The War l'ears, 1793-1815 91how the authority of parish vestries and watch committee~ would be recon-
ciled with that of his Police Board.^49
Colquhoun became one of the most vocal and persistent advocates of a
centralized, uniform system of policing for London. He urged its establish-
ment in private and in print. He testified before several Parliamentary
committees and lobbied successive Home Secretaries.^50 Patrick Colquhoun
is important as a transitional figure, literally and figuratively a man in both
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His work appeared at a point in
time when a number of constituencies in English society were anxious
about crime, its causes, and ways to prevent it, and his views bridged many
of those groups. Colquhoun combined a Benthamite view of the criminal
justice system with the wartime zeal of a counter-revolutionary and the
crusading spirit of a vice-president of the Vice Society.^51 Nicholas Rogers
has noted this in his discussion of Colquhoun's attitude towards vagrancy,
arguing that 'the central thrust of his recommendations ... privileged policing
as the main arbiter of vagrancy and the central agency for its resolution.'^52
However, Colquhoun's enthusiasm for reform was tempered by a belief
that evil, rather like the poor, would always be with us. The ultimate goal
of policing was thus not to rid society of evil but to control and minimize
the impact of crime.But in spite of all the efforts of human wisdom, aided by the lights of
Philosophy, and freed from the mist of prejudice or the bigotry of darker
ages; - In spite of the best laws, and the most correct system of Police
which the most enlightened Legislature can form: it will not be altogether
possible, amid the various opposite attractions of pleasure and ·pain, to
reduce the tumultuous activity of mankind to absolute regulari~r -We can
only hope for a considerable reduction of the evils that exist.^5Patrick Colquhoun's ideas appealed to many but for different reasons.^54
But the individual 'branches' of Colquhoun's General Police were still unac-
ceptable to many. Colquhoun's integration of all these components - the
criminal law, prisons and punishments, the poor law, trade regulation, street
policing, moral reform - meant reforms too radical for most Englishmen.
Critics found fault with Colquhoun's inflated statistics on crime, his negative
characterization of the labouring poor, his failure to censure the vices of the
rich, and his advocacy of centralized policing.^55 Colquhoun insisted, how-
ever, that his system was a whole cloth:
Indeed it is but too evident, that nothing useful can be effected without a
variety of Regulations, such as have been suggested in different parts of
this Work. It is not, however, by the adoption of any one remedy singly
applied, or applied by piece-meal, but by a combination of the whole
Legislative Powers, Regulations, Establishments, and superintending