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at least in the night. But the main improvement of this law would consist in creating a superintending power, to whose discretion should be intrusted the dismissal of the persons appointed by the parochial authorities in cases of misconduct, negligence, or inability, and to whom it should beJong to enforce generally, if necessary, the due execution of this act. . Your committee, considering with this view whether there are any public bodies on whom might conveniently be imposed the duty of connecting in some degree the scattered parochial authorities, have naturally found their attention directed to the Boards of Magistracy which have been created by the 32 Geo. HI. c. 53. which establishes seven Boards of Magistracy. These Boards have obtained the name of Police Offices, although neither by the provisions of this act, nor by the nature of their duties, have they any superintendance whatever in matters of preventive and parochial police; they merely constitute the first stage in the administration of criminal jurisprudence. It would seem to be extraordinary, that in London there 'should be no office in which information is collected from which intelligence can be obtained as to the state of the police. The Secretary of State for the home department, has not, necessarily, any knowJedge on this subject, except with reference to crimes committed.

The greatest advantages would arise from making use of these boards of magistracy, as constituting centres to which information might constantly be communicated, and daily reports made from the several parishes. It should be

the duty of some of the principal officers, attached to the several boards of magistracy, to go rounds according to some rotation, and to visit the several watch-houses, and report in the morning to the office to

which they are attached. It should be the duty of the high constable occasionally to make similar visitations and reports. It is further recommended, that the provisions of the statute of 14 Geo. III. cap. 90, should be extended, which, after having prescribed the general outline of the mauner in which watch is to be kept, directs that the several parochial authorities shall meet, and make more detailed rules and regulations for the instruction and guidance of the constables, beadles, patroles, and watchmen. Copies of such rules and regulations should also be transmitted to the police office of the district, that the officers may judge whether such regulations are complied with. Copies should be affixed to the watch-house. But the system would be imperfect unless information, collected at each of the seven boards of magistracy, was accumula ed at some one central point, in order that there may be the means of comparing the occurrences and circumstances of the various parts of the town. The office at Bow-street might form the centre, to which this various inform tion should be transmitted.

It would probably be necessary to attach to it some fit person, whose immediate duty should be to compare and digest such infor mation, for the purpose of being communicated to that board of magistrates, and to the secretary of state. Although this part of the subject be of pre-eminent

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importance, and as some of the witnesses have said, to be all in all, yet there are several other measures which may come in aid of this system.

With this view the police office at Wapping, called the Thames Police Office, for the detection of felonies, &c. committed on the riyer Thames, is noticed. Its funds are inadequate for such an establishment as would be necessary to guard the property on the line of river from London bridge to Battersea. Ait additional number of boats should be provided for the river above bridge.

other hand, it has not occurred to your committee that the powers already given could be enlarged consistently with the general liberty of the subject. Doubts, however, have arisen on the construction of this act, and the subsequent act of 51 Geo. III. whether they extend to the city of London (properly s called), which is stated to be at present the resort of many reputed thieves, from the shelter afforded by the act being understood to be so limited; it seems therefore desirable that it should be amended for this purpose.

It is at present very difficult to convict receivers of stolen goods; but your committee think that the evil would be much checked, if the law with respect to the execution of search-warrants were amended, and the officer enabled to put them in force as well by night as by day, under the direction of the magistrates.

The increasing population in the neighbourhood of Greenwich requires another police office on that side of the river. It is in the contemplation of government to remove the Thames Police Office to the Surrey side, for that purpose: this might then be made an office for an eighth division. The most notorious pickpockets and other reputed thieves, are permitted to frequent the public avenues of the town with impunity, notwithstanding the provisions of 32 Geo. III. made for the purpose of their apprehension but the law, as it now stands, does not authorize the officer to apprehend them, unless, first, they are seen in some public avenue; secondly, unless they are. reputed thieves; and, thirdly, unless they are on the spot with the intent to commit a felony. This can be proved only by some overt act which they are seen to commit; such as hustling, attempting the pocket, or the like. It has been suggested, that if further powers were given by the legislature, the apprehension of the seoffenders would be greatly facilitated; but on the VOL. LIV.

Hackney coaches frequently are used for the conveyance of stolen property in the night, and to avoid detection, the proper number of the coach is frequently taken off, and another substituted during the time they are in waiting; this might in some degree be remedied, by dis recting the proper number to be painted on the pannel of the coach.

Your committee fully agree in the recommendation of a former committee (28 Report Finance), that the magistrates should have further means of rewarding their officers for extraordinary activity and exertions, as the case might require. If this power was given to a limited extent, the police officers might be precluded in future from participating in the rewards given by act of parliament. The Z

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rewards are usually divided between the prosecutor and all the witnesses; the police officer has only a small share; but this circumstance sometimes operates against his credit as a witness, and to the defeat of public justice It seems desirable, therefore, that as as a public officer, he should be free from any such imputation, and that his services would be best rewarded by the magistrates, without depending on the conviction of the offender. The increasing expense of criminal prosecutions has been truly stated to be a great source of the impunity and increase of crimes; and it seems highly deserving attention, whether the expenses of prosecution to a limited extent, and in particular cases, which may be specified, might not with propriety be defrayed out of the parish rates, or some other general fund. Such a regulation would tend to an increased activity in the prevention and prosecution of offenders, and the great relief of individuals on whom these depredations are committed.

The petitions from the licensed publicans, with regard to the stealing of pewter pots, have been referred to your committee; but it does not occur to them, that the interest of the petitioners can be so well guarded by any new act, as by regulations they can make among themselves.

The committee add, that they cannot conclude, without mentioning the incongruity in the system for the government of the metropolis, owing to the magistrates of the city of London, in the centre of the metropolis, being unable to pursue, by their warrants, beyond he local limits of the city (pro

perly so called), goods which may have been stolen within, the limits of the city, and may have been removed beyond these limits. They conceive, that the warrant of the city magistrates should have operation, without being backed by any other magistrate, within a circle of five miles from the Royal Exchange; and that warrants, signed by county magistrates within five miles of the Royal Exchange, should operate within the local limits of the city, without being backed by the city magistrates. They are aware that there are many other points which may be considered as intimately connected with the subject of police, and to which they might have directed their attention; but as these subjects have been referred to other committees, they have conceived it to be their duty to confine their investigations and their observations to those leading principles of preventive superintendance and control, and to that system of provident vigilance, which, by watching assiduously over the interests of the community, may maintain, without interruption, its good order and security.

Declaration on the Orders of Council,

The government of France hav ing by an official report, comma, nicated by its minister for foreign affairs to the conservative senate on the 10th day of March last, removed all doubts as to the perseverance of that government in the assertion of principles, and in the maintenance of a system, not more hostile to the maritime rights and commercial

commercial interests of the British
empire, than inconsistent with the
rights and independence of neutral
nations; and having thereby plain
ly developed the inordinate preten-
sions which that system, as pro-
mulgated in the decrees of Berlin
and Milan, was from the first de-
signed to enforce; his royal high-
ness the Prince Regent, acting in
the name and on the behalf of his
Majesty, deems it proper upon this
formal and authentic republication
of the principles of those decrees,
thus publicly to declare his Royal
Highness's determination still firm-
ly to resist the introduction and
establishment of this arbitrary
code, which the government of
France openly avows its purpose
to force upon the world, as the
law of nations.

From the time that the progressive injustice and violence of the French government made it imposible for his Majesty any longer to restrain the exercise of the rights of war within their ordinary limits, without submitting to consequences not less ruinous to the commerce of his dominions, than derogatory to the rights of his crown, his Majesty has endeavoured by a restricted and moderate use of those rights of retaliation, which the Berlin and Milan Decrees necessarily called into action, to reconcile neutral states to those measures, which the conduct of the enemy bad rendered unavoidable; and which his Majesty has at all times professed his readiness to revoke, so soon as the Decrees of the enemy, which gave occasion to them, should be formally and unconditionally repealed, and the commerce of neutral nations restored to its accustomed course.

At a subsequent period of the war, his Majesty, availing himself of the then situation of Europe, without abandoning the principle and object of the Orders in Coun cil of November, 1807, was induced to limit their operation, as materially to alleviate the restrictions thereby imposed upon neu The Order, in tral commerce. Council of April, 1809, was substituted in the room of those of November, 1807, and the retaliatory system of Great Britain acted no longer on every country in which the aggressive measures of the enemy were in force, but was its operation to confined in France, and to the countries upon which the French yoke was most strictly imposed; and which had become virtually a part of the dominions of France.

The United States of America remained nevertheless dissatisfied; and their dissatisfaction has been, greatly increased by an artifice too successfully employed on the part of the enemy, who has pretended that the decrees of Berlin and Milan were repealed, although the decree affecting such repeal has never been promulgated; although the notification of such pretended repeal distinctly described it to be dependant on conditions, in which the enemy knew Great Britain could never acquiesce; and although abundant evidence has since appeared of their subsequent execution.

But the enemy has at length laid aside all dissimulation; he now publicly and solemnly declares. not only that those decrees still continue in force, but that they shall be rigidly executed until Great Britain shall comply with additional Z 2

additional conditions equally extravagant; and he further announces the penalties of those decrees to be in force against all nations, which shall suffer their flag to be, as it is termed in this new code, "denationalized."

In addition to the disavowal of the blockade of May, 1806, and of the principles on which that blockade was established, and in addition to the repeal of the British Orders in Council, he demands an admission of the principles, that the goods of an enemy, carried under a neutral flag, shall be treated as neutral; that neutral property under the flag of an enemy shall be treated as hostile ;-that arms and warlike stores alone (to the exclusion of ship-timber and other articles of naval equipment) shall be regarded as contraband of war;— and that no ports shall be considered as lawfully blockaded, except such as are invested and besieged, in the presumption of their being taken en prevention d'etre pris), and into which a merchantship cannot enter without danger.

By these and other demands, the enemy in fact requires, that Great Britain and all civilised nations shall renounce, at his arbitrary pleasure, the ordinary and indisputable rights of maritime war; that Great Britain, in particular, shall forego the advantages of her naval superiority, and allow the commercial property, as well as the produce and manufactures, of France and her confederates, to pass the ocean in security, whilst the subjects of Great Britain are to be in effect proscribed from all commercial intercourse with other nations; and the produce and manufactures of these realms are to

be excluded from every country i the world to which the arms or the influence of the enemy can extend.

Such are the demands to which the British government is summoned to submit-to the abandonment of its most ancient, essential, and undoubted maritime rights. Such is the code by which France hopes, under cover of a neutral flag, to render her commerce unassailable by sea; whilst she proceeds to invade or to incorporate with her own dominions all states that hesitate to sacrifice their national interests at her command, and in abdication of their just rights, to adopt a code, by which they are required to exclude, under the mask of municipal regulation, whatever is British from their dominions.

The pretext for these extravagant demands, is, that some of those principles were adopted by voluntary compact in the treaty of Utrecht; as if a treaty once existing between two particular coun tries, founded on special and reciprocal considerations, binding only on the contracting parties, and which in the last treaty of peace between the same powers, had not been revived, were to be regarded as declaratory of the public law of

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