The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-29 00:00:00

Mr. Bright's Lambs,

(From the Morning Herald.)
To the complaint usually made regamling the
inefficiency of the police—that when their a vviees
are required they are never to be found— -may
now be added another—that when present at
what may fairly be considered breaches of the publi.'
peace they decline to act in their repression. Since
Mr. Bright's demand for the muster of a mob in
Parliament-street, sufficiently numerous to obstruct
the way, and sufficiently boisterous to frighten
timid members and influence the action of the
House of Commons, the vacant spice in front of
Westminster Hall has been occupied on every
occasion when a debate of importance connected
with the passage of the Reform Bill was likely to
arise by a crowd of disorderly and disreputable-
looking persons, whose conduct towards the political
leaders whose opinions happen to be at variance
with their own, has been most disgraceful, witahout
causing any interference whatever in behalf of the
outraged on the part of the police, who stand passive
spectators of the riotous proceedings. We can
well comprehend that Lord Elcho should be sur-
rounded and hustled in St. James's Park by the

unwashed claimants for the franchise ; because it

is probable that the guardians of public tranquillity
were not, as is their wont, present where their duty
should have brought them ; but we cannot under-
stand by whose orders a mob of insolents
are permitted with impunity to pour fourth

their disgusting Billingsgate and _ imperil the

personal safety of such men as Sir John Pakington
and Mr. Lowe, by frightening the horses they ride
or drive with their ruffian hootings, under the
very noses of officials, who are always but too
ready to arrest a child selling matches to gain a
livelihood, or to take into custody any half-drunken
sot who might in his cups offer insult to the sacred
blue. It is true that one of the mob of Tuesday
night, named O'Connor, was brought before the
magistrate at Westminster and fined, but he was
made amenable to justice not because he had hooted
and yelled at the members of the Conservative party
as they came from the House—an amusement he
might have indulged in as long as he pleased with
impunity—but because, in reply to a request that
he should leave the way unobstructed, he had punched
the head of his captor while in the discharge of his
duty. It is all very well to allow Mr.
Gladstone's " lambs" to follow him through the
street and cheer him with their melodious
voices, or even to permit them to offer an ovation
to the ladies of his family. Such silly dis-
plays of sympathy from his own " flesh and
blood" may be as gratifying to him as they are
harmless to the community; but it is quite a
different matter when those entrusted with the pre-
servation of the peace tolerate the hostility of those
same persons towards others until it culminates in
the perpetration of acts of personal violence.
Nor is this neglect of duty in the want of the
protection which should be afforded to the Con-

servative members of Parliament the only one
which may be justly brought against Sir Richard

Mayne.

The misconduct of some of the members

of the force under his command has been lately,
on more than one occasion, atrocious, and

although most strongly commented upon by the
magistrates before whom the culprits were brought,
and reported to his superiors by the superintendent,

the offenders have been permitted still to con-
tinue in their employment to the manifest danger of
society at large. On Wednesday Edwin Nesbitt,
No. 341 S, was charged at 3farylebone office on a
warrant with assaulting a person named Paine, of

Chapel-street, Camden Town. The complainant

had seen him strike, and almost choke, his son of

en years old, who had been sent of an errand.

On remonstrating against such unprovoked and

cruel conduct he was himself instantly seized by the
throat and nearly strangled. A neighbour named
Lang, who interfered in his behalf, and who

besought the policeman to spare him, as he was
suffering under great affliction, having only just
buried his wife, fared still worse ; he was knocked
down, and pursued to his lodging, where, in a
struggle to arrest him, both bis arms were broken.
Meantime Paine, when released, ran to the police-

station for protection, and during his absence Nes-

bitt forced the door of his room, and smashed all his
furniture to pieces. All those facts were clearly

proved by respectable witnesses, who fully corrobo-
rated the statements of the complainant ; and an-

other constable, who attempted to remove the

ruffian from the spot, had his thumb smashed
by a blow of his truncheon. About a fortnight
before this same policeman had, at the same court,
charged three young men with being drunk
and assaulting him. He and a brother constable
who gave evidence contradicted themselte.s in so

marked a manner that Mr. Mansfield dismissed

;he prisoners, saying " that it was palpable to

every one who heard the case that the prose-

cutors were a pair of rascals."

It was no

wonder, then, on Nesbitt's appearance again
before him in uniform that the worthy magistrate

should express his astonishment that after his

former denunciation of his conduct he should be

still permitted to remain in the force, or that he

should declare " that he considers Sir Richard
Mayne and the other commissioners responsible for
this piece of ruffianism." Mr. Lewis applied for a
remand, in order that Nesbitt and his confederate
might be charged with perjury committed on the
last occasion alluded to. He said that he had
been in communication with the commissioners
on the subject, but that they regarded the affair
as merely a quarrel between the parties, and ho
produced a letter received from them, on
reading which, Mr. Mansfield said—" I think
it wrong when a magistrate expresses himself so
strongly as I have done that the commissioners
should treat, the matter so lightly, for it is upon the
good conduct and discipline of the police that the
public safety depends. I cannot understand why
they have overlooked this case." A very well-me-
rited censure this on those who, admitting men into
the force without sufficient vouchers for their good
conduct, allow them to continue in it after'their un-
fitness for the position they fill has been discovered.
Tolerating the presence of such fellows amongst a
body of men upon whose good behaviour so much
depends is criminal in the extreme in their chiefs,
and may entail endless misery on innocent persons.