I mention these two cases, out of not a few with which I am acquainted, as illustrating in some measure the very different systems on which the detectives of England and France do their work. In the latter country, as in every other country in Europe, London is regarded by the dangerous classes as the happy hunting-ground of thieves and rogues of all kinds. I am fully aware that many Englishmen would regard the French detective mode of working as underhand and mean, and object to what they would term any underhand work of the kind. But surely when a question of such magnitude as the detection of crime is mooted, the authorities ought not to be guided by what is merely a matter of sentiment. Murderers, burglars, thieves, swindlers, and all other evil-doers, do not hesitate to use the most effectual means at their command in order to insure success to themselves. Why, then, should we do so? Crime of every kind is getting daily more and more clever and scientific in its working; why should we not avail ourselves of every possible advantage which the perpetrators of crime can command? One thing is very certain, that unless we take a new departure in the manner we attempt to detect crime, the dangerous classes will very soon have everything their own way. As a French police agent once told me, every crime that is undiscovered serves as an incentive for a dozen more of the same kind. With respect to the very strong dislike which some persons have to anything in the shape of a secret police—or rather to disguised agents of the police acting as spies in the camp of the dangerous classes—it ought not to be forgotten that the same prejudice existed half a century ago against the ‘new police,’ or the ‘Peelers’ as they were called, being substituted for the watchmen or ‘Charlies’ of our grandfathers’ days. If the authorities are wise enough to constitute and maintain a really efficient system of secret police agents in the place of what we now call ‘plain-clothes officers,’ the result will be much the same as was the substitution of a regular metropolitan police in place of the old watchmen. But if this greatly called-for change is delayed much longer, we shall see the criminal classes gaining in strength every year, until it will become as difficult to get the mastery over them as is the case in some of the Western States in America. A secret police, or rather, a number of secret agents of the police, organised on the French system, is what we must institute ere long, and the sooner it is taken in hand the better. Those who require their services do not hesitate to employ ‘Private Inquiry Offices’ and other similar establishments; why should the government decline to entertain the idea of such an agency as is here advocated? If any man of influence and authority in the land could be present at a ‘business’ meeting of English, French, and a few German thieves in some of the lowest haunts of ‘Foreign London,’ an efficient system of secret