The valuable, if not indispensable, nature of the services which may be rendered by Special Constables when directed towards the suppression of riots, already indicated at Birmingham in 1839, was more fully exemplified in 1848, when the Chartists assembled at Kennington Common, threatened to descend upon London. The fear that the Metropolis might be subjected to an access of anarchy similar to that which bestowed an evil notoriety on the Gordon Riots, gave rise to preparations for defence on an unprecedented scale. At this crisis not less than two hundred thousand citizens enrolled themselves as Special Constables; the Metropolitan Police were told off to guard the bridges; and all available troops were held in reserve, mostly in houses on the Middlesex side of the river. The Duke of Wellington took command of this huge police army, and so perfect were his arrangements that, without the display of a single redcoat, the rioters outside dared not advance to the attack, and their sympathisers within dared not make any diversion in their favour.
The whole subject of the policing of riotous and riotously disposed crowds is of the highest importance; but being a science in itself, its many aspects cannot be discussed in a book which only professes to tell briefly the story of police development in this country. At the same time, if we are to appreciate correctly the bearing of one fact upon another, if we hope to draw intelligent conclusions, it is impossible to avoid altogether what may be called the semi-scientific side of the question. In order to estimate the efficiency of any police force, to decide, for example, whether its failures are due to faulty organization or to bad generalship,—it is not sufficient to have an acquaintance with a mass of facts, dates and figures, but a key is required to read the cipher, some guide is necessary to assist in arranging the known factors in the order of their relative importance.
An indifferently directed force may be capable of dealing in detail with isolated offenders; but the problem of pacifying a combination of peace breakers may induce a strain which will find out the faulty link in all but the most highly tempered organizations. Just as a concerted breach of the peace by a number of persons is disproportionately more serious than an independent breach by any individual, so also do police duties take a higher range as soon as it becomes necessary to concentrate the energies of a number of constables for the attainment of a common object. If he is to employ his constables to the best advantage, a superior officer of police must have some knowledge of the general laws that sway men when they are assembled together in great numbers, those "volcanic forces" which, in the words of an American writer, "lie smouldering in all ignorant masses."
Men have a gregarious instinct which, under the influence of excitement, induces them to herd together without any definite object and often at great inconvenience to themselves; the progress of the resulting congestion is normal until a certain point is reached, the point at which entirely new forces begin to act. When this moment arrives, all self-control is repudiated, decent and orderly men become desperadoes, cowards are inspired by a senseless bravado, the calm reason of common-sense gives place to the insanity of licence, and unless the demoralising tendency is checked, a crowd rapidly reaches the level of its most degraded constituent. The explanation of these phenomena is probably to be found in an excessive spirit of emulation aroused under conditions of excitement, which makes a man feel that the responsibility for his actions is no longer to be borne by himself, but will be shared by the multitude in which he has merged his identity. It is the business of the police to exhaust every art in a sustained effort to prevent the ferment from reaching the critical stage, and to watch the crowd so narrowly that the first symptom of violence may instantly be suppressed. This can best be accomplished by local constables who are acquainted with the persons and names of individual members of the crowd, while it is of even greater moment that the constabulary should not be the first to give offence, or contribute to a breach of the peace by the use of exasperating language or aggressive action.
The problem before the policeman operating against a riotously disposed crowd is somewhat similar to that which confronts the soldier in the face of the enemy, and it was on this account that the Metropolitan force was given a semi-military organization. In some respects, however, the policeman's task is the more difficult of the two, chiefly because he has to strive for peace whilst actually engaged in conflict; the soldier at least enjoys the advantage of knowing his own comrades, whereas the constable is often unable to distinguish friends from foes, and continually runs the risk of converting the former into the latter. Whilst the greatest possible latitude must be allowed to individual constables, the secret of success lies in mutual, not in independent action, and for mutual action to exist, there must be discipline and intelligent direction. When the use of force can no longer be delayed, the plan adopted by the officer in command should be easy of accomplishment, simple of comprehension, and its success should leave the law-breakers at a strategical disadvantage sufficiently obvious to convince them of the futility of further resistance. Nothing is so fatal as vacillation: partial success leads on a mob to the commission of fresh excesses, partial repression only aggravates it. It is far better to leave a crowd altogether alone, than to sustain even an apparent defeat. Force is no remedy unless it is unswervingly and unhesitatingly applied; and as it is comparatively immaterial in what direction repression is exercised so long as it is consistent and irresistible, it is usually good policy to divert the energies of the mob towards the line of least resistance. It is more efficacious, for example, to keep a crowd moving in some definite direction, than to dissipate the strength of the police in attempts to arrest ring-leaders, to seize banners or the like, which may degenerate into a series of disconnected single combats not uniformly favourable to authority. Any apparently uncalled-for attack may convey the impression of wanton outrage, and so tend to defeat the object in view, by increasing that state of irritation and excitement which it is the principal duty of the police to allay. Many branches of police science which to-day are in the common knowledge were unheard of and unsuspected during the first half of the nineteenth century. This is particularly the case with regard to that part of the constable's duty which has to do with the management of crowds: before 1830 there were only two methods of dealing with a riotous mob, the first was to leave it severely alone, and the second was to allow a regiment of cavalry to trample it into submission. No government worthy of the name is justified in adopting a policy of non-interference at a time when the lives and property of law-abiding citizens are in preventible jeopardy, and the disastrous consequences that may follow upon the employment of the second method were sufficiently advertised (to cite two instances only) by the Bristol Riots and the so-called Peterloo Massacre.
London police and London crowds are now renowned all over the world, the former for the general excellence of their arrangements, and the latter for their almost invariable good humour. Perhaps the credit is not always fairly apportioned, for it is not too much to say that the good humour of the crowd is more often due to the admirable tact of the police than to any inherent virtue that exclusively resides in Londoners. At first the police were hardly more successful in suppressing riots than the soldiers had been: in Birmingham as at Coldbath Fields, events shewed that the unpopularity of the new constabulary went far to neutralize the undoubted superiority naturally possessed by a civil, over a military, force for the purposes of peace maintenance. As time went on, and as police and public came to understand each other, riots became less frequent, and conflicts less bitter, until the harmony which now so happily exists was arrived at. If it is allowable to talk of a turning-point in a process which is gradual, this point was reached soon after the disturbances which commonly go by the name of the Sunday-Trading-Bill Riots. Though not accompanied by any loss of life, nor followed by those unsparing attacks on the conduct of the police that had embittered the Coldbath Fields controversy, the collision which took place in July 1855, between the Metropolitan Police and a mixed London crowd, were serious enough to stir up much of the old animosity, and to prove that, if the policeman was no longer an object of active dislike to his fellow-citizens, neither could he as yet lay claim to any great measure of popularity.
The disturbances in question arose out of the following circumstances. Lord Robert Grosvenor had introduced a bill, the object of which was to prevent all buying and selling within the City of London and metropolitan police district on Sundays. Popular feeling, which ran high against the measure, found expression in a variety of ways, some serious and some serio-comic. The point of view of the masses was not badly summed up in these lines:
"Sublime decree, by which our souls to save
No Sunday tankards foam, no barbers shave,