ABSTRACT
A central theme of this book, and especially of this second part of it, has been the tension between the intentions of local government in policing matters, and the origins and background of the executive force that was used to implement policy within the localities. This chapter assesses the capacities of policemen within local communities and to do this, new material on the police operation of the licencing laws is introduced in order to show what restrictions were placed upon them. Three dimensions to a policeman’s sphere of action have been latent within the preceding discussion: restrictions were placed upon him by the type of hierarchy he operated within, by the kind of law he used, and by the sort of man he was. Issues that have previously implied a similar pattern of capacity and restriction are the Night Poaching Prevention Act, the police operation of the vagrancy laws, and the use of policemen as agents of riot law. These issues are considered briefly again in this chapter, in order to clarify what were the possibilities of police action within mid-nineteenth -century communities.
