convictions for offences against property
alone, there was the striking fall above
expressed: closer analysis in another table
refers nearly all of it to the head of larceny
and stealing. Another table shows that the
chief decrease is in petty theft. A decrease of
five or six thousand in the twelvemonth is
not accounted for by the interception of the
young offenders in reformatory schools. The
number detained in the reformatory schools
is but about two hundred in the year. We
may infer, therefore, that the labour done by
many men, for bettering in many little ways
the home condition of the poor, is bearing
fruit. Provocation— or it might be called
compulsion— to small crimes is weaker. There
is better support given to right feeling and
honest effort, as the old fog of antagonism
between class and class is lifted from the
surface of society. On the other hand, it is to
be observed, on reference to the tables for
London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh,
and Dublin, that the decrease of crime is very
much less marked in the great towns than in
the country generally.

In other tables are to be found striking
illustrations of the growth of our material
strength. A calculation, extending over six
years, shows that Lancashire brings into use
every year a million of additional spindles,
and a new host of almost ten thousand
power-looms. In Yorkshire, during the
three years over which our calculation has
extended, sixty new collieries have been
annually opened, and the quantity of pig-iron
made in the West Riding, which, in the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-four was
seventy-three thousand tons, became one
hundred and seventy-five thousand in the
next year, and two hundred and seventy-five
thousand in the year following that.

We need no more details to show that the
Housekeeping Accounts of this country are in
a very hopeful state. Prosperity increases,
population grows; nor does poverty keep
pace with its growth, but an almost settled
number of the poor we still have always
with us. Yet there is increase of general
education, and a marked improvement in
the bodily and mental health of the
community, shown by the decrease of
preventible disease and petty crime. Therefore
we may face Christmas cheerfully, conscious,
as a nation, that we have not been labouring
in vain for self-improvement, and right
steadily determined to go on and prosper.

The number of emigrants from the three
kingdoms was a hundred and seventy-six
thousand in the first of our three years, the
same in the second, and two hundred and
twelve thousand in the third. The chief
outlet of emigration is to the United States.
The number of emigrants who go to the
United States is twice as great as that of
those who go to the Australian colonies.
The number going to Australia is three times
as great as that of emigrants to British
North America; but there go to British
North America six times as many as the
whole number left to distribute itself about
the world in other places. To the United
States there go for every Scotch emigrant,
six English and twelve Irish. To the
Australian colonies there go for every Scotch
emigrant, two or three Irish and six English.
To British North America the emigration
from each country in the three years was so
exceedingly unequal that no general rule can
be stated. At the beginning of the period,
emigrants went nearly man for man from
each of the three kingdoms; but, in the third
year, there went two Englishmen for every
Irishman or Scotchman. In rough numbers
the character of emigration from these
islands is thus fairly enough stated.

To these notes of the state of our domestic
housekeeping accounts, we may as well add a
glance at the state of those outlying properties
to which the faces of so many emigrants
are turned, and with whose well-being our
own prosperity is closely bound. Here is a
blue-book of " Statistics of New Zealand," for
the year eighteen hundred and fifty-six, and
the three years preceding, " presented " (last
April) " to both Houses of the General
Assembly by command of his Excellency the
Governor," printed at Auckland, for the New
Zealand Government, and exactly resembling
similar works printed in London by George
Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode. This
is a general view of the state of New Zealand,
compiled from the statistics published
separately by its respective settlements, and from
colonial blue-books. The materials it
presents are defective, but the effort to produce
a well-digested housekeeping account, once
bravely begun, will create means for securing
the information that is now deficient. We
read here, that in the five years ending in
eighteen hundred and fifty-six, the population
rose in Auckland from nine thousand to fifteen
thousand; in New Plymouth, from one
thousand five hundred to two thousand five
hundred; in Wellington, from six thousand to ten
thousand; in Nelson, from four thousand to
seven thousand; in Canterbury, from three
thousand to nearly six thousand; and that in
Otago, the population was, during five years,
more than doubled. As to education, so far as
the tables go, they show that in five years there
was an increase of seven per cent. upon the
number of the colonists able to read and write,
the proportion now seeming to be three in
every five. During the same period there has
been a steady increase of the shipping trade;
and the live stock possessed by colonists had
multiplied so rapidly, that on comparing
their state at the end of the five years with
their state at the beginning, they were found
to possess more than three times as many
horses, nearly three times as many heads of
cattle, and more than four times as many
sheep. The criminal statistics show that in New
Zealand serious crime is not common, but