The Internal Police Administration of England—II
| Date | 01 October 1931 |
| Author | Harold Benjamin |
| Published date | 01 October 1931 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3100400413 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The
Internal
Police
Administration
of
England4
I
BY
HAROLD BENJAMIN,
B.A.
OXON.
(Continued
from
Vol.
IV.,
No.
3,
page
460)
The
Police
Bill
of
1785
and
Subsequent
Reform
in
the
Metropolis to
1829
S
we have seen, by
1780
some progress had been made
A
towards a reform
of
the old police system. The watch had
been transformed into a paid professional force
;
a stipendiary
magistracy had been created and had shown by its efficiency
the superiority of the paid over the unpaid Justices of the Peace;
a small but professional body
of
police under magisterial con-
trol. had been established
;
a succession
of
writers and magis-
trates, by their pamphlets on police, had been drawing the
attention of the public to the need for some kind of police
reform.
But
no
attempt had been made to reform the system as a
whole. Reforms had been made only when the presence
of
circumstances made reform unavoidable
;
and this clearly
illustrates why the old voluntary system remained in force long
after it had ceased
to
be adequate for the needs of the country.
The old system of police administration had grown up with the
nation.
It
was an essential part of the Englishman’s political
creed that duties of police are duties to be entrusted only
to
the
free citizen, to the householder independent of government
pay. The only paid police force of which he had cognizance
was the Gendarmerie of France, and that he associated with the
suppression of personal liberty aid the ubiquity of spies.
A
standing army had always been repugnant to English ideas and
all the more repugnant
was
the idea of a paid police force,
598
To continue reading
Request your trial