Now, what are the causes of the remarkable difference between this city and England in extent of crime? England has its immense cities, abounding with ignorant and vicious classes of population--it has its London, its Liverpool, its Birmingham, its Manchester and its Leeds, and yet this single city of New York, if we may trust official tables, exceeds not only each of them in crime, but all put together! It cannot be ascribed to any peculiar character of our people, distinct from theirs--for it is notorious that the greater part of our criminality springs from the foreign element of our population. Of the seven murderers above specified, for instance, six of them were foreigners--one being a German, three Irish, one English, and one a Nova Scotian; and the seventh, though born in this city, was of Irish parentage. The same people that chiefly commit the crime here, are found in vast numbers in every English city. Why, then, the difference in the extent of that crime? This question does not admit of either a ready or a brief answer. The causes which produce this result are various and complex, some of which we may consider hereafter. The most important of them are, doubtless, the comparative inefficiency of our police in preventing crime, the comparative uncertainty of our courts in punishing crime, the neglect of our young vagrant population, and the vast number of disorderly groggeries, licensed and unlicensed, that have all the while, without restraint, been stimulating the passions and bad propensities of all the lower classes of our population. It is time that these matters should be seriously and earnestly looked at and cared for. Our streams of crime are increasing into torrents, and they threaten to overwhelm us. The facts we have given, startling as they are, cannot be denied. Official documents prove them. Read and ponder! It will be observed that four distinct causes are here assigned for the difference in the extent of crime in New York and in English cities. Of them all, we have had something to say at various times. The first we discussed at some length in a former number,[2] and pointed out a few of the disadvantages to which the best police system must be subject under institutions like ours. Upon the second of these alleged causes we had prepared the article in our present number before seeing the observations of the New York paper. Scarcely a number of our Journal has been without some call to more concern for our vagrant juvenile population. So that our readers will not find any thing startling in the revolting statement we have copied, unless it be the striking proximity of cause and effect. [2] See Journal for January, 1853, Art. III.