In addition to the enormous evil arising from the periodical discharge of so many criminals by proclamations, acquittals, and pardons; _the_ HULKS also send forth, at stated times, a certain number of convicts; who having _no asylum_, _no home_, _no character_, and _no means of subsistence_, seem to have only the alternative of starving, or joining their companions in iniquity; thus adding strength to the body of criminals, by the accession of men, who, polluted and depraved by every human vice, rendered familiar to their minds in those seminaries of profligacy and wickedness from whence they have come, employ themselves constantly in planning and executing acts of violence, and depredation upon the Public; and some of them, rendered desperate from an additional degree of depravity, feel no compunction in adding the crimes of murder to that of robbery, as has been too clearly manifested by many late instances. From what has been thus stated, is it not fair to conclude, that the want of security which the Public experiences with regard to life and property, and the inefficacy of the Police in preventing crimes, are to be attributed principally to the following causes? 1. _The imperfections in the Criminal Code; and in many instances, its deficiency, with respect to the mode of punishment; as well as to the want of many other regulations, provisions, and restraints, applicable to the present of Society, for the purpose of preventing crimes._ 2. _The want of an active principle, calculated to concentrate and connect the whole Police of the Metropolis and the Nation; and to reduce the general management to system and method, by the interposition of a superintending agency, composed of able, intelligent, and indefatigable men, acting under the direction and controul of his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department.--On these persons, it is proposed, should devolve the subordinate care and direction of the general Police of the Metropolis; so as to obtain, by the introduction of order and arrangement, and by efforts of labour and exertion, a complete History of the connections, and pursuits of all or most of the criminal and fraudulent persons who resort to the Metropolis; (either natives or foreigners;) forming, from such materials, a Register of all known offenders, and thereby establishing a clue for their detection, as often as they are charged with committing depredations on the Public--with power to reward Officers of Justice, and all other persons whose services are found to be useful in the discovery or detection of delinquents of every description.--To keep an Account of property stolen, or procured by swindling or fraudulent transactions in the Metropolis, as well as in other parts of Great-Britain:--To establish a Correspondence with the Magistrates in Town and