At first sight it seems almost incredible that any part of the nation, except the criminal class, should have felt and exhibited such bitter hostility to legislation that we now see had been too long delayed; but the reluctance of the people to welcome the innovation was not so unreasonable as it now appears. It is easy for us to be wise after seventy years' experience of the admirable results that have followed upon the Act of 1829; but in that year the only example of modern militarily organized police before the eyes of the people, was that under which Paris had groaned since the time of La Reynie. Chateaubriand's philippics directed against the French system were eagerly read and quoted, and it was felt that London could not avoid the condition of interference with individual liberty that obtained across the Channel. People could not associate in their minds a proper police organization and the maintenance of justice, and remembered that "injustice is always most formidable when armed." The events of the French Revolution were still in the public mind; and many Englishmen, who had looked on with horror at the spectacle of a neighbouring country writhing in the grip of anarchy, narrowly watched the course of events at home, in fearful anticipation lest any of the causes which had brought about the debâcle in France should be reproduced in this island. Nothing under the ancient régime had pressed the French people so hard nor bitten so deep as the police tyranny of the eighteenth century; and when the day of reckoning came, the one rallying cry which never failed to stir the Parisians to an extremity of fury, was that for the abolition of the "lettre de cachet"[185] and for the overthrow of the lieutenant of police and his gang. And no wonder! Liberty was impossible under a system which arrogated to itself the right "de tout voir, de tout connaître, et de tout juger;" when no man could call his conscience his own, and when no fireside was secure against the paid informer. "If three men meet together, I can rely on it that at least two of them are on my side" boasted Sartines, a famous Chief of police. What plan could be more demoralizing than the one which sets the servant to spy on the master, the son to watch his father? What system so base as that under which the same hand that presses yours in friendship is the first to arrest you, what instrument so fatal to liberty or justice as the "lettre de cachet" which proclaims the innocence of the man who was legally convicted yesterday, and sends to the Bastille to-morrow the man who was honourably acquitted to-day? People in England who knew these things, not unnaturally asked themselves the question, Why, with our eyes open, should we forge against ourselves a weapon similar to that, whose sharp point has goaded our neighbours till they were driven to set alight the torch of revolution and to destroy the whole fabric of government?