The annual Report of the Chief Commissioner- of Police, -which
has appeared this week, is a very interesting public document. If deductions are made for men employed on station duties and special work, men ill, and men on leave, there are only 9,037 constables available for ordinary duty in the streets,—a number entirely inadequate for a district which covers seven hundred square miles, has a population equal to that of many good-sized Kingdoms, and contains an amount of accumulated wealth such as has never before in the world's history been concentrated in one spot. To do the work required of them under ordinary circumstances is by no means easy for the present force of constables, and when an exceptional demand is made, as in the ease of the East-End murders or the Trafalgar-Square riots, the necessary result is that a con- siderable portion of the fundamental business of the police has to be neglected.
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