et Gangs,"
the young burglars and murderers, the garroters and rioters, the thieves
and flash-men, the "repeaters" and ruffians, so well known to all who
know this metropolis.

THE DANGERS.

It has been common, since the recent terrible Communistic outbreak in
Paris, to assume that France alone is exposed to such horrors; but, in
the judgment of one who has been familiar with our "dangerous classes"
for twenty years, there are just the same explosive social elements
beneath the surface of New York as of Paris.

There are thousands on thousands in New York who have no assignable
home, and "flit" from attic to attic, and cellar to cellar; there are
other thousands more or less connected with criminal enterprises; and
still other tens of thousands, poor, hard-pressed, and depending for
daily bread on the day's earnings, swarming in tenement-houses, who
behold the gilded rewards of toil all about them, but are never
permitted to touch them.

All these great masses of destitute, miserable, and criminal persons
believe that for ages the rich have had all the good things of life,
while to them have been left the evil things. Capital to them is the
tyrant.

Let but Law lift its hand from them for a season, or let the civilizing
influences of American life fail to reach them, and, if the opportunity
offered, we should see an explosion from this class which might leave
this city in ashes and blood.

To those incredulous of this, we would recall the scenes in our streets
during the riots in 1863, when, for a short period, the guardians of
good order--the local militia--had been withdrawn for national purposes,
and when the ignorant masses were excited by dread of the draft.

Who will ever forget the marvelous rapidity with which the better
streets were filled with a ruffianly and desperate multitude, such as in
ordinary times we seldom see--creatures who seemed to have crept from
their burrows and dens to join in the plunder of the city--how quickly
certain houses were marked out for sacking and ruin, and what wild and
brutal crimes were committed on the unoffending negroes? It will be
recalled, too, how much _women_ figured in these horrible scenes, as
they did in the Communistic outbreak in Paris. It was evident to all
careful observers then, that had another day of license been given the
crowd, the attack would have been directed at the apparent wealth of the
city--the banks, jewelers' shop