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the morals of its people as its best prop. What maybe found easy and practicable in the yet infant stateof society, may become difficult, and perhaps impossi-ble, when evil habits descend from generation to generation, until at length it becomes too gigantic forhuman exertion. Comparatively speaking, the countryis yet virtuous. To permit it to retrograde, as itbecomes more wealthy and more populous, by an inattention to the general progress of evil habits,would be to entail upon posterity an excessivecalamity. The task is certainly not difficult atpresent, since in the country there is little to fear, and hence it would seem, that the energy of police wouldonly be necessary in the great towns, checking andrestraining those propensities, which lead to the cor-ruption of morals. Nor ought it to be forgotten, thatan indulgence in many propensities, which half acentury ago were divested of their evil consequences,from the then infant state of society, became noxiousas population increases. It is then drunkenness,gaming, lewdness, and other offences, leading to thecorruption of morals, acquire their sting. They pro-mote idleness; while want of employment, wherelabour is necessary for subsistence, is the never failinginroad to crimes. I am induced to enlarge upon this subject, fromthe facts you have disclosed, relative to the criminaloffences committed in the city of New York. Theyappear to me to be of a magnitude to excite a con-siderable degree of alarm with respect to the increaseof criminality in the American towns; inasmuch asit would appear that they greatly exceed the number of larcenies and misdemeanours, committed in townsin Great Britain, of an equal or even a greater popu-lation; and although I have not had an opportunityof ascertaining the fact, I have an impression on mymind, that the annual convictions in the whole ofScotland, where the population approaches twomillions of people, are short of those which take