The morale of our London Police is clearly in need
of improve- ment. Five clerks in a joint stock bank were on Thursday charged with assaulting the police in the Haymarket, and with using obscene language. An inspector, three serjeants, and several police officers swore to different facts, which collectively proved that defendants were drunken ruffians who had assaulted them in the most unprovoked manner. Defendants, under our absurd laws, could give no evidence, but fortunately the scene had been witnessed by gentlemen not in the dock, and not policemen, and it was proved beyond all question that the police had invented the whole story ; that the young men had quitted the bank five minutes before perfectly sober; that they had made no riot, and that they had been savagely assaulted by the officers, whom the magistrate unhesitatingly declared guilty of perjury. This disposition to 'hang together in the witness-box is the one grand drawback to the 'character of the London Police, and the greatest obstacle in the way of giving them efficient protection. Once in a case, they will have a conviction, swearing usually, it is true, to make up the deficiency of evidence caused by our silly refusal to examine the -accused.
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