I am currently in the United States, where over the past few months there have been numerous protests against police brutality (that have then been met with even more police brutality...), which have called for defunding the police. Given the US's relative lack of social programs, things that would be better handled by mental health, social workers, etc. fall under the police's umbrella, and they tend to overreact, armed to the teeth as they are with military surplus equipment, with violence and force, even though, I would argue, their main duty should be to preserve the lives of the people in their districts, especially those who may or may not be guilty of a crime. I thought it might be interesting, given these recent debates, to see how the police were viewed over a hundred years ago.
In Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, police doesn't necessarily refer to a specific body of people, but includes generally "the regulation and government of a city or country, so far as regards the inhabitants".
Johnson notes that the word police comes from the French; the beginning of the 11th edition Encyclopædia Britannica article on the subject notes that the "word was adopted in English in the 18th century and was disliked as a symbol of foreign oppression". The article on police can be found in volume 21, spanning across pages 978 through 981. It is interesting to see how often abuses of power or the employment of the police as an oppressive force against the citizenship is mentioned. Here are some choice excerpts:
A French king, Charles V., is said to have been the first to invent a police, 'to increase the happiness and security of his people.' It developed into an engine of horrible oppression, and as such was repugnant to the feelings of a free people.
[...]
The state of London at that date [~1770], and indeed of the whole country at large, was deplorable. Crime was rampant, highwaymen terrorized the roads, footpads infested the streets, burglaries were of constant occurrence, river thieves on the Thames committed depredations wholesale. The watchmen appointed by parishes were useless, inadequate, inefficient and untrustworthy, acting often as accessories in aiding and abetting crime. Year after year the shortcomings and defects were emphasized and some better means of protection were constantly advocated. [...] The crying need for reform and the introduction of a proper police was admitted by the government in 1829, when Sir Robert Peel laid the foundation of a better system. Much opposition was offered to the scheme, which was denounced as an insidious attempt to enslave the people by arbitrary and tyrannical methods. The police were to be employed, it was said, as the instruments of a new despotism, the enlisted members of a new standing army, under the centralized authority, riding roughshod over the peaceable citizens. But the guardians of order, under the judicious guidance of such sensible chiefs as Colonel Rowan and Sir Henry Maine, soon lived down the hostility first exhibited, and although one serious and lamentable collision occurred between the mob and the police in 1833, it was agreed two years later that the new police was rapidly diminishing, and that it had fully answered the purpose for which it was formed.
[...]
The aim and object of the police force remain the same as when first created, but its functions have been varied and extended in scope and intention. To secure obedience to the law is a first and principal duty; to deal with breaches of the rules made by authority, to detect, pursue and arrest offenders. Next comes the preservation of order, the protection of all reputable people, and the maintenance of public peace by checking riot and disturbance or noisy demonstration, by enforcing the observance of the thousand and one regulations laid down for the general good. The police have become the ministers of a social despotism resolute in its watchful care and control of the whole community, well-meaning and paternal, although when carried to extreme length the tendency is to diminish self-reliance and independence in the individual. The police are necessarily in close relation with the state; they are the direct representatives of the supreme government, the servants of the Crown and legislature. In England every constable when he joins the force makes a declaration and swears that he will serve the sovereign loyally and diligently, and so acquires the rights and privileges of a peace officer of and for the crown. The state employs police solely in the interests of the public welfare. No sort of espionage is attempted, no effort made to penetrate privacy; no claim to pry into the secret actions of law-abiding persons is or would be tolerated; the agents of authority must not seek information by underhand or unworthy means. In other countries the police system has been worked more arbitrarily; it has been used to check free speech, to interfere with the right of public meetings, and condemn the expression of opinion hostile to or critical of the ruling powers. An all-powerful police, minutely organized, has in some foreign states grown into a terrible engine of oppression and made daily life nearly intolerable. In England the people are free to assemble as they please, to march in procession through the streets, to gather in open spaces, to listen to the harangues, often forcibly expressed, of mob orators, provided always that no obstruction is caused or that no disorder or breach of the peace is threatened.
[...]
France. — It is a matter of history that under Louis XIV., who created the police in Paris, and in succeeding times, the most unpopular and unjustifiable use was made of police as a secret instrument for the purposes of despotic government. Napoleon availed himself largely of police instruments, especially through his minister Fouché. On the restoration of constitutional government under Louis Philippe, police action was less dangerous, bu the danger revived under the second empire. [...] The regular police organization, which preserves order, checks evil-doing, and 'runs-in' malefactors, falls naturally and broadly into two grand divisions, the administrative and the active, the police 'in the office' and the police 'out of doors.' The first attends to the clerical business, voluminous and incessant. An army of clerks in the numerous bureaus, hundreds of patient government employés, the ronds de cuir, as they are contemptuously called, because they sit for choice on round leather cushions, are engaged constantly writing and filling in forms for hours and hours, day after day. The active army of police out of doors, which constitutes the second half of the whole machine, is divided into two classes: that in uniform and that in plain clothes. Every visitor to Paris is familiar with the rather theatrical-looking policeman, in his short frock-coat or cape, smart képi cocked on one side of his head, and with a sword by his side.
[...]
Russia was till lately the most police-ridden country in the world; not even in France in the worst days of the monarchy were the people so much in the hands of the police. To give some idea of the wide-reaching functions of the police the power assumed in matters momentous and quite insignificant, we may quote from the list of circulars issued by the minister of the interior to the governors of the various provinces during four recent years. The governors were directed to regulate religious instruction in secular schools, to prevent horse-stealing, to control subscriptions collected for the holy places in Palestine, to regulate the advertisements of medicines and the printing on cigarette papers, to examine the quality of quinine soap and overlook the cosmetics and other toilet articles — such as soap, starch, brillantine, tooth-brushes and insect-powder — provided by chemists. They were to issue regulations for the proper construction of houses and villages, to exercise an active censorship over published price-lists and printed notes of invitation and visiting cards, as well as seals and rubber stamps. All private meetings and public gatherings, with the expressions of opinion and the class of subjects discussed, were to be controlled by the police.