The immediate result of the activity of the new metropolitan and municipal police forces was found to be, that habitual criminals had migrated in large numbers from London, and from those towns where an improved constabulary had superseded the old parish watch, and had begun to ply their trade in the unprotected districts. Country magistrates unanimously reported that the bulk of the more serious offences recently committed in their respective neighbourhoods was the work of strangers from the great towns. The superintendent of the Liverpool dock police stated that about a thousand well-known thieves, who had been evicted from the city, were now continuing their depredations in the suburbs and small towns near. Questioned on this subject, a prisoner confessed--"I considered that in London and Liverpool, or such places as have got the new police, there is little to be done, unless it be picking pockets; people there think that they are safe under the eye of the new police, and will take large sums of money in their pockets." Another prisoner, in corroboration, said "The most important obstructions that could be placed in the way of depredations is a more efficient police similar to that in London and Liverpool--very few robberies in the centre of Liverpool,--all in the outskirts, out of the police districts." A second cause that contributed to the migration of both thieves and receivers to the provinces was the extension of the railway and canal systems, which, besides facilitating the rapid movement of plunderers from place to place, exposed quantities of valuable merchandise on truck and canal boat without protection. Merchants were indifferent to the fate of their goods when once a receipt had been obtained from the carriers; and they again, in common with the shipping agents, found it extremely difficult to put a stop to the petty thieving that went on, partly because the loss was generally undiscovered until the goods reached their destination (which as often as not was in a foreign country), and partly because the number of people through whose hands the property passed was so great, that the attempt to fix the responsibility on any individual would have been to incur a laborious and expensive system of checking and counter-checking that the value of the articles stolen did not seem to justify. Of all these petty thieves, the bargemen were the worst offenders, and the opportunities they met with, combined with the impunity they enjoyed, attracted many thieves to the calling; all over the country receivers of stolen property set up shop near the canals; burglars would bring their spoil by night to a pre-arranged rendezvous, and hand it over to the bargees, who took it aboard, concealed it under the cargo, and disposed of it at the fence's shop as occasion offered.