The Sun.
London, England, 1850-10-14 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1850.

Burglary has latterly become an offence of such fre-
quent occurrence that some preventive system must se-
riously be devised for its suppression. Otherwise the law
will continue to be violated in a manner so flagrant as
seriously to mar the influence of the constituted
authorities. Without some energetic effort be made
in this direction the consequences must be as incal-
culable as they have hitherto proved calamitous.
From the impunity of previous offenders, others are
induced to speculate in the perpetration of crimes yet
more flagrant and audacious. From a burglar,
a man is incited by success to become a systematic
footpad. From the unpunished commission of petty
larcenies, an offender has not unfrequently been in-
duced to adventure upon the exploits of a highway-
man. Matters are becoming altogether too serious
in this regard to admit of any further trifling. Either
the majesty of the law must be vindicated upon the
gangs of robbers now infesting the country, or the
inhabitants of this land of boasted security and civili-
zation must continue liable to have their dwel-
ling-houses broken open in the dead of the
night, and their very lives placed in peril
of assassination. The late melancholy catas-
trophe at Frimley has shown rather conspicuously
how the guilt of murder may arise out of the less
heinous crime of burglary. It is with a view, therefore
not only to the well-ordering of society, but with,
a solicitude to witness the better conservation of the
lives and property of the unoffending members of the
community, that we here direct attention to the atro-
cities flowing from a shameful laxity of vigilance and
a most culpable insufficiency of punishment.
That such repeated outrages should he per-
petrated throughout a kingdom like this, in
an age like the present, under the vaunted
shield of a constitution like our own,
is a circumstance surely fraught to ourselves with
shame and amazement. Where, in Heaven's name,
are those manifold advantages said to accrue to the
existing generation from the advancement of science
and the general progress of civilization ? Where are
the benefits arising from the municipal police and the
county constabulary ? Where are the good results of
all those lines of railway, of all those intricate threads
of the electric telegraph which intersect the pro-
vinces in almost every conceivable direction, rendering
our intelligence in a manner, so to speak, endowed
with the mysterious power of übiquity ? Where
are all these and a thousand other so-called beneficial
consequences of the recent development of knowledge,
and of the extension of cur experience—when we find
the houses of our peaceful citizens broken open again
and again, their apartments ransacked, their plate and
jewels purloined, their private papers wantonly de-
stroyed, and sometimes they themselves cruelly shot
down on their own hearths, or most brutally blud-
geoned ? Nor must it be presumed by the unob-
servant that these things take place alone in
the rural districts, in places to some extent with-
drawn from the watchful care of a police maintained
with a cost and care so very considerable. Only a
week or so back, we had to record an outrage of this
character committed in the very heart of this busy
metropolis, and that, moreover, not during the hours
of darkness, when an oversight in the police might
be pardonable, but actually during the hours of ordi-
nary business. Nor is the case of Mr. CURETON, the
victim in question, strange though it be, so singular
as to he unprecedented. Even since the recent
period when that gentleman was nearly strangled
by the ruffians, who carried away part of
his curious and valuable property with such
consummate, and, we might almost call it, admirable
impudence, even within the last week we have bad
occasion to notice a most daring highway robbery,
perpetrated in one of our most crowded thorough-
fa however, it is unnecessary to par-
ticularise rie Unhappily,
individual instances of crimes of this tershappily,
cha-
racter, seeing that scarcely one broad sheet of a daily
newspaper can be published without some new record
of some additional offence of the description. The
question is, in short, not Are these crimes of frequent
occurrence ? but How can they be most effectually
suppressed ?
Various suggestions have been made as to the best
method of henceforth_ guarding against burglary both
in town and country. One of the latest and most in-
genious is to the effect that recourse shall again be
had to the old plan of suspending an alarm-bell con-
spicuously on the outside of every secluded domicile
in such a way as to be in communication with the
different sleeping apartments. Robbers would no
doubt be deterred in many cases by a precaution of this
simple nature ; yet, beyond this, other remedies, reme-
dies, too, of a more decisive kind, must he adopted by the
community, or otherwise the evil can never be effec-
tually eradicated. For the present we would briefly
but most emphatically suggest, that in every instance
where the police can be shown to have been
grievously negligent, they may be visited with the
most severe and summary punishment. We cannot
call to recollection any instance in which the want of
activity and vigilance on the part of these so-termed
guardians of the public has been more glaringly dis-
played than that which has been mentioned by a provin-
cial contemporary as having within the last few days