6 Before the Bobbieswas 'a resource on which they (local communities] drew in trying to resolve
problems which they could not settle locally'.U Parliament was an arena in
which local conflicts could be fought out and local initiatives given the force
of law. Local resources and personnel were likewise at the disposal of the
King's ministers, to a certain extent. Thus the state was strengthened by
being what Michael Braddick calls 'collective social power'.^14 However, as
the problem of crime in London became seen as increasingly complex and
law enforcement in the capital more than a local concern, the central
government's role adapted, as did that of local authorities. In the end, the
establishment of the Metropolitan Police was not merely the appropriation
of power by the central government from the local. What happened in 1829
in London was that local officials helped transfer power to the centre,
becoming consumers of a government service instead of providers. This
was the result of a dynamic process of change at both levels of government,
influenced by the intellectual, social, and economic context, that redefined
what policing was, how it should it be done, and by whom. In his influential
study The Sinews of Power, John Brewer has demonstrated how effective the
eighteenth-century state was at raising and equipping its military forces.^15
The British state could also police its largest city because the state included
vestrymen and paving commissioners as well as ministers and members of
Parliament. The bureaucratic state of the nineteenth century developed out
of the dynamic relationship between all these men and the institutions they
fashioned together over time.