wholesome as well as nauseous air in the uni verse, and which hath in his case corrupted a good constitution without contaminating his morals." Five hundred pounds, I may state, is the salary which, with three exceptions, the Leg islature has since assigned to the chief clerks of the metropolitan police courts. At Bow Street and Great Marlborough Street the salary is indefinite, and at West Ham it is eight hundred pounds. Fielding adds : " A predecessor of mine used to boast that he made one thousand pounds a year in his office, but how he did this (if indeed he did it) is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine, told me I had more busi ness than he had ever known there; I am sure I had as much as any man could do. The truth is, the fees are so very low, when any are due, that if a single justice of peace had business enough to employ twenty clerks, neither he nor they would get much by their labor. The public will not there fore think that I betray a secret when I in form them that I received from the govern ment a yearly pension out of the public service money." • "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." Fate, which had. condemned Fielding, like his contemporaries, Johnson and Goldsmith, to toil for the booksellers, ordained also that the hand which drew Sophia and Amelia should sign mittimuses for bleareyed Molls and Molly Segrims. But vex not his ghost, oh, let him pass! "Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, Who long was a bookseller's hack; He led such a damnable life in this world. I don't think he'll wish to come back." Fielding was succeeded as justice for Westminster by Saunders Welch, who, Boswell tells us, " established a regular office for the police of that great district, and dis charged his important duties for many years faithfully and ably." He was the friend of Johnson, who, when Saunders Welch's
health gave way, obtained for him .through Chamier (Under-Secretary of State) leave of absence to go to Italy, and a promise that the pension of two hundred pounds a year should not be discontinued. Johnson, who " had an eager and unceas ing curiosity to know human life," told Boswcll that " he had attended Mr. Welch in his office for a whole winter to hear the ex aminations of the prisoners, but that he found an almost uniform tenor of misfortune, wretchedness and profligacy." In spite of one or two magistrates like Fielding and Welch, the state of the metrop olis was so serious that 32 Geo. III. c. 53 was passed, establishing seven public offices : at Queen's Square, St. Margarets West minster; Marlborough Street, Oxford Road (as Oxford Street was called then); Hatton Garden, Holborn; Worship Street, Finsbury Square; Lambeth Street, Whitechapel; High Street, Shoreditch; and Union Street, Southwark. Three magis trates, two clerks, and six constables were attached to each office. The fees were paid to a receiver, as they are now, and by him distributed among the different offices, none of them receiving more than two thousand pounds. The salary of the magistrates was four hundred pounds each, and no other Middlesex or Surrey justice was allowed to take any fee within their jurisdiction. Two of them are still remembered, Monias Leach and Patrick Colquhoun, author of a treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, which passed through seven editions in ten years, and of which the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1838) say: "The merit of being the first to point out the ne cessity and practicability of a system of preventive police upon an uniform and con sistent plan, is due to Mr. Colquhoun." Leach is described by his biographer in the Dictionary of National Biography (that most catholic work which embraces murder ers in its fold) as "an able man," but it is added, "ill health made him irritable." The last
