Note 19 — Chapter XIII · ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DETECTIVES.

The opinion expressed by a Parliamentary Committee, in 1833, on this wearing of plain clothes is worth recording. “With respect to the occasional employment of police in plain clothes,” says the Report, “the system affords no just matter of complaint while strictly confined to detecting breaches of the law.... At the same time, the Committee would strongly urge the most cautious maintenance of these limits, and solemnly deprecate any approach to the employment of spies, in the usual acceptance of the term, as a practice most abhorrent to the feelings of the people and most alien to the spirit of the Constitution.”