Tae near approach of the election of Manicipal Councillors for the present. year and the subsequent annual meeting of Ratepayers, has a natural tendency to turn our thoughts towards Municipal subjects. One of the most important of these subjects is the status and conduct of the Municipal Police. We are apt to complain that the Police are inefficient if jinrikehas get in our way as we drive, or if wede not immediately recover an umbrella ore clock that some light-fingered Celestial has conveyed from our ill-guarded home; but on the whole there is, little serious fault to be found with our Police, Charges ofcorruption are sometimes brought by dissatiefied Ratepayers; but they are rarely proved against the native, and never, we believe, against the foreign members of the force. To those who remember the chaos into which the policing of the Settlement had fallen before the present heads of the department arrived from England, the quiet and unassuming way in which order is maintained at a comparatively trifling cost in this large city is almost wonderful, It being remembered that our government is essentially amateur, and sometimes changes almost. entirely from year to year, Shanghai is to be congratulated on nothing more heartily than on the excellence of its Police. The status of the force is as abnormal as is the whole constitution of the Settlement. On Chinese soil, which has never been surrendered to foreigners, has indeed never been claimed by them, foreigners have instituted Police which not only keeps themselves in order, but controls and protects an enormous number of the natives of the soil. This force is even occasionally employed, with the concurrence and approbation of the Chinese officials, far beyond the limits of the Settlement, and the Mixed Court Magistrate, the highest native official in the Settlement, has been known to compliment the foreign Police who has returned to his country home, has sent to Shanghai silver badges of honour to be worn by native constables in the Manicipal force. The value of instances of recognition of this kind cannot be exaggerated; and anyone who takes the trouble to spend a morning at the Mixed Court will find probably a foreign Inspector of Police not merely taking his orders from 'Mr. Chen or the Assessor, but acting almost as the Magistrates' Clerk: at Home. If we were to examine the origin of the force, we should probably find that it represents the constables which the various Consuls would other. wise have to keep, and which some do
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.