2 TlMEHRI. 
amount of crime. And this would be so if it were not 
that side by side with this advanced luxury and wealth 
there also springs up a philanthropic sentiment, a desire 
to mitigate and assuage the miseries of the poorer classes, 
a development of education, of self control, a feeling 
of responsibility and love of order, which more than 
counteracts the criminal opportunities above alluded to. 
It is in societies such as our own which are, as it were, 
in a transitional state, having a dark background of 
slavery and violence, an original substratum of con- 
victs and refugees from justice, besides an imported 
population of turbulent and unquiet spirits from both 
hemispheres, that we may expe6l to find the greatest 
development of the criminal tendency. 
It is said that every nation is differentiated in criminal 
statistics by its tendency to certain classes of crime. 
To any one studying the Criminal Records of this 
colony the truth of this statement is apparent. The 
Criminal Classes, as a rule, are drawn from the lowest 
and poorest section of the community. It is true that 
no one class has a monopoly of crime ; the Medical man 
does sometimes poison his wife ; the Clergyman at times 
embezzles the Church funds ; a Captain of Dragoons may 
commit suicide or a" Banker forgery, but Tooths of our 
criminals are drawn from the lowest stratum of society, 
and are the offspring of want, poverty, ignorance, and 
moral and material filth. All generalizations are dan- 
gerous, but still I think we may concede that murders 
and felonious assaults in this colony are mainly committed 
by East Indians and Chinese ; larcenies by black and 
coloured Creoles ; wounding with knives and razors 
principally by the Barbadian coloured people ; forgeries 
