Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/680

 660 POLICE chaux) for the city and district of Paris, who was authorized to apprehend and punish va- grants and disorderly persons, without appeal. The superintendence of the markets, weights and measures, and cesspools, the cleansing of the streets, the inspection of buildings, and the prohibition of noxious trades, were all sub- jects of legislation in France at a very early period, statutes having been passed relative to them at various dates between 1350 and 1560. But each had its own inspectors, amenable to no common head. In 1577 the privilege of electing their own police magistrates was grant- ed to the inhabitants of each district of the city. Under Louis XIV. the police attained its high- est measure of perfection as a repressive force. A universal espionage was established, and the slightest intimation of restiveness under the yoke of oppression, or the smallest departure from the monarch's views of orthodoxy, was visited with summary arrest and punishment. In its more humane and protective functions it was less successful. Under Louis XV. it partook of the general decay and demoraliza- tion which had infected the other departments of government, and furnished ready means of extortion and oppression. The national con- vention in 1794 reorganized the police and de- fined its duties. These duties comprised al- most every department of administrative gov- ernment, including the securing of the safety of traffic ; the repair of dangerous structures ; the superintendence of the cleansing and light- ing of the city; the removal of public nui- sances ; the repression and punishment of all offences against the public peace; the main- tenance of good order in and supervision of all public gatherings, festivities, and places of public amusement and resort; the inspection of weights, measures, and food ; precautions against accidents, casualties, and epidemics, and measures in mitigation of them if they occurred ; the delivery of passports, residence licenses, &c., and the repression of beggary and vagrancy ; the supervision of drinking and gaming houses, and of prostitutes; the dis- persion of crowds; the police of religious worship and of printing and bookselling ; the oversight of theatres, powder mills, saltpetre works, and storehouses of arms ; the pursuit of deserters and escaped criminals; the care of the highways, of the public -health, and of fires, inundations, and accidents; the superin- tendence of the exchanges of commerce, of the taxes, of the provision markets, and of pro- hibited wares ; and the protection of public monuments. To these multifarious duties were soon after added the regulation of the fees of health officers and veterinary surgeons, the re- moval of sick persons and corpses, the recovery of drowned persons, and the care of the public pounds. During the administration of Napo- leon I. the city police of Paris attained a high degree of efficiency. Under Louis Philippe the number of the regular policemen (sergents de mile) had risen in 1847 to 1,800. During that reign the present system of police respecting prostitution, which had been for many years under police surveillance, was adopted. Un- der Napoleon III. the Parisian police was me- tropolitan, comprising the whole department of the Seine, the districts of St. Cloud, Sevres, and Meudon in Seine-et-Oise, and the market of Poissy. It was in charge of a prefect, who was under the authority of the minister of the interior. He was president of a council of health of 20 members, all physicians, surgeons, or chemists, which had charge of all sanitary matters. Besides this council, there were 11 bureaus, in three divisions, each under a com- petent head, and each in charge of a class of police regulations. There was also a commis- sary of police in each of the 80 quarters of Paris. (For the present police organization of Paris, see PARIS, vol. xiii., p. 87.) Besides the local police of Paris, which under some of the Bourbon kings assumed or was endowed with national jurisdiction, there has been for two- centuries a system of national police in France, under the direction of a minister of police, whose functions have been mainly detective and repressive. The espionage of suspected strangers visiting the country, or of persons- believed to be disaffected or to entertain de- signs against the government, the correspon- dence of those regarded as hostile to the reign- ing authority, and other similar subjects, have been the duties intrusted to it. In England, from the time of the Saxon kings, there had been an organization, partly voluntary, for the repression of crime, the arrest of criminals, and the maintenance of order. The popula- tion was divided into hundreds, and these into tithings or companies of ten freeholders with their families. The principal man of the hun- dred was the justice of the peace, or local magistrate, for the trial of small causes, and the head man of the tithing was responsible for good order and the arrest of criminals in his limited district. The high sheriff of the county, his deputies, and the constables ap- pointed by the parishes, were eventually sub- stituted for the voluntary officers of the earlier period; but while they answered their pur- pose tolerably well in the rural districts, they were neither numerous nor efficient enough to repress crime in London. In 1753 a paid po- lice, of very moderate extent, was established in London ; but such was the fear of the peo- ple lest this measure should lead to encroach- ment upon their liberties, that'it met a violent opposition and .was soon repealed. In 1792 an act was passed for the increase of the police courts, the employment of salaried magistrates, and the enlargement of their jurisdiction. In 1800 there were 6 police constables attached to each of the metropolitan police offices, or 48 in all ; 60 other constables, under the charge of the chief magistrate at Bow street, patrolled the metropolitan roads ; the Thames police es- tablishment, organized in 1798, consisted of 41 officers ; the city of London employed and paid