ABSTRACT
The first report of the Royal Commission in March 1839, which had been set up to recommend the means for establishing in the counties what the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 had achieved for the towns, was published in March 1839. Painting a lurid picture of unchecked, migratory crime with which the existing policing arrangements were wholly incapable of dealing, they urged establishing county forces on Metropolitan lines under the Commissioners of Police. Although in practice highly ambitious recommendations, the report stressed the modesty of the costs and made an important recommendation for central subvention – a principle already established for London in the 1833 Act Whereas the new proposed operational arrangements were sweeping, it was the recommendations for changing the form of political control that were even more controversial. The Commission wanted the magistracy to lose its executive policing functions and, for policing, henceforward act in its judicial capacity alone.
