The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-25 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING-, NOVEMBER 25, 1846.

alliance with France was cemented, indicates very
unequivocally the direction which public opinion is
taking in France.
The journals of the more extreme Left and the
anti-dynastic onescontinue to reiterate their reproaches
against the government for leaving itself in a state of
isolation for the sake of an interest which concerns
nobody in France except the Orleans family. They
also persist in taxing M. Guizot with allowing things
to come to the present crisis with his eyes open, inas-
much as he must have bad full notice of what was con-
templated, not only through the press of Germany, but
directly. from his diplomatic agents.
The invitation of Count Mole to the Tuileries, men-
tioned in our correspondence of yesterday, is repro-
duced in the journals of Monday.
We are, it seems, says Le Courier Francais, in the
height of a ministerial crisis. On obverting in the
Portefeitille of Sunday the announcement that Count Mole
had an interview with the King, we went to seek informa-
tion, and learnt that the pacific M. Guizot in reply to the
accusations of Lord Palmerston, desired to take Landau to
fortify Huningue, to pass the bridge of Kehl, &c. It was
then that Count Mole was tent fir. M. Guizot was no
longer possible either in the north or in the west, and it was
thought convenient to maintain the system of changing the
minister. But M. Mole, will he incline towards England or
towards the northern courts ? It is said that the visit of
Lord Normanby at Cbamplatreux may have changed the dis-
positions of M. Mole in regard to England. What will be-
come of Poland between Lord Palmerston and M. Mole.
Cabinet Councils continue to be held daily.
The Bey of Tunis arrived, by the Orleans railway,
in Paris at one o'clock on Sunday, and proceeded im-
mediately with his suite, in six royal carriages, to the
Palace of Elysee Bourbon, which had been prepared
for his reception. He has been every where received
as a sovereign prince.

The Madrid mails were received on Monday in
Paris, bringing journals and correspondence of the
17th, but they only contain accounts from Portugal of
an earlier date than those which have already been
made public in these columns.

FRANCE.—STATE OP SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.—
The Minister of Public Instruction has charged the Faculty
of Sciences of Paris to send in to him a report on the state of
scientific instruction in France. The report is to refer par-
ticularly to the manner in which it is conducted in the col- '
leges and superior primary schools ; it is to declare how far
this instruction responds to the wants of society, and to sug-
gest whatever may seem to be wanting. The faculty has
appointed a committee to inquire into the matter. It consists
of M. Dumas, the senior member, and four of the professors,
Messrs. Pouillet, Poncelet, Edwards, and Leverrier.
THE LATE INUNDATIONS.—The Central Committee
for receiving and distributing the subscriptions for the suffer-
ers from the inundations of the Loire, held its fourth meet-
ing on Saturday. The total amount of the receipts was
811,000 francs, besides 90,000 francs from special donatiens.
Nearly the whole of the money was derived from contribu-
tions in Paris. The sums paid in from the different legions
of the National Guards amount to 198,000 francs. The com-
mittee decided upon remitting 16,000 fr. to each of the de-
partments of the Allier, Loire, Haute Loire, and Loiret.
This is independent of the sums received by receivers-gene•
ml of the departments not yet paid in to the committee,
and the articles in clothing, furniture, and other necessaries
sent to the Hotel de Ville, as we have already mentioned.
BELGIUNT.—IMPROVEMENTS IN G.ts AND SPIN-
NING MACHINERY.—M. Jobard, director of the Belgian
museum, who is now making a tour through some of the de-
partments of France, and inspecting the progress of indus-
trial and agricultural arts and science there, reports having
visited a manufacturing establishment at Mulhausen, which
is lighted with gas, the produce of a combustible, from which
may be drawn 256 litres of gas per kilogramme. In observ-
ing upon this announcement the Belgian papers remark that
the process is not new, but has been employed for more
than two yearn in the works of M. Gustave Scribe, an en-
gineer of Ghent, who has already fitted up a good number
of works in Belgium with the same apparatus. As it is
generally understood that, owing to the greater abundance
and cheapness of fuel, the manufactories of Lancashire and
Yorkshire are not worked with the same exact attention to
economy, and care against waste, as works of the same kind
are in France and Belium, both in respect of the gas light-
ing and the engine-room for the generation of steam power,
the intimation of this improved economical process, in the one
respect, may be deserving of notice. But a more important
improvement still in mechanics is referred to in the Belgian
papers, and concerns more nearly the interests of the spin-
neries of the north. The same ingenious engineer, M.
Scribe, is stated to hare invented a new self-acting spinning
machine, commonly called " self-acting mule." The "self-
acting English mule, it is observed, is very costly in price,
and of • mechanism so complicated as to require in the
overseers of the factory, a deep acquaintance with mechani-
cal science. M. Scribe has so simplified the machine, that
at an expense not exceeding one-third the price of a self-
acting mule (English), he has been able to obtain the same
results, the same economy of workmanship, and avoiding all
defects. The system of M. Scribe is (moreover), ap-
plicable to all machines on the common plan, whatever
thi ir dimensions. There are already in the city of
Ghent, 18,000 spindles worked upon the new sys-
tem, which has also been introduced in the spinning fac-
tory of St. Denys, near Mons, and into the establishment of
Messrs. Deny and Duchaine, at Braine-le-Comte." The
costly nature of the English self-acting mule is the necessary
consequence of that prolongation of the expiring patent for
the inventien„so impolitically and unjustly accorded to the
patentees by Lord Brougham, when presiding in Privy
Council some time ago, with a want of reflection and incon-
sistency then remarked upon, and this, with other conse-
quences, pointed out. The invention was a combination of two
patents, if we are rightly informed, each embodying a principle
of action indispensable to the other, and without which neither
could fulfil the working conditions sought to be obtained.
The patents came to centre eventually in the same hands.
One of them expired by flux of the fourteen years some time
before the other. By the decree of Lord Brougham another
term of seven years was conceded for one or both of them ;
and manufacturing industry was condemned to pay the extra
charge of additional monopoly for all that lengthened period.
Why should not patent law be as clearly defined, and patent
terms determined with as much exactitude as any other legal
obligations ? At the end of a fourteen years' monopoly the
inventor has still the prestige and preference is his favour for
years to come. Sir Richard Arkwright, and many others
might be cited, was much more prosperous alter his patents
were annulled than ever before. 1 hese unreasonable exten-
sions of patent right*, besides, stand in the way of ingenuity
and improvement. The patentee. satisfied with monopoly
sod high prices, has no motive to stimulate his exertions
further. But there are always ingenious and aspiring
minds ready to labour in the work of improvement and in-
vention, who are stopped at the threshold by • patent-mo-
nopoly of some piece of mechanism involving something of a
principle necessary to work upon. What, for the great ad-
vancement of scheme and industry,.might have been effected
at home, is thus abandoned to foreign and unfettered inge-
nuity, not slow to reap the fruits et it.
GERMANY.—BERLIN, Nov. 16.—News has been
received at Berlin from St. Petersburg that the Emperor
of Russia has given his consent to the marriage of the
Grand Duke Constantine with Princess Alexendra of Saxe
Coburg, but that the marriage is not to take place for two
years. The Princess has not yea been confirmed, and is to
be received into the Greek church.

TU It 1( E Y.—A letter from. Constantinople, of the sth,
says: "Two days ago a loud detonation was head to proceed
from the house inhabited by M. de Chabert, Consul- Ci,neral of
Austria at Smyrna. On going to his room he was found
lying on the bed with his skull fractured, and the pistol,
with which he had effected this rash act, by his side. For
a fortnight before the unfortunate gentleman had suffered
much from severe pains in the head, and it is supposed that
it was in a moment of dreadful agony that he thus committed
suicide. lie has left a large family."
Nafi-Effendi, recently ambassador from the Sublime
Porte at Vienna, where he is to he replaced by Chekib-
Effendi, ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs in Turkey, has been
appointed by the Sultan member of the Grand Council of
Justice.

GREECE—The Greek government has just
founded at the University of Athens a professorship of con-
stitutional law, and the law of nations. Paris was the only
city which peuessed a chair of constitutional law, and Greece
has now followed its example, and founded one. M. Sari-
polls, doctor-in-law, of the faculty of Paris, has been ap-
pointed to the newly established chair, and opened his
course of lectures on the 26th ult. to a numerous auditory.