But what most surprises us is the appearance in the public prints for the past two or three years of numerous cases of suicide. This "self-slaughter" was a crime, we thought, confined to the older nations of Europe almost exclusively. The Americans are neither a despondent, an impoverished, nor a sentimental people; and yet we have been exceedingly pained to read of men well-to-do in the world, many of them being comfortable farmers and most of them advanced in years, deliberately taking that life which God gave them for wise and useful purposes, and voluntarily going before the judgment-seat of their Maker with the crime of murder on their souls. The policy of the old common law was to consider every suicide insane, but that was merely a fiction to save his goods from confiscation by the crown; we would fain believe that the numerous instances among ourselves were the result of aberration of mind--doubtless some of them were; but others have been planned and executed with such forethought as to preclude the possibility of such a supposition. As we write, we have before us a copy of a New York journal in which no less than four suicides of Americans in various parts of the country are recorded.[14] It has been debated whether the act of a suicide is, humanly speaking, one of courage or cowardice: we are inclined to the latter opinion, but the question is immaterial. Whatever be its character in that respect, it is sure to originate in the absence of any belief which affirms a hereafter, or in that morbid form of idiocy known as spiritualism, which runs into the other extreme. In either case, it can only be prevented by moral suasion, for the civil law is of course utterly powerless in the matter; yet of all known crimes it is the most seductive, and even might be called contagious. Let us now turn to another class of our people--the adopted citizens, and consider the peculiarities of their criminal classes. The largest proportion of our immigrant population is from Ireland, and, coming from a misgoverned and plundered land, many of them, indeed we think a large majority, are very poor indeed, so destitute that they have not means to bring them to the West, or into the rural districts, and consequently remain in the large cities for life. We have observed that deeds of violence committed by a certain class of Irish-Americans are disproportionately large, when compared with the native population or with those of other countries. We regret to be obliged to say so. We yield to none in our respect, nay affection, for the children of long-suffering and persecuted Ireland, but we would be untrue to ourselves and unjust to the bulk of our fellow-citizens of Irish birth were we to ignore or deny that but too many of them allow themselves to be led into the commission of acts of violence not unfrequently ending in deadly quarrel.