The confusion resulting from this patchwork arrangement was put an end to by the second great Rural Police Act, passed in 1856, "to render more effectual the police in Counties and Boroughs in England and Wales." This measure, commonly called the "Obligatory Act," enacted that where a Constabulary had not already been appointed for the whole of a County, the magistrates were forthwith to cause such a force to be appointed for the whole or residue of that County, as the case might be; and further, that the police forces of all Boroughs containing five thousand inhabitants or less were to be consolidated with the police of the County wherein such Boroughs might be situated. An annual statement respecting crime in Counties was required to be transmitted by the magistrates (a similar statement for Boroughs to be rendered by the Watch Committees), to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in order that an abstract of the same might be presented to Parliament. Provision was also made for the appointment of Inspectors of Constabulary, with authority to visit and enquire into the state and general efficiency of the police in the several Counties and Boroughs, and to report thereon to the Secretary of State. On a certificate from the Home Secretary that the police force of any County or Borough was efficient, a sum not exceeding one-fourth part of the total cost of pay and clothing for such police force was to be paid by the Treasury.[215] The effect of this Statute was, for the first time, to provide every part of England and Wales with stipendiary police, thus completing the process which had been initiated at Bow Street more than a hundred years before. The Metropolitan Police Act, the Municipal Corporations Act, and the Permissive Act, valuable and indeed indispensable as they undoubtedly were, had been effective only in certain districts: delinquents, whom the activity of the metropolitan police had driven out of London, found a home in other large towns; a second migration followed when the Boroughs got their police; and yet a third took place, as we have seen, after the partial introduction of rural constabularies. If it is true that the degree of impunity looked for has more to do with the amount of delinquency prevailing than the want of life's necessaries, or any other factor, it is not a matter for surprise that a large army of vagrant thieves continued to ply their trade as long as there remained twenty counties and scores of small towns where no interference with their illegal pursuits was to be anticipated, and to which they might return after a successful raid to safely dispose of their plunder.