to submit to no assessment for a rural police; and notwithstanding the utmost efforts of the county magistrates for its establishment, Lanarkshire, though the most endangered county in Great Britain, is, save in three parishes, without any rural defensive force whatever. We do not suppose that the inhabitants of South Wales or the banks of the Clyde are particularly short-sighted or selfish, or more inclined to resist assessment for objects of public utility or necessity than those of other parts of the empire. On the contrary, we know that they are in a remarkable degree the reverse; and that in no part of the world are undertakings in public improvement or charity entered into with more alacrity, and supported with more liberality. We suppose the Scotch and Welsh are what other men are neither better nor worse. We adduce these facts, not as tending to fasten any peculiar charge on them, but as indicating the general character of human nature, and the universal repugnance to taxation, which, when men are really and practically, and not in form only, invested with the power of self-government, appears the moment that any proposal for subjecting them to assessment for the purpose of local defence and protection, even under the most aggravating circumstances, is brought forward. How great, then, must have been the mass of experienced, but undetected and unpunished, crime which pervades the state, when this all but invincible repugnance has been generally overcome, and men in so many cities and counties have been induced to submit to the certainty of the visit of the tax-gatherer, rather than the chance of a visit from the thief or the burglar! And for decisive evidence that the new establishment of a police force is not, by the crimes which it is the means of bringing to light, the cause of the prodigious increase of crime of late years in the British empire, we refer to the contemporary examples of two other countries, in which a police force on a far more extensive scale has been established, and has been found the means of effecting a signal diminution of crime and commitment. In Hindostan, as is well known, a most extensive and admirably organised system of police has been found absolutely indispensable to repress the endless robberies of which its fertile plains had long been the theatre; and the force employed permanently or occasionally in this way amounts to a hundred and sixty thousand! The consequence has been a diminution of crime and commitments, during the last forty years, fully as remarkable as this simultaneous increase in the British islands. The official reports which have been compiled in India by the British authorities exhibit of late years the pleasing prospect of a decrease of serious crime to a third or fourth part of its former amount. * Look at France during the same period. That there is in that great country a numerous and well-organised police force, will not probably be denied by those who know anything, either of its present circumstances by observation, or its past from history. Unlike Great Britain, it is universally established and raised, not by separate acts of parliament, local effort, and contribution, but by a general assessment, under the name of "Centimes Additionnels," varying in particular districts, according to the necessity and amount of the defensive force, but, in all, imposed by the authority and levied by the officers of government. And what has been the result? Is it that crime, from being generally brought to light, evinces the same steady and alarming increase which is conspicuous in all parts of the British islands? Quite the reverse criminal law and a powerful system of police appear there in their true light, as checking * Table showing the diminution of crime in British India : -MARTIN'S British Colonies. 12mo, Edin. Vol. ix. 322-329. Larceny. Total. 3722 |