The prostrate condition of English police under the parochial system should be sufficiently clear without the production of further evidence. What, however, is perhaps the most convincing proof, that could be found, of the utter futility and unseemliness of the police arrangements in rural districts, is contained in the following plain statement from the magistrates of the Trant division of Sussex, on the subject of the lack of proper lock-ups for the temporary detention of prisoners. "In case," they complain, "a prisoner is remanded for further examination, there is no efficient place nearer than Lewes (23 miles) ... there are cages in several parishes but never used being unsafe ... for twenty years we have been compelled to hire a man, and handcuff him to the prisoner, and they are obliged to live at a public house.... Two incendiaries were each locked to men hired for the purpose, and kept at a serious expense ten days, separately in different houses." Some sixty years ago a comic engraving was published, which portrayed a prisoner handcuffed to his gaoler, undergoing a mock trial in the taproom of an alehouse for the amusement of the village tipplers. Such an incident may well have happened, at a time when it was no uncommon occurrence for a constable to confine his prisoner in a stable, or to chain him to a bedpost, until it might be convenient to remove him to a distant lock-up. In concluding their comprehensive and interesting report, the Commissioners (Colonel Rowan, Mr Shaw Lefevre, and Mr Edwin Chadwick) strongly recommended the immediate establishment of a paid rural constabulary throughout England and Wales, with an organization similar to that of the Metropolitan police, and pointed out, that in order to lessen the expense of the proposed establishment, the new constables might conveniently perform various civil and administrative services, in addition to their normal duties connected with the maintenance of the peace. Shortly after the presentation of the report, an Act of Parliament, commonly called "The Permissive Act,"[206] was passed, enabling a majority of the Justices in Quarter Sessions, to raise and equip, at their discretion, a paid police for the protection of their county. Justices who decided to take advantage of the Act were empowered to appoint a chief-constable, and delegate to him the power of appointing, directing and disciplining a sufficient number of police constables, the expense of the force to be charged against the general county rate.[207] Adjoining shires were permitted to unite for the common purpose of policing the larger area; and if any county refused, as a whole, to avail itself of the facilities now afforded, any division of that county might maintain a separate police force; provision was also made for the voluntary amalgamation of existing borough forces with any country constabulary, that might thereafter be appointed in the immediate neighbourhood.