Most recent attempts to reform the police had been entered into under the influence of panic, and when some patched-up defence could be extemporised against the danger that threatened, those responsible for the public quiet had been content. Peel's aims were more comprehensive: he set himself to design a framework sufficiently rigid to withstand the stress of the moment, and elastic enough to admit of expansion along the lines of future development. A nice judgment was required to determine how far the old materials could be made available for the reconstruction, to decide how much to retain and how much to discard. Certain sound and well-proved principles, admirably suited to the national temper, underlay the structure which he was bent on modernizing, and these, he saw, could not be dispensed with. No mania for novelty blinded him to the value of much of the groundwork of the old system; and his reforms, therefore, were in the best sense conservative, for whilst there was no break in the continuity of whatever was good, neither was there any deliberate retention of anything that was bad. It is largely due to Peel's moderation that, the more one studies the anatomy of modern English police, the more one discovers birthmarks of its Anglo-Saxon parentage. Two months after its introduction, Peel's measure became law. The famous Act of Parliament[181] creating the Metropolitan Police Force was entitled "An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis." The preamble declared that, it having been found expedient to substitute a more efficient system of police for the local establishments of nightly watch and nightly police which had proved inadequate for the prevention and detection of crime, a new office of police was to be constituted, under the immediate authority of the Home Secretary. The Act is a long one, but its main provisions are simple and concise. His Majesty appoints two Justices of the Peace to conduct the business of the Police Office, and to frame regulations for the management of the force, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State. The financial department is placed under an official called the Receiver, and the Police Rate (which must not exceed eightpence in the pound) is to be collected by Overseers like the Poor Rate. The existing watch shall continue to discharge its duties in the various parishes until notification is made that the new police is appointed, and then all watch-boxes, arms, etc., shall be handed over, and the present watch rates shall cease. The limits of the "metropolitan police district" are defined to comprise Westminster, and such parishes in Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, as are enumerated in the Schedule of the Act. The Metropolitan police district is partitioned off into various "divisions" according to counties, those of Middlesex being as follows, Westminster, Holborn, Finsbury, Tower, Kensington, Brentford, and a division comprising certain extra-parochial places such as Grays Inn,