Why 1829? 139mode.'^58 Three years and one Select Committee later, Peel had done his
planning and searching and was ready to act.
In the later months of 1828, Peel worked closely with barrister William
Gregson to draft the Metropolitan Police bill. Peel also consulted Henry
Hobhouse, the retired Home Office Under-Secretary. Peel wanted to ensure
a smooth passage of the bill. One potential source of opposition was the
powerful City of London, judiciously excluded from the provisions of the bill.
Peel also continued to consult parish officials. There is an intriguing letter
from Lord Lowther, chairman of the Metropolitan Roads Commission, to
Peel in November 1828. It includes a list of 14 names, with remarks about
each man and his knowledge of local affairs. Magistrates, vestrymen, vestry
clerks, businessmen, a rate collector, a solicitor, and even a schoolmaster are
on Lowther's list. He explained:
In compliance with your wishes, .... The enclosed List contains amongst
the working citizens of the world, those that are the least prejudiced & the
farthest removed from Parish jobbing, & on whose information I should
most depend to arrive at the truth, if I had such a bill in view as you are
about to propose.^59If Peel contacted any of them, neither his letters nor their replies, nor notes
of conversations have apparently survived. None of them testified before the
Select Committee. But this indicates Peel's concern to consult local opinion.
Peel presented the finished bill to the House of Commons on 15 April
1829, after the furore over Catholic Emancipation.^60 In his introductory
speech, Peel had three themes - rising crime rates, centralization as the
way to have a more efficient police, and the cost of reform. He again
reminded the House of rising crime rates, quoting many statistics. While
Peel admitted that the select committee had not been able to come to any
satisfactory conclusion about the fundamental causes of crime, he was none-
theless convinced that one 'influential cause' was the decentralized structure
of London's police. An efficient police was one that had 'unity of design
and responsibility of its agents'. Given that, there was no way for the
decentralized, diversified parochial system to measure up and thus, Peel
argued, it was obviously and dangerously flawed. He emphasized the migra-
tion theory:
What advantage in a general point of view could be derived from one well-
regulated district, surrounded by five or six neigbouring parishes in which
no attempts had been made to remedy the present inefficient watch-house
system? - Would not the necessary effect be, to drive the thieves and
robbers from the protected parish into those parishes on its skirts ...?
Would not, consequently, the one well-regulated district aggravate the
evils of its neighbours?^61