It is not so across the Channel. There, while the criminal police is very defective, the police of politics is all powerful. In March last, thirty thousand political malcontents were swept beyond the gates of Paris in a single morning, before the rest of the people were up; and nobody was any the wiser till the masterly feat had been performed; but during the same month several single individuals were knocked down and robbed--some in broad day, others at dusk--yet neither of the robbers were taken. In Austria, in some of the German states, and in Italy, political _espionage_ is carried to a point of refined ingenuity of which no Englishman can form an idea. Mr. Tomkins goes, for instance, to Naples; and--as the Emperor of Russia might have enlarged on the happiness and prosperity of that city after his recent visit to it, because the streets were cleared of beggars, the cabmen compelled to dress in their best, and the fishermen to wear shoes--so in the “Travels in Italy,” which Mr. Tomkins would undoubtedly publish, there would be not a word about the police spy system; because he, innocent man, was unable to detect in his table companions, in his courier, or in his laundress, an agent of police. It is now our purpose to supply from the authentic information of a resident in Naples, the hiatus to be found in all the books of all the Mr. Tomkinses who have written “Travels.” The chief agent is the Commissary, who, says our friend, has a certain district put under his care, and is thus made responsible for its order and fidelity; he is a kind of nursing father, in short, to the unhappy inhabitants, with power to ruin or destroy; for though he nominally receives his orders from the Minister of Police, yet, as the cant phrase is, his office is eminently “suggestive;” and whether a suspicion is to be cleared up, an act of vengeance to be perpetrated, or some object of interest or licentiousness to be attained, the report of the Commissary supplies all the data for the operations at head-quarters. Immediately under his orders this General of Division has both regular and irregular troops, the former being the Policemen of the City; the latter simply Spies. When any long course of inquiry is to be carried out, he employs deputies, who bring in their intelligence from time to time; but if any immediate or important information is desired, the Commissary undertakes that little bit of business himself--it is a delicate _morçeau_ which this gourmand cannot resist, and away he posts to enjoy the banquet.