Under such an harmonious condition of affairs, nothing could be easier, were they both agreed, than bribery and corruption of the most villanous sort, and, taking Colonel Henderson’s word, “that no case has ever been known of police levying black mail on licence holders,” and further, considering the inadequate pay the policeman receives for the amount of intelligent and vigilant service required of him, the country may be congratulated on possessing, on the whole, such an almost unexceptionally good servant. It is the wrong-headed policeman, probably, who would work the greatest amount of mischief in this direction. The busy, over-zealous man, neither malicious, dishonest, nor vindictive, but simply a little too anxious to win for himself a character for “shrewdness and intelligence.” This would probably be the young policeman, desirous of making up for his lack of experience by a display of extraordinary sagacity. To such a man’s home-bred, unofficially cultivated ideas of right and wrong, it would appear of small use “suspecting” an individual, unless he immediately set about testing him with the utmost severity to know the extent to which the suspicion was justified. To be sure, an attempt is made in the Bill, as it passed the Lords, to guard against the weaknesses and shortcomings of constables by making it incumbent on them to obtain the written authority of a superior before they arrest and take a man before a magistrate; but really this may mean just nothing at all. It may be assumed that all the evidence a director of police would require before he granted a written authority, would be the declaration of the policeman applying for it that he had fair grounds for making the application. Undoubtedly he would be expected to make out a good case; but that, as an over-zealous and prejudiced man, he would be sure to do. The superintendent, or whoever it was that had power to issue a written warrant for a “suspect’s” apprehension, could not, by examination of the prisoner, convince himself of the justice of the act of his subordinate, to do which would be to usurp the magisterial office. And the process would probably be attended with this disadvantage,—that the said written order for arrest would wear an importance that really did not belong to it. If a man were arrested simply on the authority of a common policeman, the chances are that the magistrate would scrutinise the case narrowly, and be guided to a conviction solely by the evidence and his own discretion; but the case would come under the new act before him to a large extent prejudiced. He is instructed that the warrant that legalised the man’s apprehension was not issued in vague supposition that it might he justifiable: an official of the law—a man high in authority—has sanctioned the arrest, and here is his written testimony that he considered the step expedient.