The evidence given before the various Parliamentary Committees reveals to us an impartial contemporary view of things as they then were, and it requires but little acumen to see for ourselves how well we are served by our police to-day. The improvement that has taken place has been something more than a well-defined instance of the general amelioration in our institutions, which was the feature of the nineteenth century: the year 1830 saw an almost instantaneous change in the police of London, a transformation from an inconceivably rotten and antiquated system into one which immediately became an example to the world, and one which still remains a credit to our civilization. Simultaneously with the police revival there suddenly dawned an unwonted era of security out of the dark and dangerous shadows of the past: that this was due to Peel's Act, and to no other cause, is conclusively proved by the fact that the rural parts of England, to which the Act did not apply, had no share in the improvement which was at once manifest in the metropolis. The sharp contrast between the state of London under the old _régime_ and its condition under the new administration is well illustrated by a comparison of two critical articles taken from the leading reviews of the day. A year before the introduction of Peel's bill the _Quarterly Review_ said--"There can be no doubt that the whole of the existing watch system of London and its vicinity ought to be mercilessly struck to the ground. No human being has the smallest confidence in it.... Their existence is a nuisance and a curse"; and some years afterwards, when people had begun to realise how indispensable their police had become, the _Edinburgh Review_ refers to the Metropolitan force in these words: "The arrangements are so good, the security so general, and the complex machinery works so quietly, that the real danger which must always exist where the wealth and luxury of a nation are brought into juxtaposition with its poverty and crime, is too much forgotten: and the people begin to think it quite a matter of course, or one of the operations of providence, that they sleep and wake in safety in the midst of hordes of starving plunderers."