Introducing himself to his readers at the close of the eighteenth century, Dr Colquhoun wrote: "Police in this country may be considered as a new science." A full generation later, or to be more precise, in the year of Queen Victoria's accession, one of the leading magazines of the day found occasion to remark as follows: "The art of preventing offences is unbeaten ground—has hardly had a scientific teacher. On laws and general legislation, on the theory of crimes and punishments, on prison discipline, on the execution of offenders, and all the ulterior proceedings of delinquency, we have treatises without number; but on the institutions of police we have not a single work, except perhaps the matter-of-fact publication of the late Dr Colquhoun."[1] Since this paragraph was first printed a period of unparalleled literary activity has been witnessed, a period so prolific of book-making that the thirty-nine miles of shelves with which the main building of the British Museum is furnished have not sufficed to contain the ever-increasing accumulation of volumes that must be housed. It is true that in modern melodrama the detective has been found an almost indispensable property, nor has he been altogether neglected by the modern novelist; there are scores of blue-books containing evidence collected by Parliamentary Committees on the subject of police, and there is no lack of excellent manuals wherein the constable's duty is defined and explained; but at the dawn of the twentieth century, and in spite of the over-crowded state of our public libraries, we are still waiting for the advent of the teacher who will investigate and expound for us the police sciences.

In the following pages some attempt will be made to approach this strangely neglected subject, not indeed by the avenue that a scientist would use, but simply to trace in outline the story of English police, keeping in view the underlying principles that have directed, as well as those political and other considerations that have controlled, its evolution. Previous neglect is not however the only reason why the institution of police calls for historical treatment. On three other grounds in particular can the subject claim recognition; it deserves notice on account of its interest, on account of its antiquity, and on account of its importance.

The history of any national institution should not be totally devoid of interest; and amongst all our institutions it would be hard to find one so eminently characteristic of our race, both in its origin and in its development, or one so little modified by foreign influences, as the combination of arrangements for maintaining the peace, which we call "police." Police questions touch each one of us so intimately in our daily life, in our personal liberty and in our self-respect; the character of a nation is so profoundly influenced by the nature of the control to which it is subjected, that a due appreciation of the scope of police functions, a proper knowledge of the origin and extent of the powers and duties delegated to our constabulary forces, must possess a more than academic interest. Continental gendarmeries, framed for the most part on the Latin model, have been imposed—often ready-made—on various nationalities, without heed to their racial peculiarities, and careless of local tradition or circumstance. Our English police system, on the other hand, rests on foundations designed with the full approval of the people, we know not how many hundreds of years before the Norman conquest, and has been slowly moulded by the careful hand of experience, developing as a rule along the line of least resistance, now in advance of the general intelligence of the country, now lagging far behind, but always in the long run adjusting itself to the popular temper, always consistent with local self-government, and even at its worst, always English.

When a people emerges from the savage state its first care is the institution of some form of civil government. To this there is no exception, it is, in the words of Macaulay, "as universal as the practice of cookery." Martial law may co-exist with, and at times obscure, the civil machinery; but depending essentially, as it does, on local and temporary causes, must in the end inevitably be superseded, and whenever there arises a conflict between the two, the civil administration will invariably outstay the other by virtue of the inertia of its everlasting necessity. The penal department of any form of civil government must principally consist of two closely allied branches, the judiciary that interprets the law and exacts penalties for its infraction, and the police whose duty it is to enforce the legal code as laid down by the judges, it being in the nature of things that judicial functions cannot exist independently of police functions. Webster defines "police" as "the organized body of civil officers in a city, town or district, whose particular duties are the preservation of good order, the prevention and detection of crime, and the enforcement of the laws." Blackstone goes further when he says that "the public police and economy" must be considered as "the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners, to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations." As used in this book, the term "police" approximates to the definitions of both these authorities; in general merely a synonym for "constabulary," it also embraces all the various expedients employed by society to induce its members to acquiesce in the arrangements that tend to promote public security, including such measures as the compulsory education of children, the reformation of criminals, the observance of sanitary and hygienic conditions, the control of the liquor traffic, and the prevention of cruelty to children and animals. In this latter sense the object of police is not only to enforce compliance with the definite law of the land, but also to encourage a general recognition of the unwritten code of manners which makes for social progress and good citizenship.

Police, therefore, occupies a position of vital importance in the commonwealth; it is not too much to assert that the restraining influence exerted by a good police system is as necessary to the welfare of society as are self-imposed moral and physical restraints to the health of the individual. To the superior judges fall the duties of solving abstruse legal problems, and of determining the weightiest legal issues, but it is the police magistrate who is in daily contact with the criminal and with the aggrieved person, it is he who applies the law in the first instance, and to him the large majority of the people look for decisions upon which their liberty or their property may depend. "There is scarcely a conceivable case," said a London magistrate in 1834,[2] "arising particularly among the lower orders, which may not immediately or indirectly come under the notice of the Police Offices. It is most important, therefore, that every means should be adopted for upholding their reputation, and so extending and increasing their moral influence." Only second in importance to the magistracy comes the constabulary, "the primary constitutional force for the protection of individuals in the enjoyment of their legal rights,"[3] designed to stand between the powerful and the weak, to prevent oppression, disaster and crime, and to represent the cause of law and order at all times and in all places. In every court and alley the policeman stands for good citizenship, he is a reality that the most ignorant can comprehend, and upon his impartiality, efficiency, and intelligence depends the estimation in which the law is held by the masses.

There is no doubt that this country is well policed, and fortunately for us, there is equally no doubt that we are not over-policed. However numerous and outrageous may be the theoretical imperfections of our method for maintaining the peace, its practical superior has yet to be discovered. A police system does not only need to be efficient, it must be popular; that is to say, it must conduct its operations with so scrupulous a regard to the susceptibilities of the people that public sympathy and approval are not alienated. The problem of devising an engine of sufficient power and mechanical ability to compel subjection to a rigid standard of uniformity is not a matter of great difficulty, but there is little credit and no comfort in the indiscriminate tyranny of a Juggernaut that mangles its suicidal votaries. Government cannot be exercised without coercion, but the coercion employed ought to be reduced to the lowest possible limit consistent with safety, the ideal police force being the one which affords a maximum of protection at the cost of a minimum of interference with the lawful liberty of the subject. The real difficulty of the police problem is therefore to fix the limits where non-interference should end, and where coercion should begin. Mill enunciated the maxim that "all restraint qua restraint is an evil," and Bentham taught that only those preventive measures are sound the application of which involves no injury to the innocent; but there is one limit which cannot be disregarded if police is to be a blessing rather than a curse, and that is, that the plan adopted for the prevention of crime must never become more intolerable than the effect of the crime itself.

English police, however, is not the creation of any theorist nor the product of any speculative school, it is the child of centuries of conflict and experiment. Simple pecuniary compensation to the injured, sumptuary laws for the removal of temptation, torture in lieu of legal process, the payment of blood-money to informers, martial law enforced by puritan zealots, an amateur constabulary spasmodically supported by soldiery, the wholesale execution or banishment of offenders, these and many other expedients have all in their turn been grafted on the parent stock, tried, and found wanting. Are our present methods for the maintenance of the peace, for the suppression of crime, and for the encouragement of social virtue, perfect or nearly so? We can hardly suppose that posterity will answer these questions in the affirmative, but we can at least congratulate ourselves that the people of England, no longer living under a barbarous criminal code, enjoy to-day no small measure of security for their property and persons, without having to submit to a host of meddlesome restrictions and unreasonable formalities.