age, there are nearly one-third more murders annually than in the
United Kingdom. On what ground is this considerable increase of
homicide to be accounted for, except on the ground of climate? The
higher percentage is not caused by difference of race; it is not
caused by worse economic conditions--these conditions are much
superior to our own--the meaning of the figures is not obscured by any
material differences of legal procedure or legal nomenclature. It
cannot be urged that the Victorian population are the dregs of the
home population; the very opposite is the fact. The bad characters who
emigrate are the only disturbing element; but, after all, these men
are not so numerous, and the evil effects of their presence is
counterbalanced by the superiority of the average colonist to the
average citizen who remains at home. It may be said that there is
greater difficulty in detecting crime in a new colony than in an old
and settled country. As applied to some colonies it is possible this
objection may be sound, but, as applied to Victoria, it will not hold
good. In Victoria the police are much more effective than they are at
home, and a criminal has much less chance of going unpunished there
than he has in England. In Victoria in the year 1887, out of a total
of 40,693 cases reported to the police, 34,473 were brought up for
trial. In England, on the other hand, out of a total of 42,391
indictable offences reported to the police in 1886-7, only 19,045
persons were apprehended. The Victorian figures include offences of
all kinds, petty as well as indictable, whereas the English figures
deal with indictable offences only. But admitting this, and admitting
that it is more difficult to arrest indictable offenders, this
difficulty is not so great as to explain away the vast difference in
the numbers apprehended in Victoria as compared with the numbers
apprehended in England. Only one conclusion can be drawn from these
figures, and it is that the Victorian constabulary are more efficient
than our own, and that it is a more dangerous thing for a person to
break the law in the young colony of Victoria than in the old
community at home.

It seems to me that the points of comparison between the United
Kingdom and Victoria, in so far as they have any bearing upon crime,
have now been exhausted; on almost every one of these points Victoria
stands in a more favourable position than ourselves. The colony has,
on the whole, a better k