One of the chief embarrassments, after the inefficiency of the constabulary, which hampered the action of the authorities, and made the suppression of crime more difficult, was the popularity that the more notorious thieves enjoyed amongst a large section of the people; the sympathy, felt and expressed, for highwaymen of the Claude Duval type was widespread, and arose from a variety of sentiments. The mass of the people, who never suffered in their own pockets, were not altogether averse to seeing the rich plundered occasionally, especially as it was the policy of the robbers to be free and open-handed with a part of their booty. Another class of people who were well-disposed towards the highwaymen, gave their sympathy as a misdirected kind of protest against the severity of the law; and the "gentlemen of the road," as they were called, quick to perceive the advantage that this popularity, from whatever source arising, gave them--sometimes, but not often--performed quite gentlemanly actions, in order to enhance and to advertise their reputation for good deeds. The Abbé le Blanc, who spent some years in England early in the eighteenth century, declared that he frequently met Englishmen who were as proud of the exploits of their highwaymen as they were of the bravery of their soldiers, and in a letter to de Buffon he writes: "It is usual, in travelling, to put ten or a dozen guineas in a separate pocket, as a tribute to the first that comes to demand them," and adds that, "... about fifteen years ago, these robbers, with a view to maintaining their rights, fixed up papers at the doors of rich people about London, expressly forbidding all persons, of whatever quality or condition, from going out of town without ten guineas and a watch about them, under pain of death. In bad times, when there is little or nothing to be got on the roads, these fellows assemble in gangs, to raise contributions even in London itself; and the watchmen seldom trouble themselves to interfere with them in their vocation."[142] Without attaching too much importance to the statements of this foreign critic, it must be confessed that at no time in our history have the arrangements for maintaining the peace sunk to so low an ebb as when thief-takers like Jonathan Wild were officially recognised and allowed to co-operate with the constitutional police forces, and at no time has the flood of lawlessness reached such a height as when highwaymen and footpads dictated their own terms to all who made bold to use the King's Highway. Yet the Government took no steps towards organizing an adequate defence, and utterly failed to provide any counterpoise to the criminal tendencies of the age; it was left to private enterprise to carry out the duties, or some of them, that Parliament neglected to perform. In 1696 a "Society for the reformation of manners in the cities of London and Westminster" was formed, and in 1702 was