The compulsory duty of serving as a constable, argued the middle-class, was not only unprofitable but a wicked waste of good time that might be devoted to objects that paid better; and so the system of deputy constable crept in. Hue and cry was all very well, they said, for the agriculturist or the villein; he could lay down his spade to join in the pursuit with little detriment to himself; but it was different in the case of the weaver or the merchant, the former could not afford to leave his loom nor the latter to lose a bargain; and so hue and cry fell into desuetude. When property cansisted only of timber, cattle, and land, difficult things for a thief to remove, little protection was demanded, but when valuable articles, all more or less portable, became common, and when many kinds of fraud, all more or less subtle, menaced both consumer and producer, a better guarantee for security was asked: and so the old-established trade-guilds adapted themselves to the changed conditions, and introduced new protective measures. These modifications must now be examined in more detail. It is doubtful at what date the custom first arose of discharging the office of constable by proxy, but certain it is that, in the Tudor period, instead of one headborough responsible to the Crown for the maintenance of the peace in Tything and Hundred, which, as we have seen, was anciently the system, we find two or more constables answerable to the Justices, nominally employed by the year, but practically as permanent deputies, performing duties delegated to them in parish and township, and their services paid for, not by the public at large, but by the individuals whose deputies they were. In some respects the change, which in all probability was a gradual one, contributed to the deterioration of the police administration, because unfortunately a very indifferent sort of man was almost invariably selected as deputy. Speaking of constables, Bacon says they are "of inferior, yea, of base condition, which is a mere abuse or degenerating from the first institution, for the petty constables in towns ought to be the better sort of residents in the same, save that they be not aged or sickly, but of able bodies in respect of their keeping watch and toil of their place"; and Blackstone says that considering the class of man that commonly acts as constable, it is just as well that he should remain in ignorance of the powers that are entrusted to him by law.