POLICE. The term police designates that executive civil force of a state to which is entrusted the duty of maintaining public order and of enforcing regulations for the prevention and detection of crime. In a perfect system of civil administration the function of the police should be to curb the liberty of the subject only when it degenerates into licence—and any material variation from the standard is to be deprecated as being arbitrary and tyrannical.
A civil organization, established by authority, for maintaining the essential tranquility of the state and the security of its citizens in their lawful occupations is of high antiquity and has place alike in Egyptian, Greek and Roman law. In Rome, however, it was not until the time of Augustus that the police became a special institution in the city. In the hands of his unworthy successors it speedily became a terrible instrument of tyranny, justifying the dictum of Chateaubriand "la police par sa nature est antipathique a toute liberte." Upon the fall of Rome all traces of police administration disappeared under barbarian rule, only again to be revived in the Capitularies of Charlemagne which contain a large number of police regulations concerning weights and measures, tolls, markets, the sale of food, grain and cattle, the burial of the dead, and measures to be taken in time of famine and pestilence.
A recrudesence of anarchy on the death of the emperor of the West destroyed all these, but soon after the settlement of the Normans in France, that enterprising race established a highly repressive police system calculated to restore public safety at the expense of public liberty, and this system formed the basis of the police code introduced by William the Conqueror into England. Prior to the Norman conquest and for some time thereafter, the system of "frank pledge" was of general obligation in England. This institution provided that each district tithing should be di vided up into associations of ten persons who were jointly answer able for the good behaviour of, or damages done by any one of themselves.
It seems probable (so far as London is concerned) that the existing police regulations of the Saxon kings, modified perhaps by an infiltration of Norman ordinances, were continued after the conquest. The Charter of William the Conqueror to the city dated 1078 expressly providing "I acquaint you that I will ye be all law-worthy as ye were in King Edward's days." An ordinance of the 13th year of Edward I. (set out in the Liber Albus) enacts that strict watch and ward should be kept in London "by strong men with good arms" for the maintaining of the King's peace. In 1585 an Act was passed for the better governance of the city and borough of Westminster and this statute was re-enacted and extended in 1737, only to be succeeded in 1777 by yet another Act containing wider and stricter provisions.
In spite of repressive measures until the end of the 18th century the conditions alike of London and the provinces were deplorable. Robbery and violence were rampant everywhere, highwaymen infested the roads, footpads lurked in the streets, whilst, but too often, both watchmen and innkeepers were accessories to the com mission of crime. At the commencement of the 19th century it was computed that there was one criminal to every 2 2 of the population. Such was the state of affairs when, in 1829, Sir Robert Peel laid the foundation of that organization on which is based the existing metropolitan police system. At first it encountered much opposition and was denounced as an insidious attempt to enslave the people by arbitrary and tyrannical methods. This unfavourable impression, however, soon diminished, especially as the conviction of criminals and speedy reduction in the number of offences evidenced the efficiency of the new force. Subsequent Acts of parliament extended the system throughout Great Britain. Statutes passed in 1839 and 1840 permitted the formation of a paid county police, to be appointed by the justices of the peace for the county.