The Sun.
London, England, 1829-09-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The new police force is on the eve of being
brought into action, and of putting to an imme-
diate test the justice of those complaints which
have been made by all classes of individuals for
more than two centuries, against the total inef-
ficiency of our " ancient and most reverend
watchmen." The principle on which English
police (as it is called) has hitherto invariably
proceeded, is congenial to our national preju-
dices, leaving men's free agency in a great mea-
sure uninterrupted, until it ripens into the ac-
tual perpetration of crime. This respect and de-
ference for the freedom of the subject has never-
theless overshot one purpose, while it served a
worse : it has forgotten to protect the innocent,
and has transferred all its real benefits to the
wrong doer. This instructions to the new po-
lice, which we have this day copied, set out
with a formal abandonment of the rule that it
should be the sole aim of justice to punish guilt,
—a policy the inevitable effect of which was to
permit every species of outrage upon the unof-
fending, that the criminal might be hanged upon
" satisfactory evidence," instead of restrained by
the interposition of public authority, upon rea-
sonable suspicion of his atrocious purpose : the
result of which delicate system has been, that the
honest or helpless has been sacrificed to the vil-
lain, and the villain himself to the vengeance of
the law. The theory taught by the new regu-
lations is, that the power about to act under
them ought to have for its main object the pre-
vention of crime,—not the execution of the
criminal. It is true that the forthcoming sys-
tem may be productive of considerable, though
partial evil, if the abuse of such a right and
practice as that of interference before the fact
be not guarded against with great vigilance and
discretion. But if the right be in general exer-
cised on fair grounds of apprehended crime, and
• from a bona
,fide zeal on behalf of the public
safety, we do not see that, as a whole, any ra-
tional objection can be made to it. Undoubtedly
officers of a much more enlarged degree of at-
tainment and intelligence than those to whom
the humbler functions of the police have been
hitherto entrusted must be sought out for the
performance of this more complicated service ;
and, indeed, the instructions which have been pre-
pared, and the chilies imposed upon the new guar-
dians of the public peace, would have been quite
ludicrous under the ancient regime. The in-
structions are voluminous, but carefully digested.
They announce to the police constables the pos-
session of extensive powers ; but they prescribe
extreme temper, mildness, and forbearance in
their exercise. The substitutes for the old
watchtnen and Bow-street myrmidons are not,
like their predecessors, forced to make up by the
manifold expedients of cunning and rapacity, for
the want of more judicious and legitimate sti-
mulants to an active discharge of their duty.
They are not to be hopeless of even high re-
ward, or fearless of disgrace or destitution when
they merit them. A hierarchy is established,
of which the most lucrative and confidential
offices are held forth to the ambition of its
humblest members. A superintendence is pro-
vided for, which must bring the qualifications of
every individual police-man to the intimate know-
ledge of his superiors'at the head of the corps,
which creates a solid responsibility every where,
and affixes the strongest sanctions by which hu-
man nature can be influenced to the obligations
entailed upon each person appertaining to the
service. The strength of the metropolitan po-
lice, as at present constituted, is as follows :-
5 divisions, or companies, each consisting of
1 superintendent, 4 inspectors, 1! serjeants,
144 police constables—forming a body in each
division of 165 effectives, and a total force for
that portion of the metropolis which is at first
to be comprised within Mr. Peel's project, of
825 officers and men. How far their numbers,
when distributed on duty, may compare with
those of their lethargic and undisciplined prede-
cessors, we cannot now conjecture ; but if as is
probable, they fall short in that respect, the
public, we trust, will not fail to be indemnified
by their superior fitness and their skilful organi-
zation as a corps. The pay of the lowest rank
is very moderate, being only 3s. per day ; and
that small salary liable to specific deductions.
The inspectors, however, are said to have 1001.
per annum, and the superintendents 2001. ; and
to these offices, through the intermediate rank
of serjeant, every zealous police constable is, by
the formal conditions of the service, told that he
may reasonably aspire. If the system be not
jobbed, it is one which promises advantageously
for the public safety.—Tintes.
The Meeting at Cork for the purpose of tak-
ing into consideration the present state of the
Established Church in these kingdoms, of which
we gave yesterday a copious report, has taken
place at a time when the minds of men are pe-
culiarly open to the reception of the views en-
tertained by the_speakers. At another time a
call for Church Reform would have been a voice
in the desert. This is not a season, it would
have been said, for the members of the Church
to occupy themselves with internal reforms, when
their combined efforts are demanded against a
common enemy. But the relations between the
rwna
who
not
aaort e thete.
Church and the Dissidents being now perma-
nently fixed, and the former deprived of the
power, real or imaginary, derived from penal
laws, the Establishment is driven to look for se-
curitytraecfoiremd
swithinshould
u tldhiet itself. It
eti
ac:bratlelttipiesstihiwi
ich
t.
advantage, tag alle, and ground abuses
wolf' attachment esta-
blishments there will be found membras whose
to whom all establishments are good or bad, in
proportion as they profit by them. They, how-
ever, who are attached to the establishment, and
not to the abuses, are naturally anxious that the
ground of their attachment should not be mis-
I taken, and that the circumstances which seem to
authorise suspicion as to their motives should
tease to exist, Hence we may be sure that
those who call out for reformation of the abuses
of the Church are zealous adherents of that
Church, while those who are opposed
to such reformation have no attachment to
any particular Church, but love the Church
merely for temporal inducements. The Stan-
dard of last night, in commenting on the pro-
ceedings of the Meeting, observes, " That a re-
form might be advantageously prosecuted in the
order and discipline of the Church
eye by no
means deny ; that it might even be profitably
made to extend to a toty2liv new
distribution of
the Church property WQ admit •
,but
tee deny the
rightould we w resist the attempt, to make
reform or ch:,,,lge which
shall not Benin from the
Churc: ierse.l.ll" B b
ut Lord Mounteashel has
inticipated this ob. jectton, for his reform bes,ins
teith the Chzire4 herself,
They could not find f
with the pure doc-
trines of the Established Church bur; a great deal
gf fault was, he
5, regretted to say, to be found with
her management and teßwssolitiet. Who tlere to
,inoingterthtEodi
Establishment,
uas natural