All this would be beyond the scope of my subject were it not that the government of New York, past and present, is intimately bound up with its police. The Mayor, as the chief of executive power, is the head of the force by which it ought to be protected, and peace and good order maintained. Not long since, that police was attacked by many reputable citizens and declared to be a disgrace to modern civilisation. The situation had grown up under the shadow of Tammany Hall, that strange product of modern democracy, an organisation, originally political, which grew with steadily increasing, irresponsible power till it overshadowed and overawed the city of New York, ruling it with barefaced chicanery and imposing an outrageous despotism. In 1894 the power of Tammany was temporarily overborne by an outburst of popular indignation. But it was scotched, not killed. The almost irresponsible power wielded by the Chief Magistrate under the latest charter is working again for ill. There is no guarantee for its wise and temperate exercise; and a new Commission, known as the Mazet Commission, presided over by Mr. Moss, has conducted an inquiry which revealed that some of the old evils were again in the ascendant. Until 1896 the outside public was apt to regard the police of New York as "the best and finest in the world." The eulogistic words are those of its own champions, who claimed for it that "its services have been great, the bravery of some of its members conspicuous in life-saving and yet more in quelling riot and disturbance." It has always been a tradition in America that the police may be trusted with considerable powers; a free people, feeling that law in a new country must sternly check license, has not unwillingly permitted its constituted guardians to use the strong arm on occasion, and in a way that would not be tolerated in slow-going, sober old England. To "loose off his revolver" at the fugitive he cannot catch, or who has slipped through his fingers, is no uncommon practice with the American policeman, what though he may hit the innocent pigeon and miss the offending crow. I can call to mind the summary finish of a prolonged strike of "street-car" employees which I witnessed in one of my various visits to New York. A force of policemen in plain clothes and armed to the teeth were sent "down town" on a street-car with orders to fight their way through, which they did "handsomely." In other words, they shot down all opposition. The number of casualties was never publicly reported. Let us consider first the constitution of the force. The whole body of police is small compared with that of other large cities, and in proportion to the mixed, turbulent public it controls--only one to 500 souls; it is governed by a Board of four Commissioners appointed by [Illustration: "THEY SHOT DOWN ALL OPPOSITION" (p. 269).]