Recent Book: The Underside of Revolution: The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789–1820
| Published date | 01 October 1970 |
| Date | 01 October 1970 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7004301019 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
CHILDREN
AND
YOUNG
PERSONS
L. G.
BAN
WELL
and L.
GOODMAN:
Clarke Hall and Morrison on Children,
Second (Cumulative) Supplement to Seventh Edition. Butterworths. £3 lOs.
Those who use Clarke Hall and
Morrison will know it as the great
authority on the important (and
rapidly growing) branch of the law
relating to children and young persons,
and will not need to be told how
excellent it is. One of its more useful
features is
that
from time to time a
supplement is made available to keep
abreast of changes in the law between
editions.
The first supplement to the present
edition was issued in 1968 and, in view
of the many legislative changes which
have occurred since then, the appea-
rance of this publication is welcome
indeed.
The second supplement is the
largest
that
this reviewer can remem-
ber. It is well over half an inch thick
and runs to 351
(+xviii)
pages, an
indication of the volume of new law
which is produced in these days. The
supplement used to tuck into a flap
inside the back cover of the main
volume; now the two must stand
side-by-side on the bookshelf.
A good deal of the new material is
accounted for by the Family Law
Reform Act 1969 and the Children
and Young Persons Act 1969. The
latter measure will have very far-
reaching effects on police work and,
if for no
other
reason, those police
officers whose duties are concerned
with juveniles or juvenile courts and
who use Clarke Hall and Morrison
will find this supplement of the
greatest assistance. J.
DANIEL
DEVLIN
THE
UNDERSIDE
OF
REVOLUTION
RICHARD
COBB:
The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789·1820.
Oxford University Press. 80s.
Anyone interested in revolution will
find Mr
Cobb's
study of unusual value.
He is dedicated to seeking the
truth
about
his subject; he is always ready
to examine the validity of the evidence;
he is always sceptical of received
opinion; and his long and deep
research into revolutionary move-
ments in France enables him to write
with exceptional authority.
Like
other
authors who have had
new things to say, he is not easy to
read. His very scrupulousness results
in treatments which will repel those
who are looking for the more sensa-
tional or romantic views of history.
Yet here are the facts
about
the
relationship of successive authorities
to the sans culottes, many of them
taken direct from statements by the
individuals concerned, and the reality,
as usual, is more remarkable
than
the
myths.
The police evidence is carefully
weighed. Mr
Cobb
has keen insight
into the informer's trade and into the
nature of the various kinds of police
report-made
as they were in the con-
text
of
a variety
of
police organisa-
tions. The police tradition had been
October 1970
well rooted under the Ancien Regime
and it was to produce many
odd
growths in the days of the Jacobins
and the reactionaries of Thermidor;
the Directory and the First Empire
were to constitute themselves as police
states. The activity of the police in the
period dealt with was astonishing;
they developed the technique of anti-
cipating collective violence, and their
regulation of people on the move, of
aliens, of vice, of trade, was remarka-
bly comprehensive.
What
they made
of
all the information they collected is
another matter: Mr Cobb is alert to
the fixed ideas and political purposes
which so often governed police atti-
tudes and actions.
It
is impossible, in a short review,
to do justice to a work of such scope
and such close texture.
It
must suffice
to say
that
this is a pioneer book,
which evaluates revolutionary ex-
perience at levels which have
not
been
explored in this way before. The stu-
dent of police history and the police
historian studying the business
of
writing history cannot afford to
neglect it.
QUAESTOR
341
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