CONSTABULARY FORCE.
A PETITION of which the following is a copy has been agreed upon for general adoption, by the Ratepayers within the several parishes forming of the Alresford Union, to be presented at the next Quarter Sessions. And it is hoped that all persons feeling aggrieved by the Constabulary Force will forthwith adopt a similar course.
To the Worshipful her Majesty's Justices of the Peace in Quarter Session assembled, for the County of Southampton.
We the undersigned ratepayers of the parish of ______ respectfully beg your attention to our Petition, which we place before your Honourable Court.
We feel with great alarm the serious increase within the last year of the county expenditure, occasioned principally by the formation of a Constabulary Force, which, in our humble judgement, is unnecessary and uncalled for in this agricultural and thinly populated county without manufacturers or any other extensive establishment likely to create any serious riots or breaches of the peace; and we beg further to represent that this oppressive tax is principally sustained by the cultivators of the soil, for whose protection against the many petty thefts to which they are so liable, the Constabulary Force is almost useless. Also, that it is with great difficulty the more humble class of Ratepayers can find means to pay the many other berthens imposed upon them, thereby rendering a Police Rate the more odious; and we venture the more strongly to impress on the attention of your Honourable Court our desire to be relieved from this heavy expense, because the populous towns of the county have a Police Forces under their own control, and that by the Act of Parliament, if any particular district of the county requires a Constabulary Force, the Justices have power to establish the force wearing, such a district being alone chargeable with the expense without burthening the whole county.
We therefore humbly pray your Honourable Court will be pleased to take this our Petition into your serious consideration, and dissolve, as early as possible, the general Constabulary Force of the county.
(See also following pages:—
19-Oct-1839
19-Oct-1839
23-Nov-1839
20-Jan-1840
7-May-1840
8-Jan-1842
14-Feb-1842
12-Mar-1842)