The National Register.
London, England, 1816-09-23 00:00:00

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No. 440.—V0L. IX.

POLITICAL DISQUISITION.

REPORT of the POLICE of the METROPOLIS.

THE more we contemplate the contents of the volume
before us, the more we are amazed at the complicated
niture and alarming extent of the evil:: therein recorded,
and the less we feel competent to convey, particularly in
our circumscribed limits, even a faint idea of their atro-
city. We shall not, therefore, attempt to give a regular
abstract of those horrid details, but shall content our-
selves with selecting a few of the most remarkable, and
making such general reflections upon them as may natu-
rally occur, without pretending to trace the source, or
propose the remedy, of the evils in question.
Many causes have concurred to bring matters to the
excadfol crisis at which they are now arrived ; the first
and greatest of which, no doubt, has been the War,
which for duration and magnitude has never, and proba-
bly will never, be equalled; a war which, " growing
with the growth," for more than twenty years, has not
only exhausted the resources of the country, and conse-
quently increased the wants of the people; but, by directs
ing our whole energies and attention to foreign affairs,
has caused us to overlook or neglect the more important
concerns of our domestic policy. By the termination of
that destructive war, however, we are at last, fortunately,
left at leisure to turn our eyes inward upon ourselves,
and to behold with unparalized, though astonished gaze,
that basilisk of corruption, the Police of the Metropolis !
\Ve look, and, as enchanted, are lost in admiration and
horror ; admiration, at our apathy and blindness in not
seeing, what we now see, sooner ; and horror, at the
vil-
lainous combination of heterogeneous, yet conspiring in-
terests, which have so long upheld, and so ingeniously
matured, that system of depravity which thrives upon the
ruin of the country.

But what shall we say ; where shall we begin ; how
untie that worse than Gordian knot—that knot of ser-
pents, whose very existences are interwoven, and who
are equally dangerous to be approached, and difficult to
be laid hold of, by reason of their poison and their slime ?
Shall we, beginning at the head, endeavour to trace
them downwards, through all their various windings,
to the tail ?—in other words, from the domineering,
time-serving magistrate, to the feeble, fee-extorting
watchman ; or follow their contortions from the tail up-
ward,—from the blood-seeking informer to the blood-
destroying distiller ? On whichever side, in whatever
light we regard those appalling scenes, we are equally
shocked and disgusted ; whether at the overreaching ava-
rice of brewers, the selfish connivance of magistrates, the
mercenary motives of informers, the monstrous profligacy
of the lower orders, or the criminal apathy of the higher ;
—all, all serve to inspire but one opinion of the errors,
insufficiency, and gross mismanagement of the present
system of Police ! And, setting the degree of moral
turpitude aside, it is difficult to determine, whether
inure ruinpas effects to the publi: result from the con-
duct of a Mercer= or a Vaughan, a Millbury or a
Price.

That this censure may not appear, to those who have
not read the Reports of the Committee, too severe or un-
foundixt, let us examine, but without pretemliug to me-
thod or order,a few of those circumstances that have trans-
pired in evidence. In proof of the first charge, namely
of error :—The jurisdiction of Union Hall, which con.
tains, it is said, 25 parishes, 127,319, souls, and is be-
tween thirty and ti►rty miles in circumference, possesses
only seven constables; while that of Bow-street, which
is but the eighth or ninth part as large us the former, has
10S. Again, the Thames Police Office is situated be-
tween the offices of Shadwell and Whitechapel, which,
it is thought, transact but little business, and are, be-
tween them, fully competent to all that may arise to the
east of the Minories ; while to Union Hall alone arc left
the concerns of a district much more extensive than that
of the other three put together: