The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-12 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 12, 1846.

"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream."

Of the general efficiency and organization of the
metropolitan police we are thoroughly satisfied. The
duties of that extensive body are so peculiarly
onerous, and, notwithstanding this, their fulfilment is
usually so characterised by propriety, that our opinion
respecting the force collectively, if prejudiced in any
particular, is certainly prejudiced in its favour. To
preserve order and decency in a metropolis of such
vast dimensions as London, even when its inhabitants
are previously awed into something like social sobriety
by our constitutional enactments, by the stringent
bye-laws of our capital itself, and by our aggregate
municipal regulations, is an office of no little diffi-
culty, and entailing no insignificant responsibility
upon its agents. The cleansing of the Augean
stables, though delineated by the mythologists as an
almost impracticable undertaking, required, never-
theless, scarcely equal courage, and scarcely com-
parable energy with that necessary for the purging of
depravity, rioting, drunkenness, and obscenity,
with all the minor specimens of immorality and in-
subordination, from the avenues of this enormous city.
The preservation of decorum throughout London
necessitates the utmost vigilance, the most untiring
activity, the most imperturbable self-possession, and
the most continuous zeal in each individual of every
separate corps. Now, considering the extraordinary
surface covered by the metropolis, and taking into
account the astonishing multitude of its inhabitants,
it is impossible to deny that a very remarkable
amount of decorum is preserved in its thoroughfares,
and that very circumstance demonstrates, ipso facto,
that the various members of the metropolitan police
are vigilant, active, self-possessed, and zealous in the
habitual performance of their duties. We, there-
fore, repeat our previous observation :—We are
fully persuaded that the metropolitan police, as
a body, is most intelligent, efficient, and well-
organised. In acknowledging the merits of the class
we are, nevertheless, by no means disposed to allow
the delinquencies of the individual to pass unre-
proved. Cases have occasionally arisen in our police-
courts in which the existence of an insolent and do-
mineering spirit has been manifested among the very
agents of peacefulness and justice. Policemen have
sometimes availed themselves of the respectable
authority with which they are invested for the in-
dulgence of the most disreputable violence. They
have not unfrequently come before the public as,
those most contemptible and intolerable of characters,
Jacks-in-office. Armed and paid and clothed for the
maintenance of the local and general laws by which
the social condition of the empire is regu-
lated, they have become at times merely the
agents of their own grovelling passions. They
have merged themselves into the terror of blind
courts and the despots of bye-lanes. Whenever "the
insolence of office" is thus miserably developed in our
metropolitan police, common sense tells us that the
offender should not merely be visited by condign
punishment, but that, especially where the circum-
stances are of an aggravated character, he should be
immediately discharged from the body, and rendered,
with certain restrictions, incapable of being further
employed in that cspacity. Otherwise the members
of the police force would be liable to become contami-
nated by association with such individuals.
We have been induced to consider the advisability
of such a proceeding as the one just mentioned from
the facts which have been disclosed on the recent
trial of a constable in the G division of the metropo-
litan police, and the particular circumstances of which
case are referred to in the report of the Middlesex
Sessions, printed in another part of The Sun. A
more flagrant case we do not remember. We have
frequently had the misfortune to read accounts of
ruffianism perpetrated in various quarters of England,
and in various territories of the globe; but within
the scope of our memory we cannot call to recollec-
tion any one incident combining so much of the in-
decorous and the brutal, so remarkable for gratuitous
cruelty, for brazen-faced lying, and for audacious
insolence. We have no intention to garble facts
merely to suit a purpose, for we have no purpose
whatever to suit, unless it be the purpose of express-
ing our abhorrence of anything like tyrannical con-
duct, be it tyranny under a sceptre or a broomstick,
from an emperor down to a policeman.
Here is'a respectable female, the wife of an honest
tradesman, walking along Whitecross- street, accom-
panied by an equally respectable woman, her neigh-
bour. They are the cause of no impedie)ent in the
thoroughfare, they are partakers in La disturbance.
This very reputable police-constable of the G division
thereupon accosts the former, calling her " a common
woman," commanding her in the most insolent man-
ner to be off, offering " to bet a quartern of gin that
she was a common woman," and at last, on her
remonstrating with him for his behaviour, assaulting
her with the most unnecessary brutality, and under
the most scandalous circumstances. The woman
is committing no offence when she is called by the most
opprobrious epithet ; her arms are pinched and
twisted ; she is dragged off by main force to the
station-house ; she is almost fainting, from ill-treat-
ment and distress of mind, on her way thither ; a
false charge is entered against her, before the super-
intendent; and when she is at last discharged from
custody, as in no degree culpable, her shawl
is thrown in her face, and she is treated
in all respects with the most contemptuous
impertinence. Nor are these the only parti-