25 APRIL 1829, Page 8

THE POLICE.

MORNING JOURNAL—It is notorious that crimes abound, and that almost every third person one meets in the street is either a thief, or what we will not mention: it is notorious that houses exist, and are openly sanctioned, for the congregation of avowed thieves, and for the practice of, and for initiating, the inexperienced into vice of every sort. Our street-keepers are, for the most part, in the servants'-hall of some gentleman who lives in the street ; the police-officer, who should be going his rounds, is in the ale-house ; in the evening we are for many hours with no watch or ward of any sort ; and at night the patrol is drunk, and the watchman fast asleep. Prostitutes ply the streets ; pickpockets infest public places ; and the housebreaker has com- pleted his burglary sometimes even before the hour of retiring to our ordinary repose. Body-snatching, shop-lifting, murder, rape, and the whole melan- choly catalogue of crime which the inspection of any day's police reports in the newspapers can furnish, increase and multiply. And yet the magistrates, armed with authority, whose duty it is to put the laws in force, and who can and ought so to do, look tamely on, and pocket their salaries in the midst of them. When an offender is brought up before them, indeed, if his prosecutor relent not, the energies of the relaxed laws are sometimes effectually roused ; but as for the prevention, detection, or remedy of crimes or criminals, no more notice is taken of it than if we had no magistrates and no police esta- blishment, or than if the commission of crime was the natural result of civi- lization and virtue, and the practice of good only fit for the saint (in the modern acceptation of the word) or the savage. When so much is annually paid for our police system what a system we might have—how beautiful in theory— how perfect in practice. How comes it, then, that we are so despicably beneath every other civilized nation in the world in this respect ? Answer, Mr. Peel. We throw out these remarks for your consideration—thinking your present police bill good enough as a partial measure, but as a partial measure only. The whole police system requires amendment and alteration, for it is radically wrong.