The Confidence Trick is perhaps the form of crime that would most naturally commend itself to the police banditti of New York. For the force was engaged all day long in playing a gigantic Confidence Trick upon the citizens. The gold brick which the swindlers sold to the credulous countryman was hardly more mythical than the enforcement of the law which was supposed to be secured by the organisation of the City police. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the police were hand-and-glove with the gang of swindlers which, under King McNally, carried on the Green Goods trade in the City of New York. It was one of the most lucrative of all the crimes which were carried on under police protection, and one of the safest. Few of all the stories told before the Lexow Committee display quite so unblushing a co-partnership between the law-breakers and the law officers as was revealed in this Green Goods swindle. The rascality of the rogues was so audacious that it provokes a laugh. For it is possible to carry impudence to a point where indignation is momentarily submerged by the sense of the ludicrous. Sheer amazement at the existence of such preposterous villains begets such a sense of its absurdity, that any censure seems as much out of place as in the nonsense tales of the nursery. Yet when the grotesque impression subsides, it is difficult to find terms strong enough to characterise this systematic misuse of the powers created for the protection of life and property and the due observance of the law for the purpose of facilitating fraud and of aiding and abetting and protecting swindling. The evidence taken before the Lexow Committee contains a mass of materials for an exhaustive description of the criminals of New York, and the various methods by which in 1894 they preyed upon the public; but the person who undertakes the compilation of such a work is not to be envied. The Report of the Committee is a very striking illustration of the wickedness of issuing books without indexes. Here we have five bulky volumes of evidence without even an index of the names of witnesses. There is no subject-index of any kind. Witnesses are called and recalled in bewildering confusion. Nevertheless, even the most cursory perusal of the evidence brings to light a great many interesting and extraordinary facts as to the organisation of the criminal classes of the city. Green Goods are forged or counterfeit bank notes. The pretence is either that there has been an over-issue of certain denominations of paper money by the Treasury, or that the plates have been stolen from the Government, and by this means it is possible to offer to sell ten dollars for one.