The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-04-10
BALTIMORE.
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1858.

The City Council has under consideration the
revised ordinance establishing the police force, and
most of the members have something to say re-
garding the defects of the law and the inefhcency
Of the men selected to enforce it. 1t seems to
be conceded that together with many good officers,
many bad ones have been appointed, and numerous
amendments have been offered, which, the authors
of them suppose, will ensure an Improvement upon
the present state of things-one member believing
that a mans character becomes elevated as the
permanency of his official tenure is assured, pro-
poses to appoint policemen during good behaviour,
and as this would bring to summary close the
services of a number of those now in office the
suggestion may be made to work proftably, though
not in the way intended
Another desires to curb their zeal by restricting
their enjoyments of such vicious amusements as
fires and elections evidently thinking that by some
strange mistake they have assisted in putting out
the former, and in aggravating the latter. But
the gentlemen of the Council, while thus discus
sing the police and the ordinance, appear to have
overlooked the fact that necessary connection ex
lists between the two. A law is one thing, and the
execution of it another, and the legislative body
wise responsible for the indiscretion bad faith
with which they may be exercised. If some men,
the annals of whose lives, the criminal calendar
alone can furnish, have been enrolled in the police
corps, is the ordinance by which that corps was Or
gained to bear all the blame?
Are the defunct councils of former time to be
called to account because lawless and infamous
men to-day are clothed with an authority which
they created? Wethink the present Council should
be made to bear that portion of the burthen which
weighs so heavily on the people to-day. If "no-
toriously unfit men, have been nominated-who
confirmed them? If unblushing criminals have
been rewarded-who sanctioned the act? If a
long of vice has led to place and proft-who
have lent encouragement to the idle and the vile,
by browning such with success?
We deal in no wholesale condemnations. If it
is true that many respectable and honest men may
be found in the ranks of the police; it is no less
true that some are there who are known to this
community only for the frequent outrages which
they have perperated in its midst. If some upright
Councilmen made vigorous protests against their
confirmation, yet certain it is that majority of
the thirty members constituting that body, accord
ed them their appreciation.
The community has seen these things, and has
been almost SILENT yet though it is supne it is not
wholly Indifferent. 1t has noted the gradual ten
dency of municipal affairs from bad to worse. 1t
has known how selfish ends and party purposes
have actuated men heretofore, and recognizes the
yet more prevailing power of like motives now. If
good citizens almost despair of better things, they
will still remember those to whom duty was en-
trusted only to be left unfulflled-in whom con-
fdence was reposed that has been fagrantly
violated.
If in point of fact one single man, with whom it
disgraceful TO have come to terms, has been
duly installed an officer of this corporation, the
principles by which the case should be adjudged
need no further comment