Sir Arthur Hastings, the newly appointed British envoy to France, once tactfully criticized his former subordinate: "The new police from various parties are all spying on directions, monitoring and informing on each other. Even when such informing is done out of belief and with the best motives, not for money, informing remains informing. In fact, I would prefer informants to do so out of motives of money and carnal desires, because taking pride in informing is a highly dangerous trend. Although this greatly expands intelligence sources, from a long-term perspective, the paltry immediate gains do not outweigh the damage to the purity of the police system and the corrosion of good social customs..."
—Alexander Herzen, 1850 in Paris
Ordinary people would probably find it hard to believe that such a group's young men, who were recently imprisoned in jails and barracks, could view their fate so optimistically.
