The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-06-16 00:00:00

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hirshipi, and Lord Francis 'Egetinii, ivho fiat appid: ' tiOti to the miticig of theii go blinded by taieeit, afid
priated a sum of money to be yearly distributed hi self-interest as are the majority of the persons corn-
books for the most deserving—have come forward in posing that body ; but these busy-bodies form a mere
aid of the objects of the Institution ; and we may also fraction of the community to whom we are desirous
refer to the very praiseworthy efforts made by the mas- that our zealous and talented member should have -an
ters in the distribution of books to their most deserving opportunity of addressing himself.
scholars. In addition, we are compelled to notice, as

LO CA fa NB iV S

amongst the most pleasing of the features attendant
upon these examinations, the most expressive and pa-
ternal manner in which their results were conveyed
to the different you ng gentlemen by our worthy senio
The advice, as to their future life and the
commendation bestowed upon the past, will, we trust,
be remembered as tenaciously as it was faithfully and
sincerely tendered.
We cannot conclude these few remarks without ex-
pressing our sense of the able manner, and spirit and
zeal, with which the affairs of the Collegiate Institution
are conducted. And at the same time we must appeal
to the leading conservative ladies and gentry of our
town to co-operate with them more heartily than they
have done hitherto. In particular, we refer to the lec-
tures which have been given. These have been, thus
far, of a very superior character for talent and interest.
They have been presented with every aid to the com-
fort and convenience of the audiences. And yet, on
more than one occasion, we regret to have observed a
somewhat slender attendance of those classes whose
presence would most conduce to the welfare of the In-
stitution. We hope this will not continue to occur, as
by that means the sterling value of the lectures—their
talent—must for the future be very sensibly deteriorated.
We may remark that the attendance of the pupils and
members has on all occasions been excellent; and, for
their sakes, we hope that nothing will intervene to
lesson the value of a boon which is sought after with
such avidity.

ST. THONIAS'S CHURCH, TOXTETII-PARK.—A license
has been granted lor the celebration of marriages at this
church.
MERCHANT SEAMEN'S ACT.—We are glad to learn that
a petition in favour of an amendment of the Merchant Sea-
men's Act, and to which nearly seven thousand signatures
are attached, has been forwarded to our representative Lord
Sandon for presentation to the House of Commons.
SUMMER ASSIZES.—The following are the days and places
appointed for holding the Summer Assizes for the Northern
Circuit, before Mr. Justice Wightman and Mr. Justice
Cresswell :—York, Wednesday, July 12 ; Durham. Wed-
nesday, July 26 ; Newcastle, Wednesday, August 2 ; Carlisle,
Monday, August 7 ; Appleby, Thursday; August 10 ; Lan-
caster, Saturday, August 12 ; Liverpool, August 17.
LIVERPOOL PROTESTANT BENEVOLENT SOCIETY'—It
will be seen by an advertisement in our paper of this day,
that the Annual Dinner of the above excellent and praise-
worthy institution will take place on Monday the 19th inst.
We understand that several of the honorary members have
signified their intention of attending, and that Mr. Joseph
Cooper, one of the oldest among them, has, with his wonted
kindness, consented to take the chair on that occasion. We
are glad to hear that the funds and its numbers are on the
increase

Rector

We have this day the painful task of recording ano-
ther of those disastrous conflagrations, which have of

late conferred so injurious a notoriety upon our town.
Another extensive and valuable property, affording

employment to a considerable number of our indus-
trious population, has fallen a sacrifice ; and there is
too much reason to suspect that the calamity is attri-
butable, alone, to the act of an incendiary

A refer-

ence to our report, elsewhere, will afford evidence,
little short of conclusive, that no mere carelessness—
no spontaneous combustion—no accident of predis-
posing causes—has occasioned the destruction of 'the
premises of the Messrs. Crofts. The buildings them-
selves were of the most perfect construction.' Their
management was of the most careful description.
They were safe up to the last moment at which they
could be examined by the servants of their owners ;
and, most striking fact of all, the locality, in which
combustion appears to have commenced, was one en-

tirely removed from any reasonable probability of acci-
dental ignition.

Coupling these facts with the very strong suspicion
which has attached to the origin of the recent fires at
the Duke of Bridgewater's warehouses, and indeed of
other recent fires in Liverpool, it cannot but strike any
reflecting man that it is time, and full time, that a
searching examination should be entered upon, and
resolutely followed up, for the purpose of arriving, if
possible, at the sources of destruction of property so
deplorable—destruction, too, so injurious to the welfare
of the town itself. Incendiarism the most wicked and
deliberate can scarcely he denied to exist. It is almost

weekly occasioning the sacrifice of valuable property—
not that only which the devouring element consumes,
but of the very reputation of the port, as one safe for
the warehousing within its limits of produce of any
description. We have been told of loose management.
We have been amused with accounts of the almost
maniacal practices of warehouse owners and ware-
housemen, porters, and others, employed in this de-
partment of our trade. These, however, can have
nothing to do with the existence of incendiarisnz. The
case before us is not that of a warehouse at all ! And
we must, therefore, cast our eye much beyond such
mere paltering—and spiteful paltering it is—with the
question at issue, and endeavour to reach, what is the
only material subject for inquiry, the cause and the in-
struments of this demoniacal crime.
Wherever we have hitherto traced the career of the
incendiary, we have ever found him some moody,
sullen maniac, or some brutalised and senseless being,
worked up to the commission of his deeds of destruc-
tion by private injury, or fancied injury, or by some
political delusion. The outrages of Itibbonism, or
Whiteboyism, in Ireland, are distinctly traceable
to a distinct cause. We can conceive readily the
inducing motives of a " Swing." We can as
readily conceive the motives which have induced
the turn-out workmen in our manufacturing districts
to burn the very factories in which they were earning
their bread. But where have we the same ground of
reasoning to go upon in the cases before us, and in
many recent cases which have occurred in Liverpool ?
How can we trace to any of these inducements or hn-
pulses the cases of the Duke's Warehouses or Messrs.
Crofts' Soapery ? We have no evidence, and none,
we believe, exist, that there is any misunderstanding be-
tween either of these parties and their workmen.
Passion, then, or misguided conviction with respect to

communicating with the other at

the ends

Me character of the act, can have had no portion in
inducing the crime; and here appears to be the diffi-
culty of attaining even a guess at the persons or de-
gree of the perpetrators. •

We must go, therefore, beyond this beaten track of
investigation; and humiliating to human nature it is
to have to do so! We must ask are there no classes
in this country, and in this town, sufficiently debased
to rush upon even the crime of incendiarism, for the
profit, for the additional employment, which the oc-
currence of calamity affords ? And, more than this,
are there not employed in some departments of our
multifarious industry, men so bitterly hostile to every
thing which bears the name, or upholds the strength,
of England—so fatally in the power of secret treason,
lurking in the very heart of our large towns—that they
would scarcely pause at the precipitation of a calamity
however certain to be widely spread, to ask themselves
any more than the question whether or not they could
do so with impunity !

We feel imperatively called upon to throw out these
few hints, for the consideration of our local magistracy,
who will no doubt be induced by this new instance of
the spread of incendiary crime amongst us, to use in-,
creased activity and vigilance for the detection of the
perpetrators. We would not for a moment fasten a
stigma such as this upon any class of our fellow-towns-
men, or fellow-countrymen. But when we look at the
miserably ignorant, and degraded, and, we may add,
excited and inflamed men, who are to be found occu-
pying, in this great town, departments of labour which
bring them into the position to do the very mischief
which is going on around us, we may surely ask, is
that proper precaution used in that selection, which is
consistent with the magnitude of the power to injure
placed in their hands ?

At the next council meeting Mr. Parker intends to
bring forward a motion for rescinding a resolution re-
cently adopted for the erection of the new gaol on the
site of Wavertree Hall. As a general principle we are
opposed to the re-opening of questions which have
been discussed, and upon which a vote has been taken ;
but there may be, and sometimes are, occasions when
it is advisable no; to adhere too closely to such a rule,
and as there is a strong feeling out of doors against
the appropriation of this land for the intended build-
ing, grounded upon several forcible reasons which we
need not enumerate, nn opportunity will be afforded to
those who -are desirous of carrying out the resolutio
of the council, of answering the various arguments
which will be brought forward against carrying it into
effect. Of course we are bound to defer to the strongly-
expressed opinions of the scientific men who have been
consulted, that the situation can be thorougly drained ;
but it is confidently affirmed that sufficient cannot be
accomplished in this way to secure the health of the
inmates.

We publish in another column a full report of the
speech of Sir Howard Douglas in the House of Com-
mons on the 15th May last, as we find it in Hansard's
Reports. We are induced to do this, as affording our
gallant representative an opportunity of explaining
fully his reasons for recording the vote against which
exception has been taken by the Anti-Monopoly Asso-
ciation of this town, and which that factious and med-
dling body has so modestly "denounced." Of course
we do not expect that the arguments of Sir Howard,
plain and unanswerable as they are, will carry convic-

CHARGE OF ASSAULT AGAINST A SCHOOLMASTES'.
Evan Claytor, a schoolmaster at Liscard, was charged, at
the petty sessions there, with cruelly beating one of his pu-
pils, a little boy, son of Mr. Leicester, butcher, at Seacombe.
From the statement of Mr. Ellis, surgeon, and the appear-
ance of the boy, it appeared that he bad been very severely
beaten with a cane, and had had a narrow escape of being
lamed for life. The magistrates; after expressing their opi-
nion that the conviction of the defendant would materially
injure the defendant in his profession, and therefore it was
not necessary to inflicts heavy penalty, ordered him to pay
a fine of Ns., the expenses of the medical attendant 155.,
and the costs of the case.
THE 14VICATHER.—The weather has now undergthae a most
beneficial change, and we entertain the hope that it is at length
decidedly settled. Altho' up to Tuesday fires had heen used
by most persons in their sitting rooms, we are glad to say
that they are now generally discentinued ; indeed yesterday
and on Wednesday the sun-shone• brilliantly, and the two
days possessed all the characteristics of midsummer. We
perceive, however, that the weather is very different in the
south ; in London. on Tuesday the rain poured down in tor-
rents the whole day, and Wednesday according to the me-
tropolitan papers was a cold, damp, " sloppy" day. The
weather has, however, undergone generally throughout the
country a " blessed and seasonable" change.
ST. PETER'S WARD.—The election of a representative for
this ward in the Town Council took place on Tuesday, before
the alderman (Mr. Turner) and the two assessors of the ward,
at the Horse and Jockey Tavern, Seel-street. The polling •
booth opened exactly at 9 o'clock, and a few minutes after-
wards, Mr. John Smith (the late member for West Derby
Ward) tendered the first vote for Mr. John Stewart. the
gentleman put in nomination by the Conservatives. Several
other votes were afterwards received, but no other candidate
was proposed. • At twenty minutes past ten o'clock, no vote
having been tendered for an hour, the alderman declared the
election closed, and that Mr. Stewat t had been duly returned.
A worthy substitute has thus been found for Mr. Samuel
Holme ; and " Gibraltar" has been taken without the enemy
having dared to show the bright-ness of his countenance.
MR. ADDASIS'S LECTURES AT THE COLLEGIATE INSTI-
TUTION.-011 Tuesday evening, Mr. Addams delivered, at
the theatre of the institution, the concluding lecture of his
series of seven, on voltaic and magnetic electricity, before a
highly-gratified audience, amongst which were many ladies.
He commenced by stating, that he had now to submit an
interesting portion of his subject, namely, Thermo-magnetic
Electricity, which implied that beat had an influence in pro-
ducing electric currents; and thence he would deduce the
fact that currents of electricity must be passing over the
earth itself from east to west—the sun being a primary cause,
and the motion of the earth another—and these currents
acted upon the needle as we found them. The magnetisth of
a bar of steel was effectually destroyed by submitting it to a
red heat, as in that state it lost its power of maintaining the
order of electric currents, and this alone proved that heat
prevailed over electricity. Mr. Barlow and others had com-
pared the in4pence of heat upon the magnetic condition of
various kinds of iron, and found this fact. The magnetic
influence of cold cast iron, and cold carburretted or malleable
iron, was very different. Cold beaten iron possessed 30° of
magnetic power, and cast iron only 21°. A cold bar of the
former attracted the needle 40° out of its bearing, and a cast
iron one only 21°; when heated to a white temperature they
had no effect, but when at that heat called by smiths " a red
heat," cast iron had a power of 62‘) and malleable of 45°.
When the bars were about to melt they had no power over
the magnetic needle, however near it was placed, but as they
began to cool magnetism became evident, and its power was
at its maximum when the iron had cooled to a blood-red
heat, scarcely visible by daylight. To show the iefluence of
heat in directing electricity in metals, he produced a small
quadrangle or square, resembling a picture-frame, two of the
opposite sides of which were of bismuth and the two others
of antimony, mitred together and soldered at the corners.
The electricity in either metal had no particular direc-
tion. But by heating one of the metals at one of the
corners or joints, and leaving the rest in a cold state,
the electricity began to circulate. He placed a small and
delicate magnetic needle within the frame, and applying
the flame of a small lamp under one of the joints, the electric
current passed from the bismuth into the copper, and moved
the needle rounitein one direction : but when he heated the
opposite corner (of the other metal) the effect was reversed,
and it turned in the opposite direction. So long as the
tempreature of the joint was greater than the rest of the
metal, there would be a current of electricity. When the
frame contained a number of elements the power would be
increased, but there was a limit to this, for if they were in-
creased in proportionate size to the frame, nothing was
gained. The same effect was shown by a great number of
metals, and tables of them, in the order in which they stood
as conductors of electricity (as we understood him), had
been arranged. He called attention to these, the first of
which was in the following order :—bismuth, platinum, till,
lead, brass. copper, zinc, iron, antimony. Electricity set
out r-

_rom the btsruottl down. 1:11e copper wus nem LU
recipient from the bismoth, and the deliverer of it back. He
then showed a very beautiful thermo-electric experiment, by

means of a very small but sensitive instrument, which, on
being but breathed upon at one end, had, through two pieces
of copper wire, so great an effect upon a fine magnetic
needle within a glass case that it drew it in a different direc-
tion, and when slightly .heated in a like manner at the other
end produced a reverse motion. By thus heating a piece of
metal more in one place than another a sort of telegraph
could be made, or it might be indicated how the temperature
was going on in a stove-house, or in a furnace. This thermo-
electric machine, consisting of alternate little bars of bismuth
and antimony, each 11 inches long, and ith of an inch square,
the one meta

copper wires. After showing some further experiments; he
explained voltaic electric induction, or the effects of currents
of electricity coming against each other. Metals had an
electric effect if moved to and fro, or in any direction. Ile
showed that by putting a small plate of zinc and another of
copper into acid and water, and applying them to a fine magnet,
the direction of the electric current could be ascertained. One
pleasing experiment was shown by a vertical copper wheel with
a magnet placed on each side, but not touching it. If the wheel
be placed with its axis east and west, and turned round, the
earth's magnetism will act upon it, and occasion currents of

electricity io run from the circumferences into the axis, and
vice versa according as it is rotated, one way or the other, as
was manifested by the galvanometer. This was an import-
ant experiment, for the wheel being of matter riot ordinarily
magnetized it might be considered an epitome of the rotation
of the earth itself. By turning it as the earth turns the elec-
tricity came out of its equator, and entered its poles. By
moving it in the contrary direction, that is from east to west,
the electricity would come out of the axis of the wheel and
entar the equator. Here the current of electricity was very
great in quantity, as he would show by another similar appa-
ratus, used in a different mode. He took a circular copper-
plate, placed on a vertical axis, and which might be turned
round by a wheel connected with it. All iron was avoided in
its construction. He suspended a bar of iron about an inch
over the wheel, by a thread and a little stirrup of paper, and
the wheel being rapidly turned the magnet also turned round
rapidly. in either direction, though not touching it ; but a
bar of iron, not magnetized, placed in the same position, re-
mained quiescent, however quickly the wheel was turned.
He next showed a magnet revolving on its own axis, and
afterwards the extraordinary, but only momentary, electric
effect of suddenly thrusting a bar magnet into a wooden cylin-
der, wrapped round with a coil of copper wire, and communi-
cating by wires with a fine needle. The instant it was put in
with the poles in one direction the needle moved round, and
when put in on the other it moved in the opposite direction.
This apppeared to be caused by an instantaneous wave or
shock, which as instantly died away. The lecturer then
showed some beautiful experiments with a magneto-electric
machine, working with a wheel, the construction and action
of which he fully explained. It was, however, too complex
(in large magnets, &c,) to be described here. By this a con-
tinuity of electric sparks was kept up, similar to those pro-
duced by an electrical machine, and capable of giving electric
shocks, sufficiently powerful even for those of rather strong
nerves. By this he ignited paper dipped in spirits of wine,
and other combustibles, and also warmed wire to a visibly
red heat. It showed, too, the influence, by means of
coils of wire one within the other, of one current of electri-
city upon another, and the wonderful effect (demonstrated by
the sparks) of making and breaking their conduction. He
also decomposed water by the apparatus. Towards the close
he advtrted-ttr the various sources from.which-we might ad-
duce the magnetism of the earth and its motion, one-half
heated at a time, and the othernot ; the minor influence of light
upon it; its stratification and components of rocks, granite,
slate, and the water lodged in its cavities, operating us plates
of a voltaic pile, and so producing electricity. It was be-
sides to be observed that the veins of metal found in this
country run from east to west, and that was the direction in
which the currents of electricity themselves went round the
globe. These things would have a tendency to move the
earth on its axis, and there was reason therefore to believe
that electricity was one of those mighty agencies, fundamen-
tally beyond human comprehension, by which the Divine
Architect regulated the revolving world of matter, the motion
of which being made upon its axis could be perpetuated even
though it had to pass through a resisting medium. He had
now brought the subject to a close, and included every im-
portant illustration available within time limits of these lec-
tures, and thereby redeemed the promise he had made in the
outset. He cordially thanked his auditors for the marked
attention with which they had listened to his instructions,
and the kind feeling manifested throughout amongst them.
And he could not retire without expressing the great plea-
sure he had felt in addressing so highly respectable a body in
that magnificent institution, and the gratification he should
feel, if they, on a future occasion, required his services in ex•
plaining that branch of science to which he had addressed
himself.—lle was loudly applauded in his several interesting
experiments, and was repeatedly. cheered from all parts of
the house at the close. Several ladies and gentlemen after-
wards " partook'.' of shocks from the magneto-electric ma-
chine, the varied effect of which upon their nerves was pro-
ductive of considerable amusement. We cannot take leave
of 11Ir. Addams on this occasion without tendering hint our
humble raced of praise, for the general clearness of his ex - planations,.and the beauty of his experiments, accomplished
byavourarid superior apparatus. In en-
a large quantity of y
g to give even costla
sketch of each lecture, we have
laboured under some difficulties, and may possibly have
fallen into some slight mistakes—first, from our own inade-
quate acquaintance with this peculiar and extraordinary sci-
ence ; and secondly, from the impossibility of hearing dis-
tincty all that the lecturer stated, owing to the reverbera-
tion of the voice in the theatre, which, though well attended,
is of such capacity for an audience that it was on no one occa-
sion sufficiently fitted to counteract this, if we may so call it,
defect. We have also been uecessited to pass Over many ex-
periments from not being provided with diagrams. We
know, however, of no more rational mode of spending an
agreeable hour or two than in attemiiiig, to such expositions
and illustrations, which blend solid information with arouse-
!lln, and shall be glad when in the general routine of sub-
jects,et Mr. Addams is again invited to appear amongst us,
assured as we feel that he will avail himself of all the novel-
royements in the science which may in the mean-
tie
sand
meidepveloped.