times, and that the government might be sure of support for its bad as well as its good measures when they appeared to be directed towards the doing of rough justice on individuals whose presence was felt to be a common danger. It could be assumed that the means adopted for this purpose would not be too closely scrutinised. Government was from necessity a fighting machine. But it was a machine so ill adapted for fighting that its action, far from attaining to mechanical precision and gravity, was coarse, spasmodic, questionable, and was driven to atone for want of ease and regularity by displaying an excess of often ill-directed energy. The means ready to the hand of the administration were scanty. Without an army, without police, without detectives, the order maintained in the country practically depended upon the goodwill of the upper and middle classes. The police of the kingdom consisted of watchmen in the cities and boroughs; in the country, of parish constables. Both were notoriously inefficient. The type of watchmen with which Londoners were familiar in the opening years of the seventeenth century is sufficiently known from the character of Dogberry. About the same time the parish constables were distinguished for being “often absent from their houses, being for the most part husbandmen, and so most of the day in the fields.”[456] As late as 1796 the watchmen of London were recruited by the various authorities from “such aged and often superannuated men living in their respective districts as may offer their services,” and were recognised to be feeble, half-starved, lacking the least hope of reward or stimulus to activity.[457] Without an excessive strain on the imagination it may be conjectured that in the intervening period the police system did not rise to a high pitch of perfection. In the capital the king’s guards and the city trained bands were available forces, but in the provinces the only body on which reliance could be placed for the execution of justice was formed by the sheriff’s officers or in the last resort the cumbrous militia. Even the militia could not be maintained under arms for more than twelve days in the year, for although the force of any county might be kept on foot for a longer period by the king’s special direction, the Lord Lieutenant had no power to raise money with which to pay the men.[458] The only practicable instrument of government for the defence of the state was the judicial system of the country. As there was no method known for the prevention of crime by an organised force of police, and no deterrent exerted on would-be criminals by the existence of a standing body of soldiery, the only possible weapon to be used against them was to be found in the law courts. It followed that the judges and justices of the peace not only fulfilled the judicial and magisterial functions which are known to modern times, but constituted as well an active arm of the administration.