A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their PreventionColquhoun, Patrick
History
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis: Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property and Security are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: and Suggesting Remedies for their Prevention
Colquhoun, Patrick
Crime -- England -- London; Police -- England -- London
The habits they thus acquire are the most mischievous and noxious to
the Community that can be conceived.--Having connexions wherever the
Dock-yards are situated, as well as in several other large trading
towns in the Kingdom, they become in many respects the medium through
which stolen goods are conveyed to and from the Metropolis; and as
their existence depends on this nefarious traffick, they keep alive a
System of Fraud and Depredation which, perhaps, is generated in a
greater degree by their peculiar situation in respect to Society, than
by any actual disposition on their parts to pursue these nefarious
practices.
Even the system of supporting the poor of this Community, by lending
them small sums of money by which they may support themselves by a
species of petty traffick, contributes in no small degree to the
commission of crimes; since in order to render it productive to an
extent equal to the wants of families who do not acquire any material
aid by manual labour, they are induced to resort to unlawful means by
dealing in stolen goods and in counterfeit money, by which they become
public nuisances in the Countries where they receive an asylum.
As there appears in reality to be no distinction made by the rational
part of the Jewish persuasion, between the Portuguese and the Dutch
Synagogues, it is earnestly to be hoped that the opulent and
respectable of the former Community will lend a helping hand in
devising some means of rescuing this part of the Nation of the Jews
who reside in England, from the reproach, which it is to be feared,
has been too justly cast upon them. Policy dictates the measure, while
humanity ardently pleads for it.--In so good a work every man of
feeling, be his religious persuasion what it may, will join in
promoting and carrying into effect a measure so beneficial to the
Community at large, by devising some means to render their labour
productive; since it is clear to demonstration that to the idle habits
of this numerous class of people, is to be ascribed a considerable
proportion of the petty crimes, as well as some of the more atrocious
offences by which the Metropolis and the Country is afflicted.
_Another cause_ of the increase and multiplication of crimes has
arisen from the depraved morals of the Aquatic labourers and others,
employed on the wharfs and quays, and in ships, vessels, and craft,
upon the River Thames; and from the want, _until lately_, of an
appropriate Preventive System to check these depredations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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