THE INGRAINED love of personal liberty inherent in the British people and their distrust in giving additional power to their governments made Great Britain one of the slowest countries in the world to institute police. Jurists were far in advance of public opinion. Jeremy Bentham (1747–1832) considered police necessary as a method of precaution to prevent crimes and calamities as well as to correct and cure them. Blackstone in his Commentaries (1765) wrote, «By public police and economy I mean the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behaviour to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners; to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations.
