How is a police force established in any part of Great Britain? If we except the metropolis, where the vast concourse from all parts of the empire unavoidably forced upon government, fourteen years ago, the establishment of a central police, since found to be attended with such admirable effects, it is every where set on foot by the _voluntary act_ of the inhabitants, or a certain portion of them, in a peculiar manner cognizant of the necessity which exists for such an addition to the means of public defence. In boroughs, it is generally the magistrates, elected by a suffrage little superior to household suffrage, who introduce such a measure. In counties, it can only be proposed by the justices of peace in England, or commissioners of supply in Scotland--both of which bodies are thoroughly imbued with, and fairly represent, the general voice of the community. In all cases, whether in the metropolis or in the provinces, a police imposes _an immediate and heavy burden on all householders_. In London L40,000 a-year is given by government to aid in the support of the police; but the whole remainder of the cost, amounting to four times as much, falls on the ratepayers. In the provinces the whole cost of every police force falls on the householders; and our readers need not be told how heavy it sometimes is, and how universally it is every where complained of. Now, if there is any one peculiarity more than another by which this generation is distinguished, it is aversion to assessment. People may differ in other respects as to the designation by which the age should be characterized; but we believe all will agree that it is a _tax-hating age_. What did this nation first do on being liberated from danger by the battle of Waterloo? Throw off the income-tax. What alone induced them to submit to it again on the modified scale of three per cent? The disasters in Affghanistan; the perils of our Indian empire; the rocking of Britain to its foundation. When therefore, in such a country and in such an age, we see numerous bodies of men--popularly elected in some cases, in all swayed by the popular voice--concurring, in a great many places, in the taxation of themselves for the establishment of a police, we may rely upon it that some very general and grinding sense of necessity has been at work to produce the effect. Nothing but this could overcome, in men really and practically invested in this particular with the power of self-government, the universal and almost invincible repugnance to assessments. Rely upon it, for every crime which is brought to light, and made the subject of commitment and trial by the institution of a police force, ten previously existed, undetected and unpunished, before men were driven to the _flebile remedium_, the _ultimum malum_, of taxing themselves for the establishment of a force to repress them.