These fatal riots should have taught the lesson that soldiers are ill-suited to the task of putting down civil tumult, and that their use entails an unnecessary amount of bloodshed, especially when their action is so long delayed that an increased severity becomes necessary. Unfortunately the lesson, if learnt, was not taken to heart: at any rate no adequate remedy was proposed at the time. On one point only was any light immediately thrown. Hitherto some doubt had existed as to the legality of employing the military to put down riots, but on this occasion the King sought the advice of the Attorney-General,[154] who gave it as his opinion, that, as soldiers were also citizens, they could constitutionally be used to prevent felony, even without the Riot Act being read. It was well that this point was cleared up, because circumstances will occasionally arise when troops must be sent for as a last resource; but it is remarkable that, after the failure of the soldier to keep the peace had just been demonstrated in so signal a manner, no one should have supplied the obvious rider, and suggested the substitution of a more satisfactory agent. Half a century slipped by before the necessary change began in England; but on the principle of applying the remedy to any limb except the diseased one, Dublin was quickly provided with what London lacked, and in 1786 was passed the "Dublin Police[155] Act,"[156] under which three Commissioners were appointed, and given the command of a paid and well-organised constabulary. In the course of the following year the whole of Ireland came under the protection of the new guardians of the peace, who, developing as time went on, eventually reached that state of efficiency that is now invariably associated with the name of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The magistrates of the period set the worst possible example to their subordinate officers, and there were but few of them who did not deserve the name of "Trading Justices," that was so commonly applied. Those who did not actually accept bribes were usually ready to make a little extra money by the improper and wholesale bailing, not only of offenders who ought to have been kept in confinement, but of innocent persons also, who ought to have been immediately and unconditionally set at liberty. The system was to issue warrants against helpless people for imaginary crimes, and then to let them out on bail, the magistrate netting the sum of two shillings and fourpence every time he repeated the trick. James Townsend, a Bow Street runner, who gave evidence on this subject before a parliamentary commission in 1816, explained how lucrative this practice used to be, "and taking up a hundred girls, that would make at two shillings and fourpence, £11, 13s. 4d. They sent none to gaol, for the bailing them was so much better."