74 Before the Bobbiesmetropolitan district administered by three government-appointed magis-
trates, the Commissioners of Police, responsible for supervising the selection
and work of all other magistrates in the Metropolitan District.^106 The Com-
missioners were also to have a veto power over appointments to night watch
forces. For the entire metropolis, except the City of London, nine 'Public
Offices' were to be staffed by stipendiary magistrates appointed by the
Crown. Unpaid magistrates could act in criminal matters for greater London
only if they were approved by the three Commissioners. The role of an
unpaid magistrate as enforcer of the law was to be separated from his
administrative function as an overseer of parish government.^107 The only
limit to the -authority of the Commissioners was that any warrants to be
executed within the borders of the City had to be endorsed either by the
Lord Mayor or an alderman. If one of the Commissioners' constables wanted
to break into a house or building in order to pursue a suspect or execute a
search warrant at night, he had to be accompanied by a constable of that
parish.^108 This bill embodied the ultimate logic of eighteenth-century pre-
ventive policing: the surveillance of persons and places, strict punishment of
relatively minor crimes, and keeping records on suspected as well as known
offenders by a government-controlled, metropolitan authority.^109
For the bill's supporters, fears about rising crime overcame more tradi-
tional fears about executive power. When he introduced the bill, MacDonald
argued that it was needed because of 'the alarming height to which depreda-
tions and outrage had arrived ... no person could feel himself unapprehens-
ive of danger to his person or property, if he walked the street after it was
dark; nor could any man promise himself security, even in his bed'.U^0
Others, according to Simon Devereaux, saw preventive policing 'as a sub-
stitute for the extensive, publicly-funded penal institutions' which had been
proposed in earlier, unsuccessfullegislation.m
The opposition saw the bill as subversive to liberty, granting too much
authority to officials appointed and paid by the Crown. If the government
could restrict the authority of the Middlesex justices, was any magistrate or
other local official safe from government interference? The bill was criticized
for creating more 'jobs', more patronage for the government.^112 The Daily
Universal Register noted: 'It creates upwards of two hundred new places, and
establishes a controuling [sic] power, that may hereafter hold the power of
electing members to serve the city of Westminster in Parliament in absolute
subjection.'^113 Lord Beauchamp, using a deadly metaphor, referred to the
Commissioners as 'the three inspectors of the police of Paris'.^114 The Daily
Universal Register editorialized:
Although many inconveniences arises [sic] from an excess of liberty in this
Country, yet they are so greatly overbalanced by the advantages, that we
cannot be too careful to preserve a blessing which distinguishes us from all