Our Criminal Classes. 
and embezzlements by partly educated coloured Creoles ; 
breaches of the revenue laws and cheating by Portuguese ; 
whereas perjury, bearing false witness, profane swearing 
and indecent language seem pretty evenly distributed 
amongst all classes of the community. 
The amount of crime in this colony is something 
appalling. Taking the population at 270,000 I do not 
hesitate to say that the amount of detected crime is at 
least three times more than what is found in a popula- 
tion of a similar extent in Europe. In 1885, 2319 persons 
were committed to gaol after conviction, the population 
being estimated at 270,042 which gives us 1.97 per cent, 
of the population committed in one year. Now if we 
turn to the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales 
for the year 1886, we find that out of an estimated popu- 
lation of 27,870,586 the number of persons committed to 
prison for indictable offences and under summary con- 
viction amounted to 179,324 or only .64 per cent, of the 
population. 
The causes of this are not far to seek nor difficult to 
explain. In the first place our population is principally 
recruited by immigration, and our immigrants both from 
the East Indies, the West Indian Islands and China, are 
not the most quiet orderly and industrious of the popu- 
lation of those countries respectively. Secondly we 
have the inherited curse of slavery making our black 
population untruthful and dishonest ; in addition an 
inflaming temperature and a national drink of a highly 
intoxicating and noxious nature. One prevailing cause 
of crime amongst our East Indian immigrants is the 
scarcity of women, causing jealousy, assaults, and fre- 
quently murders to arise. An Indian kills his wife 
A 2 
