Night Watch to Police, 1811-28 111war; the national debt reached £902 million by 1816.^41 Public pressure for
cost-cutting and reduced taxes began before the fighting ended and with
peace became overwhelming.^42 In 1813, the Monthly Repository demanded
peace 'for the relief of those privations and burdens which now oppress
every class in the community, including the poor and middle classes'.^43
In February 1815, Prime Minister Lord liverpool warned Foreign Secretary
Lord Castlereagh: 'Many of our best friends think of nothing but the reduc-
tion of taxes and war establishments.'^44 The most visible sign of taxpayer
backlash was the successful campaign in 1816 to repeal the income tax. It
had been instituted in 1799 and the government had hoped to retain it
into peacetime, to help offset the huge national debt. However, the tax
was seen as a wartime expedient and there was considerable public and
Parliamentary pressure for repeal now that the war was over. The govern-
ment lost the vote to continue the income tax by 40 votes, a margin that
surprised even the opposition.^45
The cry for retrenchment also represented the continuation of the move-
ment for economical reform that dated to the 1780s.^46 Much of what opposi-
tion Whigs and Radicals called 'Old Corruption' had been pared away but
attacks on sinecures and pensions continued to find favour with backbench-
ers.47 Lord Camden reminded the Duke of Wellington in 1830 that Lord
liverpool had experienced great difficulty on this issue: 'The Opposition
always knew that questions of economy and of abolition of offices were those
on which they could command the largest divisions. They did not, therefore,
fail to urge them ... .'^48 However, the government relied on grants and
pensions to help supplement the salaries of civil seiVants and feared further
retrenchment would cut too deep into the actual machinery of administra-
tion. Lord Camden also lamented that the government had been forced to
abolish 'so many offices both in England and Ireland as renders it scarcely
possible at present for any description of men to carry on advantageously the
King's service'. Lord Liverpool's administration was forced to walk a fine line
between fressures to retrench and to provide sufficient funds to govern the
country.^4
The pressure to cut taxes and the campaign against 'corruption,' discour-
aged the creation of a centralized police force. The conclusions of Henry
Grey Bennett's Police Committee in 1818 indicate Parliament's reluctance to
support such an extensive reform. Given the weakness of the Liverpool
government's support in the House of Commons in the immediate post-
war years, it would have been surprising if it had pursued a controversial step
that could have been attacked as too costly and too open to government
patronage. 5° This did not mean that the issue of police reform, especially the
movement towards greater professionalization, was dropped entirely from
the Home Office agenda.