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
"Supposing abundance established, and remaining for ever without
disturbance, it may be deserving of consideration, in what shape and
in what degree, and with what degree of assurance, Government, in
point of Finance, is likely to profit by the abundance: for the stock
of the individuals, which each individual will consume, lay up or
sell, is on his own account; is not the Stock of Government. The
saving to Government depends upon the probity and zeal, and
intelligence of the Bailiffs in Husbandry, acting without personal
interest in the concern at that immense distance."
After opinions so decided, the result of an inquiry, aided by
extensive information, and conducted by men of talents and judgment,
it would ill become the Author of this Work to offer (if he could
suggest,) additional arguments to prove the disadvantages which have
attended, and which are likely to attend the transportation of
Convicts to New South Wales. Although with regard to mere
_subsistence_, there may be a prospect (and it is yet a distant one),
of the Colony becoming independent of supplies from this Country; yet
with respect to most other articles its wants will experience no
diminution, and having once engaged in the project, humanity requires
that the Settlement should be supplied at the expence of the Nation.
When the measure of establishing this Colony was adopted, a hope was
probably entertained that while the great difficulty and expence of
the passage home, joined to the fertility of the soil and the
salubrity of the climate, might induce convicts to remain after the
expiration of the period specified in their sentence, so as not to
become offensive again to their native Country; the removal to an
unknown region, inhabited by Savages, and situated at such a remote
distance from Great Britain would exhibit this species of punishment
in so terrific a light as to operate powerfully in preventing crimes.
Experience, however, has shewn that this salutary effect has not been
produced, and that crimes are not to be diminished by the dread of
punishment in any shape. This great desideratum is only to be attained
by a well-regulated Police, calculated to destroy the sources from
whence evil propensities spring, and to remove the facilities by which
criminality is nourished and assisted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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