error, whatever they may say for the sake of popularity or to make the best of a bad case. They have already very harsh laws against pauper and criminal immigration, and the officials are driven by public opinion to apply those laws with cruel strictness. Yet, with all the wish in the world to turn back immigrants, they are unable to deny admittance to more than a paltry number. The official machinery employed for this purpose costs more than would set up all the rejected immigrants in a good business. The truth is, the cry of

ists. And most of this senseless bloodshed takes place in some of the oldest states, while some of the newest are freest from it. The states most like British colonies in this respect were only territories the other day. It stands to reason that the people of new countries, if they are decent folks, with the true aptness for self-rule, ought to be more than commonly free from blood-guiltiness. They have the example, good or bad, of older peoples to go by. They have a clear field for law and order. They are galled by no yoke. They have what they need in plenty, but" pauper" and "criminal" against the no vicious luxury. They have harmless callings, happy homes, a simple life, healthy hopes for themselves and their offspring, and none to make them afraid. Why should they have the passions of slaves and the practices of pirates? All experience shows the opposite is the case, and new countries, if they have nothing but their newness against them, are the most humane.

A still more damning witness against the "new country" plea has yet to be called. The Americans become more bloodstained the farther they advance towards national maturity. Not only do they head the list of all nations as to the number of murders in proportion to the population, but they break their own murder record year after year. A carefully prepared and thoroughly authentic statement, published not long since by a New Jersey Patriotic Association, shows that crimes of violence in the United States have more than doubled in number in proportion to the population since 1850; and last year was the worst year of all.

When driven from the ground that America is a land of blood because it is a new country, Americans always fall back on saying that the shocking prevalence of bloodshed is due to the influx of foreigners. "What else is to be expected," they ask, "when our country is made the dumping ground of Europe? We are getting from half a million to three-quarters of a million of immigrants every year, and most of them are the dregs of the countries they come from paupers, criminals, desperadoes, adventurers, human refuse of every sort. For many years we believed we could assimilate all mankind and make good Americans of them in a year or two. But now we know that it is not so. We must have an ironclad anti-immigration law, and that's all there is to it."

Unfortunately that is not "all there is to it," by a very long way. In fact, few Americans blind themselves by any such

immigrants from Europe in the Eastern States is as hollow as that against the Chinese in the Western States. The proportion of criminals among the immigrants is infinitesimal, and all fair inquiries prove that the foreigners in America are the most inoffensive of the people. Poor and ignorant they may be, but dangerous they are not. The greater number of them are Germans, and the Americans themselves admit that the Germans are a very quiet people, seldom giving any trouble, but taking at once to some honest calling, and soon becoming excellent citizens. The same may be said of the Scandinavians, who go stolidly to their work in the north. west, and never hurt anybody. The Ital ians have got a bad name lately, but very unjustly. The secret history of the murder of Hennessey is pretty well known in America, and has been partially published. It is widely believed to have been an incident in one of those Irish feuds which have for years existed in New Or leans, as in Chicago and other cities; the same feud in which Hennessey's father and brother were killed. The accusation against the Mafia was a bold and ingenious device for diverting attention from the true nature and origin of the crime. There was not a vestige of what in England would be called evidence of the existence of any Mafia in New Orleans; but several of the most respectable Italian witnesses declared the whole story to be an absurd invention. The jury acquitted the prisoners, whereupon the mob murdered them, and raised the cry that the jury had been bribed. The "committee of safety," as the leaders of the assassins were called, instituted a prosecution against Dominick O'Malley, a detective, but the solitary witness they could bring in support of the charge was an Irishman, named McCrystal, himself one of the jury, who was ready to confess having been bribed. The court refused such a man's evidence, and after a lapse of seven

months, during which O'Malley constantly | exposed to much petty persecution from demanded a trial, the indictment against the Irish, who detest them as rivals in the him was abandoned on October 8. On labor market. They also fight a good deal being discharged he published a declara- among themselves, jealousy being the tion that the prosecutors knew all along cause of many affrays. But these things there was "no suspicion of wrong-doing "seldom happen amongst Italians who have in the Hennessey case, but "the indict- been any length of time in the country, ment had to be brought in order to satisfy and learnt the ways of civilized life. the people for what was done on March Crime of any sort is rare among the 14" that is, to justify the massacre of American-born Italians, who are particuthe Italian prisoners. He added, "I have larly intelligent and well conducted. been asked to keep quiet, and allow the There are eighty thousand Italians in New matter to be forgotten; " but he threatens York City alone, but the number of Italian yet to expose the whole affair. criminals is very small indeed.

The lower order of Jews, who are mostly Russians or Poles, are very depraved; but they are not violent. They thieve and cheat, but they do not murder; and even these poor, despised wretches work desperately hard as soon as they find out how to get an honest living, and do credit to any opportunities they enjoy in America. It is hard to say whether their moral

Like the Germans and Scandinavians, the Italians are harmless enough if not interfered with. All they ask is to be allowed to earn a living by the hardest and humblest of work. They are quick to resent ill-treatment, and they use the knife with fatal dexterity, but not without a cause. I will mention two cases which came within my own knowledge whilst in New York last year. Two Italians, broth-condition is a more scandalous disgrace to ers, new arrivals, and speaking no English, the country they have come from or the had set up a fruit-stall at the corner of country they have gone to. But, low as Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, op- they are, they cannot be held accountable posite the spot where the gigantic Plaza for any considerable share of violent crime. Hotel was then being built. The contract- It is the fashion in America to charge the ors for the building employed none but Hungarians, who swarm in parts of PennIrish laborers, and between these Irish-sylvania and some other mining states, men and the Italians in the neighborhood with murderous qualities, but this arises there was a chronic feud, which found from sheer ignorance and prejudice. The vent in jeers and insults and occasional Hungarians are very harmless and inscuffles. One day a number of the Irish-tensely industrious, but their strange men, on leaving their work at the hotel, amused themselves by teasing the Italians at the fruit-stall, whom they soon got into a furious rage. Finally one of the gang snatched a couple of oranges from the stall, and he and his comrades ran away laughing. They were noiselessly followed, however, by the bare feet of the younger Italian, who stabbed the man with the oranges in the back, and killed him instantly. The other case was somewhat similar. A miserably ragged Italian was driving a cartload of watermelons down a street just out of Broadway, selling them from door to door as he went along. While he was engaged with a purchaser, an Irish laborer took a large melon out of the cart and walked off without paying for it. The Italian ran after him, demanding his money in broken English and with frantic gesticulations, amid the laughter of the crowd. The man with the melon quickened his pace, and the Italian, unable to stop him, and afraid to leave his cart, drew a knife and struck a blow from which the man died. These are typical murders by Italians in America, where they are

tongue, uncouth looks, and clamorous manner make them regarded as a sort of ogres. The silliest stories about them are greedily swallowed, and fearful cruelties are visited upon them on account of their supposed ferocity. When the starving Hungarian ironworkers near Pittsburgh struck recently, they were shot down wholesale, both men and women, on account of the terror they inspired; but it was found they were unarmed, and really meant no mischief. During the excitement over the bursting of the Conemaugh dam, at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the year before last, when thousands of lives were lost, it was reported that the Hungarians slaughtered the dying and mutilated the dead for plunder, and committed fiendish deeds on the helpless victims whom the floods placed at their mercy. For weeks every publisher's store in America was ghastly with pictures of Hungarians doing all these things, or being shot or hanged by the United States troops for doing them. The daily papers contained columns of details of these enormities, and of the executions resulting from them.

In more than one quarter it was suggested rant people, debased by chronic hunger that the whole Hungarian population and oppression, become angels as soon should be exterminated. The agitation as they pass under the Statue of Liberty. reached such a head that the Hungarian But it lies not in the mouth of Americans residents in New York formed a committee to charge them with crimes which were a to ascertain the facts. In answer to their byword against the nation before the tide questions the United States general to of foreign immigration set in, and which, whom had been entrusted the control of not recently, but fifty years ago or more, the ruined district, declared there had not caused the most familiar type of American been a single complaint against any Hun- to be a man armed to the teeth for bloodgarian resident, but, on the contrary, the shed. If the foreign immigrants are prone Hungarians had bravely and generously to violence, all the more ought Americans devoted themselves to the work of rescue to set them an example of self-restraint, and relief. He had nothing but praise which they certainly do not do. and thanks for them, and he went to some pains to show that the charges of inhumanity so widely published against them were either sensational lies or else the ravings of panic.

People who have never lived in America, but who only read about it at a distance as a very advanced country, cannot conceive how cheap life is held there, or how lightly the crime of murder is regarded. There are three broad divisions of that crime, which only have to be pointed out in order to give a new view of the subject to those who have never thought much about it. Firstly, there are murders such as occur

more or less of premeditation or secrecy, from a motive of revenge or hatred, or for the sake of plunder, or to further or conceal some other crime. These are condemned alike by law and by public opinion in America as elsewhere, and are generally detected and punished. The death pen

This was a strong case, where disproof of a decisive kind was fortunately to be got. But, in fact, the charge of murderousness, which is commonly and persistently made by Americans against the alien population generally, is quite as un-in all countries, the taking of life with just, and as wilfully untruthful in the main, as it was in the particular instance of the Hungarians at Johnstown. The officially authenticated figures compiled by the New Jersey Association already referred to prove that the overwhelming proportion of crimes of violence are committed by Americans, and that the foreign popu-alty, however, is inflicted in few cases, lation are singularly free from bloodshed. The significance of these remarks as to the alleged criminality of foreign immigrants will be seen when it is remembered how small a proportion of the American people are Americans. Of the inhabitants of the three cities of New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey-which are practically one city-four out of five are either foreign born or born of foreign parents, according to the authority of Mr. John Jay, president of the Huguenot Society, one of the most patriotic and beneficent citizens of America, who has made a study of this question. There are many parts of the United States, both cities and country places, where the proportion of foreigners is even greater than that.

It stands to reason that among the millions of aliens exiled to America by the hardness of their condition at home, there are many undesirable citizens and an appreciable element of evil. I do not hold a brief for these foreigners. I have no object in making them out better than they are, or better than a like kind of people elsewhere. Tennyson's Northern Farmer says, "In the loomp the poor are bad," and it were folly to pretend that low, igno

various "degrees "of murder being recognized, according to the caprice of juries, and the system of appeals and the shameless corruption of the courts affording many loopholes of escape. Still, these crimes are not peculiar to America, and there is no reason to dwell on them here. Secondly, there is a very numerous class of homicides, which would be called murders in any other country, arising from the habit of carrying weapons and of using them upon the slenderest pretence of provocation or self-defence.

The Americans take a most curious view of this kind of killing. They consider that any man may rightly shoot another from whom he thinks himself in danger of a blow or any hurt, or even from whom he has had bad words. The police and other officers of the law set a very poor example in this respect. They are themselves among the worst offenders. All these guardians of the peace carry firearms, and use them recklessly. Á notorious case occurred last year. A judge of the Supreme Court, on circuit in California, stopped to breakfast in the public restaurant of a railway station, accompa nied by a United States marshal, a high

official of the court. In the same train | man for having slain another under what was a barrister, who had a grievance is called provocation. All over the States against the judge on account of what he the killing goes on, in family feuds, in deemed a wrongful committal for con- personal quarrels, or in the most casual tempt. Seeing the judge seated at break-disputes between strangers. Often it takes fast, the barrister applied some sneering the form of a rough-and-ready duel, two remark to him, and then, losing control of men who have a grudge against one anhis temper, struck him with his hand. other meeting in the street, or in busiThe United States marshal instantly drew ness, or in society, and shooting, with or a revolver and shot the barrister dead, without words, until one or both fall dead. sending a second bullet into his body to Sometimes friends or partisans of the make sure of him after he had fallen to combatants join in, and a mêlée ensues, in the floor. The barrister's wife, who saw which any number on either side, or on it all, rushed back shrieking into the rail- neither side, are killed or wounded. In way carriage, but was seized. In her parts of Kentucky and Virginia these reticule was found a revolver, and the blood-feuds are carried on hereditarily, Grand Jury refused to indict the marshal, and whole families are "wiped out." on the ground that he was justified in Within the last few months there came to shooting the barrister, because the re- an end in Kentucky a vendetta, in which volver found in the wife's reticule might twenty-two persons, including several have been used to shoot the judge with. women and children, had been killed, This was held on all sides to be good law whilst only one of the offenders had been and good justice, and the marshal's action brought to justice. It must not be supwas highly commended. It reminds one posed that only ruffians and common of the triangular duel in "Midshipman brawlers do these things. There is no Easy." There are hundreds of cases of distinction of classes in their readiness to homicide by peace officers almost as strik- kill, but leading men in point of education ing as that, and some of them are posi- and position often disgrace themselves by tively ludicrous. In New York not long shedding blood. This is especially the ago a policeman was told that a theft had case in the Southern States, where it is been committed in the street, and the considered the sign of a gentleman to have thief had gone in a certain direction. He had at least one fatal "difficulty." But it followed him, and seeing a man, who had is far too common in the North also; and apparently been sleeping on some steps, in all ranks of society, even in New York get up and run away, he drew his revolver and Philadelphia, men are to be met who and fired at him. He missed his mark, have taken life who are not ashamed of but mortally wounded a bystander across themselves for it, and whose friends are the street. The runaway was caught, not ashamed of them either. It is not however, and turned out to be a harmless thought a thing to be ashamed of, and in follow who had been awakened by the most instances there is a great deal of hue and cry, and taken to his heels in fear. sympathy with it. Here is a case which Yet the constable was held to have done well illustrates the tone of feeling on this his duty, because the man might have matter. A gentleman occupying a posibeen the thief. These shootings by the tion of great wealth and influence in New police became so common that one of the York became involved in one of those daily papers proposed a sort of "police- domestic lawsuits which are so common alarm," by which the public might have in America. His wife's brother, who had notice when the street-firing was going to warmly espoused her side of the dispute, begin. A San Francisco paper improved met the husband, and tried in vain to on this by wittily suggesting that "the bring about a private settlement. On the more respectable of the criminal classes day appointed for the trial the brother should be organized for the protection of again met the husband, and high words the citizens from the police." But noth- ended in a fracas. The brother was uning was done, and the evil is as great as armed, but the husband had brought his revolver, and without a moment's hesitation he laid his brother-in-law dead at his feet. He was arrested, but immediately released on bail; the Grand Jury found no indictment, and his position in society was in no way affected by the incident. Nine Americans out of ten would hold that the killing under those circumstances

ever.

It is easy to understand that in a country where such practices on the part of the officers of the law, and such ideas regarding them, prevail, ordinary folks do not deem it necessary to put any restraint on themselves in the use of deadly weapons, and do not think any the worse of a

was justifiable, however deplorable; and they would have held the same if it had been the other way and the brother had killed the husband. The rule seems to be that killing is no murder, and the law has nothing to do with it, whenever there is provocation enough on either side to make the other party angry. By the practical application of that rule thousands of lives are sacrificed, many of them valuable ones, under conditions where a little right feeling and self-control would remove the whole cause of strife.

The paltriness of the occasions when arms are resorted to, indeed, almost passes belief. They have a cant phrase in America, "McGinty!" which is used like "Who's your hatter?" in England. A man was coming out of a saloon when another called out, "Say! Have you seen him?" "Seen who?" asked the man, taken unawares. "McGinty!" shouted the other, amid a roar of laughter from the saloon loafers. The victim of the stupid joke instantly "pulled his gun" and shot the joker. He was tried, but pleaded provocation, and got off with a nominal sentence. A member of a well-known club in New York, who prided himself on his pedigree, wished another member to read a book on the subject, and left it for him with the hall-porter. Returning some days later he found the gentleman had not taken the book, but had made some excuse, and left it with the hall-porter as before. The man of ancient lineage was very wrath at this, and, meeting the other member at the club door, charged him with the slight. The other again excused himself, and ended by saying plainly that he was not interested in the subject of the pedigree. This was an unbearable insult. The next moment a shot was fired, and the scorner of pedigrees only saved his life by running into the street and getting under a wagon. His assailant, after a long delay, was arrested, but released on trifling bail, and no further proceedings were taken.

Another instance happened to myself. I had been travelling in a railway carriage in the South, in company with two very pleasant men who chanced to be seated opposite to me at the end of the crowded car, and had got out to "buy a lunch," as they say, at a station, my two fellow-passengers having promised to keep my seat for me. When I returned to the car I found a tall, gaunt man, in a broad slouch hat, apparently about to take my seat, but yet not actually taking it. A glance at my acquaintances opposite showed me why he

hesitated. Each of them was holding a cup of coffee to his mouth with his left hand, while his right grasped a revolver covering the intruder. Time being short, they were drinking their coffee while they "kept the Britisher's seat." The tall stranger politely retired on my appearing, the others put their revolvers in their hippockets without any remark, and we resumed our journey. What amused me most of all though was a glimpse I got of a solemn-looking old man about half-way down the car, who had drawn out from somewhere an enormous, antiquated, ivory-handled six-shooter, and was holding it up with his finger on the trigger, ready to take a hand in any little festivity that might arise. He looked so disappointed when it all ended in nothing that I felt quite sorry for him.

Boys, and even women, quite commonly take the life of a fellow-creature in the United States, and if "provocation" or any strong emotion can be shown, it is thought rather creditable to them than otherwise. It is considered a sign of "good grit"- that is, high spirit, or, rather, ungoverned temper. I was an unwilling witness of what appeared to me a cruel murder by a woman in a main thoroughfare. She was well dressed, and rather handsomewhat would be called a lady in appearance; and her victim was a youngish man, of the smooth, neat, polished, finely clothed, Wall Street type. They met face to face on the pavement, and stopped to speak, as I thought, like ordinary acquaintances; but the woman, after some hurried words, produced a revolver from her reticule or muff, and rapidly fired four or five shots. I got as far away as possible, and made for the elevated railway, but looking back, I saw the man struggling on the pavement, and I read in the evening papers that he had been shot dead, riddled with bullets. He was a well-known stock-broker, and the lady was said to have some money claim against him which she had been unable to make good at law. There was pretty general sympathy with her for her nerve and her straight shooting, and there is little doubt she would have got off scot-free, but she died before the long preliminaries of the case were finished. The Americans have an extraordinary liking for an “excitable temperament," which is nothing but what we call a violent temper, in women. One hears men every day say they wouldn't give a cent for a woman who is not " good grit," or has not "a bit of the devil in her;" and a woman who