country has also a nomenclature of crime and methods of criminal
procedure peculiar to itself. In each country the police are organised
on a different principle, and act in the execution of their duty on a
different code of rules. In all cases, for instance, of mendicancy,
drunkenness, brawling, and disorder, the initiative rests practically
with the police, and it depends almost entirely on the instructions
issued to the police whether such offences shall figure largely or not
in the statistics of crime. A proof of this fact may be seen in the
Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, for the year
1888. In the year 1886, the number of persons convicted in the
Metropolis of "Annoying male persons for the purpose of prostitution"
was 3,233; in 1888, the number was only 1,475. This enormous decrease
in the course of two years is not due to a diminution of the offence,
but to a change in the attitude of the police. Again, in the year
1887, the Metropolitan police arrested 4,556 persons under the
provisions of the Vagrant and Poor Law Acts; but in the year 1888, the
number arrested by the same body under the same acts amounted to
7,052. It is perfectly obvious that this vast increase of apprehensions
was not owing to a corresponding increase in the number of rogues,
beggars, and vagrants; it was principally owing to the increased
stringency with which the Metropolitan police carried out the
provisions of the Vagrant and Poor Law Acts. An absolute proof of the
correctness of this statement is the fact that throughout the whole of
England there was a decrease in the number of persons proceeded
against in accordance with these acts. These examples will suffice to
show what an immense power the police have in regulating the volume of
certain classes of offences. In some countries they are called upon to
exercise this power in the direction of stringency; in other countries
it is exercised in the direction of leniency; and in the same country
its exercise, as we have just seen, varies according to the views of