flooded, has been characterized by an increase of crime, and a general loosening of morals among the labouring classes, hitherto unprecedented in the country--certainly not equaled during the same period in any other European state, and, so far as we know, without an example in the previous history of mankind. Struck with astonishment at this extraordinary and painful phenomenon, and wholly at a loss to explain it on any of the principles to which they have been accustomed to give credit, the Liberals have generally endeavoured to deny its existence. They say that the returns of commitments do not afford a correct measure of the crime that really exists in the country; that a police force is now more generally established, and is incomparably more vigilant than heretofore; that crimes are classified in a different way from what they formerly were; and that though the figures do not err, yet the results to which they point are not the real ones. There is some truth in these observations. It is true that a police force is more extensively established, and is more efficient than it formerly was;--it is true that crimes are now differently classified, and enter different columns, and appear in different returns from what they formerly did;--it is true that there are specialties in the case;--but it is not true that those specialties tend to make the returns of crime appear greater than the reality; on the contrary, they all tend the other way. They show that the returns as now constructed, and the police force as it at present exists, do not by any means exhibit the growth of crime in its true colours; that it is in reality _incomparably greater_ than these returns or this agency has brought to light; and that, great as the evil appears from an examination of the Parliamentary returns, it is in truth far more colossal and alarming.