The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-23 00:00:00

EAST INDIA iiIIIPPING.

Arrivals.—Sept. 22, the Amity, Scott, from the Mauritius,
off Beachy Head, sailed May 17, and St. Helena July 21 ; Bri-
tish Sovereign, Brown, from New South Wales, off Penzance,
sailed from Sydney May 4, and Pernambuco, Aug. 5.
Arrival at Penang.—The Cherub, Walker, from London.
Arrivals at Singapore.—The Hoop Velvaart, Gower, April
30, from Palemburg ; Sir A. Campbell, April 30, from Cal
cutta ; Good Success, Durant, April 30, from Bombay ; Isa-
bella Robertson, Hudson, May 1, from Calcutta; Volunteer,
Silva, May 1, from Bombay ; Jane, Middleton, May 2, from
Samarang.
Departures from Singapore.—The Hebe, Malcolm, April
'27, for London ; Helen, Selford, April 27, and Eleanor, Lyons,
April 29, for China; Ruby, Warden, April 28, for Calcutta;
Bright Planet, Trugate, April 30, for Penang and Calcutta;
Helen, M'Anslcr, May 2, for Borneo ; Tartar, Rough, May
3, for Batavia.
The Ivanhoe, Gibson, Liverpool to Calcutta, has put back
with loss of foremast, maintopmast, and bowsprit, having been
in contact with the Abbotsford, for Bombay, off the Floating-
light, The latter has proceeded.

From the advertisements which are not unfrequently seen
in the public newspapers, it would seem to be a commonly
received opinion that a husband can direst himself of his
liability for his wife's debts, by giving public notice that he
will not be answerable for any debts she may contract after
such notice. It may, perhaps, not be uninteresting to look
a little into the law upon this subject, and to inquire—
Ist. When he is not liable for them.

After a divorce, ab inilio, his liability is extinguished.
So, after adultery in the wife, the husband will not be an-
swerable for the necessaries furnished her after expulsion
from his house ; and this holds although he was the aggres-
sor, having lived with another woman at the time of ex-
pelling his wife, who at that time had no imputation on her
conduct, yet afterwards dishonoured herself. A woman
eloping from her husband, yet not accompanied by an
adulterer, must be trusted at the tradesman's own risk, as
the husband is not liable ; but he cannot, either by public
advertisement or particular notice, exempt himself from his
wife's debts, contracted after a forcible ejection from his
house ; and notwithstanding her conduct had been exceed-
ingly incorrect, and she had been assisted in her improprie-
ties by the plaintiff, yet the Court held that his liability for
necessaries still existed.

In a case which was argued three tames in the Court of
King's Bench, and the Judges being divided, was adjourned
'to the Exchequer, nine of the Judges held that a husband
was not liable for the necessaries furnished to a wife during
a separation without his consent, having given the plaintiff
particular notice not to trust her, and notwithstanding that
he did not allow her any maintenance.
A tradesman supplying a wife with goods unsuitable to
her station in life, without any authority from her husband,
does so at his own risk. In an action for wearing apparel
supplied to a married woman, without the husband's know-
ledge, and which she had received in quantities unsuited to
her rank, the husband was not liable ; and it was held to
be unnecessary to prove that the wearing apparel furnished
was not required by the wife, in consequence of her being
supplied with proper clothing from another quarter. These
seem to be the cases which would apply to persons in the
middle ranks of society, and it would appear that in all
these (with the exception above mentioned) the husband
was absolutely absolved from the claims of those who had
trusted his wife, without being compelled to give either
general or particular notice to tradesmen.
It may perhaps seem unjust to fix a tradesman, who has
supplied a woman whom he knows to be married, and who has
before traded with him, with a knowledge of facts which it
is very improbable he could be acquainted with ; but it
must be recollected, that in every case it is the duty of
tradesmen to make cautious inquiry as to the situation,
capabilities, and liabilities, of the fair one he may be in-
duced to trust, as he could not recover from the husband
beyond the extent to which a proper investigation would
have shown him to be liable.
2d. In those cases where the husband is liable, notwith-
standing particular circumstances, the principal seem to be
these :

A husband having a wife who had committed adultery in
his house, and not expelling her, neither making any provi-
sion for her in consequence of separation, is liable for neces-
saries, unless he can fix the plaintiff with a knowledge, either
positive or implied, of the situation in which she was living.
Receiving an adulterous wife into the house, and turning her
out, renders the husband answerable in an action for neces-
saries. W hen by ill-treatment a wife is forced to leave her
husband's roof, she shall carry with her credit for necessa-
ries, and her husband is liable ; and quitting the husband's
house under an apprehension of personal violence is equi-
valent to turning her out, and will render him liable for
necessaries. A common woman having been brought into
the house by the husband will justify the wife's quitting
the house, and he will be answerable for necessaries ; and
he cannot avail himself of a plea of adultery, which he did
not discover until after the credit had been given.
As in the former cases it was observed that an advertise-
ment was of no utility to the husband, and could only be
an act of courtesy to the tradesman in certain cases, so in
those last mentioned it would not have the effect of dis-
charging him from his liability, as he was absolutely liable,
whether the tradesman was or not aware of the peculiar
circumstances of the case. I have not gone into those
particular cases where separate allowances and their ade-
quacy, or separation by deed or agreement, would give a
different character to their liability, as they may form the
subject of a subsequent article.—Legal Observer.

One of the most mysterious robberies which has
lately taken place in Hull was made on, it is supposed,
Thursday night, of the post-office letter-bag from that port
to Hamburgh. Thursday evening the Hamburgh letter-
bag, containing 328 letters and two newspapers, was sent
from the post-office by a clerk, and delivered on board the
Lee steamer, which was to sail that night, and take the
letter-bag. The clerk took the mate's receipt for the bag,
and the vessel sailed. On Friday night, about nine
o'clock, a man named Ware saw afire in a pig-stye in Gib-
son-street, Foundry, belonging to a man named Marriott,
about a mile from the Junction Dock, where the Lee laid.
He extinguished the fire, which appeared to be papers
burning, and next day, about two in the afternoon, went
with some others out of curiosity to see what these papers
were, when they found they were a number of letters. The
remains were taken to the station-house, when they were
taken possession of by the superintendent, and information
given by him to the post-office, and measures were taken by
the police to find out who had committed the robbery. The
Lee will not sail from Hamburgh until Thursday, and not
arrive until about Saturday—consequently it will not be
known until then how the robbery could be effected. Most
of the letters are so much burnt that neither the addresses
or names of the writers could be made out. There are
amongst them letters from Hull, Manchester, Leeds, Liver-
pool, Sunderland, Newcastle, Huddersfield, Glasgow, Dun-
dee, Sheffield, &c. ; many of them are written in German ;
some have bills of exchange, and in others are enclosed pat-
terns of cloth. The Altona letter-bag, which had been
enclosed, was found in High-street, on Friday morning,
empty ; it is not known whether the letters which had been
in it were amongst those discovered in Gibson,street.—
Hull Paper.
During the heavy gale on the afternoon of the 26th
ult., a boat belonging to Skeld Vod herring fishery station,
in Zetland, while passing the south-east end of Orkney Is-
land, was upset, and we are sorry to add that her whole
crew, six in number, met a watery grave, and, with the ex-
ception of one young man, have left large families. This
melancholy occurrence having been seen from the shore, a
boat was instantly manned and proceeded to the spot, but
too late to render any assistance, as the boat had instantly
gone down, and none of the crew were to be seen.—Edin-
burgh Observer.
GUIDING BALLOONS.—We find in the Enianci-
pacion, under the head of "Article Contntuniptc," the fol-
lowing lines :—" An unexpected event, a fact, the existence
pf which appeared chimerical, is at. length realized. The
art of directing balloons is discovered. This sublime dis-
covery, the consequences of which are incalculable, is due
to the profound studies and researches of M. William van
Eschen, a native of Brussels. The system of the author is
equally simple and ingenious, and the effect is infallible. By
means of his application, and with a new kind of balloon
also invented by him, the aeronaut will be able in the usual
state of the atmosphere to proceed at pleasure with the
greatest rapidity. Only, in case of contrary and violent
winds the balloon will not make a rapid progress. In this
respect it resembles steam-boats, it resists the currents (of
air) and obstacles, and in some manner overcomes them."--
Dutch Paper.
Tuesday, a lad about fourteen, dressed in the
costume of the scholars of Christ's Hospital, London, took
his place at Ramsgate for Deal by one of the coaches. He
informed the coachman he had no money with him, but he
should be met by a lady at Deal, who would pay his
fare. 0n arriving at Deal a female, who sat by his
side, discovered that her gown was cut, and that her purse,
containing two sovereigns and some silver, had been ab-
stracted from her pocket ; but on looking round the
purse was found empty near the spot. Suspicion immedi-
ately fixed on the boy, and he was apprehended—a sove-
reign and some silver, with a new comb, and some other arti-
cles, with two or three letters, were found on him. One of
the letters was from his mother, and expressed her regret in
affecting terms that, after having discharged two or three
servants on suspicion of robbing her, it should be her
painful lot to discover the robber in her own child. The
little urchin conducted himself with great effrontery, in-
sisting on having a conveyance to the Magistrates, which
twaaksen and,
acceded to by the constable. The evidence being
on the Magistrate intimating that be should
con snit him for trial, he inquired with astonishing slim'
I. old if it were not a bailable offence ? The lady who was
robbed manifested considerable unwillingness to prosecute ;
but she was bound over to do so in 401., and the other
witnesses in 20/. each. The boy, whose name is Gibbon,
, was then committed to St. Augustine's Gaol for trial at
the next Quarter Sessions, the offence having been perpe-
trated in the county.—Kentish Chronicle.

At the meeting of the mechanical branch of the British
Association for the advancement of science, on Monday,
Mr. Russell gave the following interesting information on
the subject of the motion of steam-vessels in shallow wa-
ter. It bad been found, he said, that several species of
waves were generated in shallow water. He called the
first of these the great wave of translation, as is dif-
fered from all other in not being a proper wave, but a
translation of one great body of water taking place with
an equal velocity throughout the whole depth. This
was generated by the motion of a body through the wa-
ter. This part of his discourse Mr. Russell illustrated by
the exhibition of several drawings. The first was of a
vessel at rest, placed at a given degree of immersion in a
fluid of certain depth. The next showed that by a motion
of four miles per hour, an anterior wave was generated,
the water accumulating at the sides and before the bows of
the vessel. This wave, Mr. Russell said, consisted of the
fluid which she displaced by her motion. If this motion
were increased, the anterior wave was increased. One of
the drawings represented an extreme case, which he had
witnessed, where, in a depth of five feet, the anterior wave
had so accumulated by increased speed, that the posterior
portion of the vessel was left in so little water, that her
rudder was knocked off against the bottom. The effect
of the anterior wave, which carried with it the whole
body of the water at equal velocity to the greatest
depth, was to raise the prow which was more deeply
immersed, and to depress the stem, as it were into.
a bottom, that she had the same difficulty to contend
with as if pressing up an inclined plane, binds the pres-
sure of water at the bows to get through. It was found,
also, that this wave moved with a given velocity, which►
was in proportion to the depth of the fluid. 'When in
a rectangular channel, four feet deep, the velocity of this
wave had been found to be as much as eight miles an
hour. The boat being stopped altogether, the wave con-
tinued to go on with a velocity of eight miles an hour ;
and he had himself followed a wave of this description for a
mile and a half, and had seen no diminution of its velocity.
It had been found that if the vessel could be so propelled
as to be placed through, or on the top of this anterior wave,
that if she were so constructed as to balance herself in this
position, the immersion of the other was diminished, the
sinking of the stern corrected, the resistance which was
offered before was overcome, and she was borne along at
greater speed. There were places where steam-navigation
to a great extent took place in shallow water : such were the
Thames and the Clyde, and he might mention the Mersey ;
but he thought the water was generally deeper there. Va-
rious methods had lately been suggested for the improve-
ment of rivers ; and it had struck him that he could not
apply his investigation to a better purpose than to the dis-
covery of how far they might bear on the improvement of
rivers. The wave of which he had spoken was generated
to an enormous extent in rivers where steam-vessels plied.
In one experiment he had seen a succession of them to the
extent of a mile and a half. In a channel, 500 yards wide
and seven feet deep, lie had seen in a vessel going at a very
slow rate, the immersion of the stem increased three feet
more than when she was at rest. In the anterior hollow
there were two currents, one formed by the water rushing
away from the bows, and another by its rushing
back into the hollow. This formed waves which had a
most destructive effect on the banks and bed of the channel.
It formed a large breaking and destructive surge which
rushed towards the banks and swamped any small vessel which
it met with in its progress. The lateral current rushed past
the paddles, and as it was passing in the same direction
that they revolved it caused them to have to make a greater
number of strokes to obtain power. The object of inquiry
was how these difficulties were to be removed ? Was it in
the width or depth of the channel, or in the formation of
the vessels ? The results of the investigations were—first,
that in proportion as the depth of the channel was increased,
in that proportion did the phenomena vanish. The first
question, then, was, should the river be deepened or widened
—should it have a rectangular or a triangular section. He
had found in an experiment which he had made, that a
vessel went at the rate of four miles an hour with 22 strokes
per minute from the engine ; with 35 strokes per minute
six miles per hour, and with GO strokes of the engine five
and half miles per hour ; and by no means could they get
her afterwards to go at a greater rate tl.an this,
though the power was raised to seventy strokes
per minute. In another instance, as they increased
the number of strokes they lost speed. The vessel
at first went seven miles per hour, then six and a
half, then six, then five and a half, and afterwards five miles
per hour, and they could not get any greater speed. The
reason was that when they started they had not made
any anterior wave, but as they pressed forward this
kept increasing till at last they had generated four feet
of water at their head. The next question was with regard
to the form of the channel. He had caused artificial chan-
nels to be made of a great variety of forms, both with rect-
angular, triangular, and semicircular sections. The ge-
neral result of these experiments was, that the rectangular
were the best. There was another description of waves,
which he called waves of equal displacement. These waves
were principally generated by vessels which were bluff in
the bows instead of tapering away in a gradual sweep.
They went away laterally, and depended entirely on the
form of the vessel. They could be obviated by making the
water-lines of the vessel of a particular curvature. Mr.
Russell, here, and in several other instances, illustrated his
meaning by drawing models with chalk. Without these
diagrams, it is impossible to convey an impression of his
meaning by mere words. He designated the line a con-
cave water-line. If, on the contrary, the bows were round
and broad, they generated those waves which on the
Thames caused so much injury to small craft. Mr. Fair-
bairn, of Manchester, and Mr. M‘Neile, had made a series
of experiments which, while they agreed with his theory,
fully proved its correctness.

PAISLEY.—This, we hope, is the last time we shall
require to notice the painful state of a portion of our able-
bodied working population being sustained by public con-
tribution. At the meeting of the Relief Committee last
night, it was agreed that the whole of the men should be
paid off this week, leaving to a sub-committee the power
of granting a little additional relief, to an amount not ex-
ceeding three days' pay to such extremely destitute cases
as they may think proper—the relief either to be given in
labour or provisions, as the committee may think proper.
For the last three days the number on the work list has
amounted to about 300. The soup-kitchen list is likewise
gradually diminishing, but that establishment is still to be
continued for a few weeks, for the assistance of poor females.
—Caledonian Mercury.
TURF GAINS.—When it first became known that
Edward Petra had fallen into difficulties, and was about
being exiled from his " good hall," I was spoken to by a
friend upon the subject, who said that he at least could
not ascribe his ruin to the turf, for no man had shared so
amply its good things. " You know," he continued, " that
he won three consecutive Legers, and the stakes alone
must have been a little fortune to him." ‘. I know," was
my reply, "that he won one Leger which never produced
a shilling of stakes, and I will tell you the circum-
stances of it that you may see how little the teal
facts of racing are known, save to those engaged in
them. In 1828, Mr. Petra won the Leger with the Colonel.
That horse he purchased from Mr. Marmaduke Wyville for
a sum of money, with the stipulation that if he won the
Leger, Mr. Wyville should be entitled to half the stake.
Some time previous to the race he was tried with Veloci-
pede, the result being that Velocipede won by a hundred
yards. This of course was a poser. Velocipede was known
to be a flyer, and now they had the actual proof that,
bairing accidents,' they could not beat hint. After a
good deal of diplomacy, it was finally arranged that should
either of the horses win, the stakes should be divided be-
tween Mr. Armitage, the owner of Velocipede, and Mr.
Petre. The day arrived, Velocipede ' had a leg,' and the
Colonel won ; whereupon Mr. Armitage pocketed one
moiety of the stakes, Mr. Marmaduke Wyville the other,
while Mr. Petre had all the honour, besides the gratifica-
tion of paying the expences, of the race."—llionthly ifa-

gatine.
EMIGRANTS IN AMERICA.—A correspondent of
a morning paper says—" I am just arrived, in the Eliza
Warwick, Captain Welch, from New York, in which city
I have been resident several months, and I boldly assert,
without fear of contradiction, that from the total suspension
of specie, as well as nearly all other payments, and the
total stagnation of trade, not less than 20,000 mechanics,
labourers, and others, have within a few months left New
York and its vicinity, numbers returning home, others go-
ing to Canada , some to perish in the Far West,' and not
a few becoming soldiers—i. e., food for powder, in the
Florida war against the Indians." Upon this subject we
may add the following from the New Yoi k Daily Express :
In the packet-ship Oxford, which sailed yesterday for
Liverpool, there were 130 steerage passengers returning to
their own country, finding it impossible to get employment
in this. Several thousands would do the same if they bad
the means."