In truth, so far from its being the case that crime is now better looked after, and therefore more frequently brought to light than formerly, and that it is that which swells our criminal returns, the fact is directly the reverse. So weak, feeble, and disjointed, are the efforts of our various multiform and unconnected police establishments over the country generally,[8] that we assert, without the fear of contradiction by any person practically acquainted with the subject, that the amount of undetected and unpunished crime is rapidly on the increase, and is now greater than it was in any former period. We would recommend any person who doubts this statement, to go to any of the criminal establishments in the country, and compare the list of informations of serious crimes lodged with those of offenders committed; he will find the latter are scarcely ever so much as a third of the former. These facts do not appear in the criminal returns, because they are not called for; and the police-officers are in no hurry to publish facts which proclaim the insufficiency of the means of repressing crime at their disposal. But occasionally, and under the pressure of immediate danger, or a strong sense of duty on the part of the public functionaries, they do come out. For example, it was stated by Mr Millar, the head of the Glasgow police, (a most able and active officer,) in a letter read at the county meeting of Lanarkshire on 21st January 1843, on the subject of a police for the rural district of that and the adjoining counties, that in the three months immediately preceding that date, _ninety-one_ cases of theft, chiefly by housebreaking, had been reported at the Glasgow police-office, committed in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, but beyond the police bounds; and that from his own information, and that of the other officers of his establishment, this number, great as it was, was not _a third_ of the crimes of that description which had actually been committed during that period. On the other hand, it was stated by the sheriff of the county at the same meeting, that in only fourteen of these ninety-one cases had any trace whatever been got of the delinquents. In other words, the number of instances in which any clue was obtained to the criminals was only fourteen out of 273, or _one in twenty nearly_. And yet this miserable driblet of one in twenty, exhibits in the criminal returns for Lanarkshire an increase of 75 _per cent_ in seven years, or a duplication in ten. This instance, to which hundreds of others might be added from all parts of the country, shows how extreme is the illusion of those who lay the flattering unction to their souls, that serious crime is not now more prevalent than it was formerly, but only better brought to light.