To illustrate the strength of this resistance, and the important bearing it has upon the present question, we shall refer only to two instances--one in England, and one in Scotland. It is well known what a scene of confusion and disorder South Wales has for years past been. The bloodshed at Merthyr-Tydvil, the strikes in Glamorganshire, the attack on Newport, and the Rebecca riots, had for a series of years fixed the attention of all parts of the empire upon this, as one of the most inflammable and dangerous portions of the community. Nor did these disorders appear surprising to those who were practically acquainted with the state of the country, overrun as it is in many places by vast iron-works, which have brought together a great and reckless population, and inhabited in all by a discontented and ill-instructed peasantry. Population had advanced with unexampled rapidity--having increased, from 1831 to 1841, _thirty-six and a tenth_ per cent in Monmouthshire; the greatest increase during the same period of any county in the British empire.[3] Here then, if anywhere, it might have been expected that a general feeling of insecurity, the sense of an overbearing necessity, would have overcome the general repugnance of men towards local assessment, and led to the establishment of a police force in all the counties of South Wales, on a scale adequate to the magnitude of the danger with which they were threatened. Was it so? Had the counties taken the requisite steps to avoid the calamity? Quite the reverse; the aversion to a police assessment was so strong, that nothing whatever had been done. Glamorganshire had only established one on a small scale, after repeated and earnest efforts on the part of its able and public-spirited lord-lieutenant, the Marquis of Bute; and the Rebecca riots surprised the adjoining counties without any preparation whatever. And even after those disgraceful disorders had continued several weeks, and rendered South Wales the scandal of the empire, and the astonishment of Europe; still the repugnance to assessment was such, that it was only after a severe struggle, and by no small exertions, that it was at length carried; and the public-spirited member for the county, who to his infinite credit brought forward the measure, stated at the county meeting on the subject, that he was aware he endangered his seat by so doing!