If the guardianship of the City of London was better
than that of outer London it was still far from perfect. Thieving on the Thames caused the river to be carefully guarded earlier than the streets. Peel came to the con- clusion that there must be an end to the appointing of the guardians of the streets by a multitude of unrelated local authorities. He went straight to the heart of the matter by making his Metropolitan Police a civil force under the Home Secretary. The top-hats of the " Peelers " proved at a glance that they were not soldiers. They were hated and derided at first, but they won their way to trust and prestige. The streets of London became, in a very short time, reasonably safe and orderly. "Nothing could be more respectable than the police," wrote the Duke of Wellington. And he, with Peel shares the credit for having brought them into being. The City of London still has the right, which Peel left untouched, of appointing its own police, but the standard of the Metropolitan Police is the standard not only there but all over the country—the standard, too, not only for Great Britain, but for foreign countries, who, send their representatives here to learn "how it is done."
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