The ministry are unpopular, as they deserve to be; the police are unpopular and we should despair of the spirit of Englishmen if an establishment so repugnant to the fundamental principle of the Constitution, were not unpopular.

In the King's speech, which created so unfavourable an impression. His Majesty was made to say"I am determined to exert to the utmost of my power all the means which the law and the constitution have placed at my disposal for the punishment of sedition and for the prompt suppression of outrage and disorder."

Here is a specimen of the inflammatory placards distributed at this period :

Liberty or death! Englishmen! Britons!! and Honest Men!!! The time has at length arrived. All London meets on Tuesday. Come Armed! We assure you from ocular demonstration that 6,000 cutlasses have been removed from the Tower for the use of Peel's Bloody Gang. Remember the cursed speech from the Throne! These damned police are now to be armed. Englishmen, will you put up with this?

In truth, the state of the country called for firm handling. Scarcely a night passed in the Home Counties without some daring act of incendiarism. In Norfolk agricultural machinery such as threshing machines were wantonly destroyed. In Carlisle the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were burned in effigy; and yet, there was a marked division of opinion about the police. On December 11, an attempt was made to murder Superintendent Thomas, who was stabbed by a man in the dress of a waterman and was saved by the accident that one of his waistcoats was double-folded. Two nights later a constable on duty at Millwall was met by four sailors who seized him and dropped him into the Thames, twelve feet below. The tide was out; he fell into the mud, striking his head against the gunwale of a boat and cutting his right cheek. The men made off unrecognized.

On December 14, Sir Robert Peel presented petitions from Hampstead and Deptford, praying that the new police might not be withdrawn; a day later a petition from St. Mary's, Lambeth, prayed Parliament to repeal the Metropolitan Police Act, These conflicting petitions became common. Opposition journals such as the Standard suggested a middle course— that the true remedy" for the unpopularity of the police and its insufficiency would be to take it out of the hands of the government— to restore the appointment and direction of the officers to the magistracy or the parochial authorities, or, if it seems better, to extend the organization to district boards appointed by the householders."

But, as we learn from a large number of meetings and petitions, the real grievance against the police was its expense. The police rate in the first year was considerably higher than had been estimated when the Act was passed— much higher in fact than the rate for the old, inefficient watchmen. There is something very modern in the attitude of householders in the suburbs of London, who sat up day and night at their windows to count how many times a policeman passed them. It did not occur to them that the very fact of the existence of the force had so intimidated robbers that they kept away and therefore more frequent visits were unnecessary. All they could see was the increase in their rates and some of the petit