The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-17 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1845

The centralisation of power—its advantages and disad-
vantages—how far the former may be neutralised by specific
c.rciunstances ; to what degree the latter may be tolerated
in consideration of countervailing benefits resulting from the
principle itself ;—these are points the careful determination of
which is of the very highest moment to the proper working
of every political, and every municipal system of goirern-
ment. Centralisation has been the ruling principle of Sir
ROBERT PEr.i.'s administrative career, as it had been
that of the Minister whom he succeeded. It has
been adopted by Sir JAMES GRAHAM ever since
he took office under the Premier, with a becoming deference
for the opinions and the example of his leader. We must,
however, in fairness admit that it is under many conditions
a valuable accession to the theory of domestic government.
In ne instances has it been so largely carried out of late years
as in the remodelling and consolidation of the authorities to
whom the Legislature has referred the executive superinten-
dence of the laws relating to the police of the metropolitan
districts, and the sustentation, maintenance, and management
of the poor. The principle is one undoubtedly liable
to very grave objection on constitutional and legal
grounds. It is objectionable on the former, be-
cause its direct tendency is to transfer from the
advisers and Ministers of the Crown, or from the
Executive recognised by the Legislature, and even from the
Legislature itself, those functions and that responsibility which
the Constitution has devolved directly upon them. It is
objectionable on the latter ground, since it almost inevitably
occasions, and therefore too readily sanctions, serious infrac-
tions of personal rights, and unwarrantable violations of the
personal liberty recognised in the subject by the common law
of the land. On these accounts it becomes our duty, as
public journalists, carefully to note, from day to day, the
mode in which these powers are administered by the hands
in which they have been centralised. And where their abuse
is necessarily an extended departure from Constitutional and
legal rights already compromised to a certain, though it may
be an unavoidable degree, by their creation, we shall not
feel ourselves called upon to apologise for the apparently tri-
vial character of any case of such abuse to which we may di-
rect the attention of the reader. The worst precedents arise
out of the smallest beginnings : and the sound maxim of po-
litics as well as morals is—p incipiis obsta.

Very recently we have had to demonstrate, an enormous
perversion of the enormous powers of the Poor-law Commis-
sioners in the department of one of their subordinate autho-
rities. We may shortly recur more at large to that "Ando-
ver Union House" cise. Our present object is to animadvert
on two ewes that have swelled, within these three or four
days, the list of almost daily acts of misconduct on the
part of the constables of the metropolitan police.
The first of the two cases we are about to notice occurred at
the Clerkenwell Police-office on Friday. It presents no
features of importance to the public as regarded the character
of the facts upon which it was brought before the magistrate,
but is of considerable gravity in reference to the violation it
involved of those personal rights and that personal liberty to
which we have just now alluded. Two working men, de-
cently attired—and, for anything that appeared to the con-
trary, well behaved, and of good character—were brought up
before the sitting magistrate, after having been incarcerated
all the preceding night, and until put in the doek, before Mr.
GREENWOOD, on Friday morning, on a charge of having stolen
a set ofharness belonging to a tradesman, from some stables in
Thanet-mews, Burton-crescent. This charge was one, to
all intents and purposes, of felony. The magistrate asked
the police-constable what evidence he had to support it?
The man replied that " one of the prisoners, after his ap-
pre erasion, said he had been in the mews after his coat on the
night the robbery was committed.
There was no further
evidence against him." Not one whit less criminatory would
have been the charge that he had been, that evening, within
the little parishes of Marylebone or St. Pancras; not one
whit less ridiculous the inference that, ergo, he had been
concerned in any robbery that might have happened
within those rather extensive limits. Yet, on no better foun-
dation than the accidental statement that one of these young
men had been in the mews—not in any certain house or
stable in that mews, on Thursday night last—a statement,
as the magistrate observed, which must have been elicited
by questions on the part of the policeman evidently addressed
to the party with a view of extracting from him matter of
self•crimination ;—on no better foundation did this con-
stable presume to take and to lock up all night, and to
parade as criminal delinquents the next morning, at the
Pt:thee-Once, two young men, " decent and hard-working,"
as they were described to be. In the offensive " slang" that
it seems to be always deemed necessary to adopt in our
police-office reports, this Dogberry, E 13, "had charge of the
case," as if he were some person professionally employed for
the prosecution ! Mr. GREENWOOD asked the intelligent "ser-
geant," with reasonable astonishment, why he had arrested the
men?—adding that "he might just as well have arrested on
the same charge any other person whom he had found walk-
ing M the Street." Really the matter involves an intolerable