general rules for securing a proper choice of
officers, for enabling an abundance of men in
one county to compensate for dearth in another,
and for ordering a local ballot when
in any county there may be an undue paucity
of volunteers. He instructs lord-lieutenants
in what manner to co-operate; has, in fact, a
supreme control over all the arrangements in
connexion with this great defensive force.
He calls out the bands for training once a
year, or absolves them at anytime from the
performance of that duty. He appoints a
general officer to command them, and
orders them to fight when they must fight;
but only for the protection of their homes.
It is only when under training or permanently
embodied, that militia-men are paid;
although a small permanent staff is commonly
maintained in each county-town as a
nucleus of organisation, ready against any
day of need. Militia pay is at the same rate
as the regular pay of the army, and comes
out of the resources of the state; not of the
county. The last yearly vote for the costs of
our militia service was eight hundred thousand
pounds.The force consists only of
infantry and foot artillery.

Cavalry is provided by the yeomanry, or
volunteer corps, over which also the Home
Secretary has control. Such corps can only
be formed with his sanction, and can be
disbanded at his command. They commonly
provide their own arms and equipments; but
the Home minister can order arms to be
supplied to them from public stores. Their
private rules must receive his sanction, and,
only within the limit of the rules thus
sanctioned, can he use their services. The
yeomanry that have formed cavalry corps,
generally assemble for drill on twelve days in the
year; those that have formed infantry corps
on twenty-four days. During this time they
are exempt from militia service, from tax
on horses used in such training, and from
turnpike tolls. The officers of these corps are
usually country gentlemen; the privates,
yeomen. They are liable to be called out
by their local magistrates in any case of
riot. Some five-and-thirty years ago they
were employed to disperse certain public
meetings; and, being brought imprudently into
collision with the people, were guilty of some
cruel excesses, for which they were thanked
by government. Discredit was thus cast on
voluntary corps; many were disbanded, and
there is no great tendency in these days to
the formation of others. The present charge
incurred by the state on account of the
various yeomanry corps, is eighty-eight thousand
pounds a year.

Then there is the Police Force, another
body charged with preserving peace and
good order; but, except in London and
in Ireland, the Home Secretary has very
little direct power over it. We have no
state police, and want none. Of late years
county magistrates have been entitled to
establish a rural police, and to pay for it out
of county rates; but of this right little use
is made. The rural police, when it is so
established, is entirely managed by the
magistrates. In corporate towns the municipal
authorities have similar powers, and establish
a town police; but this is in some
instances insufficient in respect of numbers.
The Corporation of the City of London
maintain such a police of its own, and quite
independent of the metropolitan police, which
is under the authority of the Home Office.
This force is presided over by a commissioner,
whom the Home Secretary appoints,
and it may be sent to perform service in any
part of England at the bidding of the government.
It is paid for out of local rates. There
are in London eight police courts, each
presided over by two magistrates, paid with
salaries of one thousand pounds a year.
They are appointed by the Home Secretary,
and are responsible to him for their decisions.
Their jurisdiction extends to punishment for
petty offences, and to the committal of persons
charged with grave crimes, for trial, by the
higher tribunals. In Ireland there is a state
police, or constabulary, under the orders of the
Viceroy. The Scotch police system is
something like the English.

The Home Office is charged with the general
direction and supervision of the inferior
magistracy throughout the kingdom. It does not,
however, appoint any more than a few
stipendiary magistrates in large towns. Justices
of the peace, unpaid functionaries who are
landowners, or beneficed clergymen, are
appointed upon recommendation made by the
lord-lieutenants of their counties to the
Lord Chancellor, who inserts the names of
persons so recommended in the Commission
of the Peace. The accepted gentleman may
then act as a justice upon the condition of
his taking certain oaths. He thereafter meets
his brother justices at assemblies called
Petty Sessions, held once a week or fortnight—
commonly at some respectable inn—to punish
petty offenders, and to commit for all grave
offence. Four times a year, also, the county
magistrates all meet in Quarter Sessions at
the county town; then they have power to
punish men found guilty by juries of serious
crimes, and have also an opportunity of
transacting a large amount of county business
connected with prisons, police, local taxation, and
so forth. In municipal towns, justices of the
peace are appointed, not on the recommenda-
tion of lord-lieutenant to Lord Chancellor,
but of Town Council to Home Secretary. All
justices of this kind have authority only
among their neighbours. The correction of
magisterial abuses—which abound, through
ignorance and other causes—lies with the
Court of Queen's Bench. Matters of which
that court does not take cognisance can be
brought under the notice of the Home
Secretary, who has power to deprive any
backsliding justice of his commission.