Public opinion is notoriously unstable; and in recent years the police have probably suffered to a greater extent than any other institution from the alternating favour and disfavour of the populace.[188] The comparative popularity enjoyed by the Metropolitan police force in 1834 was only a precarious possession, gratifying enough at the moment, but of little permanent value. No such disadvantage, however, attaches to a testimonial deliberately given by a representative tribunal, especially when such testimony is in direct contradiction to anticipations recently expressed by an equally competent and similarly constituted body. The 1822 Committee were of opinion that it would be difficult "to reconcile an effective system of police with that perfect freedom of action and exemption from interference which are the great privileges and blessings of society in this country." The 1834 Committee, on the other hand, having satisfied themselves that these gloomy forebodings were groundless, reported to the House of Commons as follows: "Looking at the establishment as a whole, it appears to your Committee that the Metropolitan police has imposed no restraint, either upon public bodies or individuals, which is not entirely consistent with the fullest practical exercise of every civil privilege, and with the most unrestrained intercourse of private society." CHAPTER XIV POLICE REFORM IN BOROUGHS It is sometimes assumed that the Metropolitan Police Act solved, once and for all, the question as to the manner in which London was to be policed for the future. Such, however, was far from being the case. The old prejudice was not lived down in a day; and the jealousy of those who saw what they were pleased to consider their vested rights slipping out of their grasp into the hands of the newcomers, caused the remnant of the old office-holders to make frantic efforts to recover what they had lost, and to hold fast what they were in danger of losing. There were still many irreconcilables, who looked upon the new force as a gang of usurpers and treated it with distrust and suspicion accordingly, hoping that some false move on the part of the police authorities, or some unlooked-for happy chance, might change the fortunes of the day. Luckily no such set-back occurred, and by slow degrees the ultimate success of the principles enunciated by Peel became more and more assured, and Scotland Yard triumphed to the discomfiture of all possible rivals. From the very commencement Sir Robert Peel had declared that unity of design was essential to success; but when the reorganization took place, Parliament shrank from the bold course marked out for it, and instead of making a clean sweep of all that was useless, whilst transferring to the new police anything in the old system that was of value, preferred to retain some of the existing unsatisfactory agencies, and to allow them to continue to manage or mismanage their own affairs as before.