Whilst this want of control was the chief element of weakness, it was not the only fault of the system under consideration. For effectual action, responsibility should be centred if possible in the hands of one individual, or at all events not equally divided between a dozen or more participants; yet in counties where the system of superintending constables obtained, there was no uniformity or general plan, but the officer of each petty sessional division took his own line, and as long as he put in an appearance at the Sessions, and visited the various parishes of his district once a fortnight, no one interfered with him, or directed his method. It was the custom for the county to provide each superintending constable with a horse and cart, but, even with this convenience, the districts were frequently too large for any one man to supervise; in Kent, for example, a certain division contained as many as fifty-six different parishes, whilst in Northumberland the normal area of a single police district was about three hundred square miles. Despite its obvious defects, the system was popular: not on account of any hidden virtue which it may perhaps have possessed, but simply because the small initial outlay required to start it made it look cheap: opposition to the alternative system, on the other hand, though it assumed many garbs, had its root and origin in the false economy which hopes to avoid paying for the measure of security which it knows to be indispensable. The pioneer county, as far as stipendiary police is concerned, was Cheshire, where a paid constabulary was already ten years old when the Permissive Act was passed. At the time of the formation of the metropolitan police, Sir Robert Peel was anxious to make trial of a similar organization in the country. His efforts were successful in so far that he obtained the necessary parliamentary sanction[210] and induced the County Palatine of Chester to appoint an experimental force; once established, however, he was unable to exercise any control over its destinies, and the first rural police developed along lines never intended by its author.