128 Before the BobbiesThe new Home Secretary was not necessarily pleased with the quality of
policing under the police offices. Peel often reprimanded his magistrates and
their constables for neglect of duty and corruption. For example, Peel
learned in May 1822 that two police magistrates had refused to hear a case
brought before them by a Bow Street Patrol. Under-Secretary Heruy Hob-
house, responding for Peel, wrote sharply:
He [Mr Peel] hoped that every Magistrate had known that his Duty
required him to hear every Case brought before him without considering
who is the Prosecutor or by what Constable the Prisoner has been appre-
hended and he little supposed that any of those Magistrates who have
been selected by the Secretary of State and are paid by the Public for their
Services would from· any private motives have turned away a Prosecutor
and defeated the Ends of Justice .... Confidence has been reposed in
them, that they will discharge those Functions according to Law, with
impartiality to all Parties, and to the furtherance of Public Justice. Mr
Peel is concerned that no cause should exist for the slightest suspicion of
this confidence having been misplaced, and trusts that no other Instance of
the like kind will ever fall under his Observation.^8Peel was equally tough on police office constables, disciplining them for
offences like overcharging clients for expenses or being too closely connected
to pubkeepers. Peel clearly expected high standards of professional conduct
and public service from his subordinates.
In Parliament, Peel turned his attention to the criminal law. Peel, as befitted
a conservative, 'approached the problem more cautiously but over a wider
front' than other reformers. He was aware of the interconnected nature of the
whole criminal justice system. Thus a Tory government, for the first time,
sponsored measures for the reform of prisons, punishments, and the courts.^9
Peel revealed the political strategy behind his approach in a letter to Lord
Liverpool in 1822. Explaining the resistance he was encountering from fellow
Tories to proposed reform of the Scottish court system, Peel said: 'I tried to
convince them that it was the best Policy to take to ourselves the credit of the
Reform and that by being the authors of it, we should have the best chance of
preserving limits to the Innovation.'^10 Peel's three goals, which he accom-
plished to a significant degree, were simplification and consolidation of the
criminal law and mitigation of abuses.U In 1827, Peel reduced to five statutes
the relevant contents of some one hundred and thirty different acts dealing
with theft, some dating from as far back as the reign of Heruy III.^12 This
simplified and consolidated the law and reduced the number of capital
offences. Peel also worked on prison conditions, secondary punishments, the
Scottish legal system, and the Court of Chancery.
Peel did not forget police reform in his broad-based approach to criminal
justice: 'he rarely lost any opportunity of reminding the Commons of the