Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/566

 552 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY least valuable of the reforms of the reign has been the per- fecting throughout the country of a proper system of police organisation. The metropolitan police, to which not merely London but all England owes so much, are a still earlier institution ; and, before the year 1836, legislation had pro- vided a constabulary for the boroughs. A police force for the rural parts of the county palatine of Chester was also in existence, and many country districts had themselves raised voluntary associations to maintain officers of their own — a task in which they received valuable aid from the police of the metropolis. But, with these exceptions, the lesser towns and the rural districts were guarded, in 1837, from the depreda- tions of the criminal by the effete institution of the parish con- stable and the watchman/*/ It requires an effort of the imag- ination to realise the extent to which lawlessness then reigned in the suburbs of our large towns and in our country places. In the smaller towns and villages the constable was chosen from the humblest order of tradesmen, farmers, or even day-labourers. He was frequently the master of the ale house or the village shop, who for a trifling remuneration had accepted the office, or had it forced upon him in rotation ; and the guardians of the public peace could not always read or write. The last thing such officials wished was to incur the trouble, the danger, or the odium of pursuing or arresting a culprit. Over a considerable portion of England, property was less secure than in any great European country, except- ing only Italy and Spain. Commercial travellers were loth to travel after dark. One of them, who for twenty years had made the round of the south-eastern counties from Norfolk to Devonshire, states in the year 1838 that, although perfect security prevailed within five or six miles of the metropolis, it would be imprudent beyond that distance to venture out after nightfall; and that if he could travel where there were no police with the same freedom as he could within the police district, he should be able on his rounds to save perhaps five days in forty. Property was safe neither on the river, nor on the canal, nor upon the turnpike road. Commercial houses came forward in numbers to complain that whole lines of canal were absolutely unprotected, that bales were opened, and their