Morning journal and courier., 1885-12-04

A lively town meeting yesterday. New Haven is evidently not "going to the dogs' this year.
 Tbe shrieking infant newspaper of this city, which has no means of showing that it is alive except shrieking, had bad turn yes terday. ''Hush, little baby, don't you cry.
 You'll be an angel by and by."
 The Massachusetts Civil Service law, which secures tenure of office during good behavior and efficiency to clerks in the States service, specially denies such security to teachers in the public schools. They are required to be elected annually by the school conaraittse5, The Massachusetts teachers association has now asked that the law be so amended as to give teachers the same security that mere clerical servants of the State, and in Boston even laborers in the public employment, en- joy.
 The sale of church livings in England seems very queer te those not accustomed to it, and some instances are decidedly queer. The living at Wimbish, Essex, was put up at auction, but as only e5, ,000 was bid for it, and more was wanted, it was withdrawn. At the auction it was announced that "there is no rectory house, no residence is required nor any duty whatever on the part of the holder of the living" The same has been true of it for four hundred years, and cor respondent says that the law regulating these matters is such that any buyer of the rectory of Winbish could institute any clergyman however disreputable his character might be-in spite of and in defiance of all the bishops in the realm. This seems to be 8 most remarkable statement. The living is worth e650 per annum net.
 The English High Court of Appeal has decided an interesting case in which com plaint was brought against news agents who sold paper containing libel The case was decided in the defendants favor. The defendants had neither written nor printed the paper, and the utmost that could be said was that they disseminated libel. No doubt if they had had knowledge of what was in the paper and had disseminated it they would have been held to have published the libel, but here the jury distinctly found that they had not known the contents of the pa per. Ia effect the jury found the defendants innocent disseminators. If tho law was oth erwise every vender of newspapers in the kingdom would be liable. Such law would be unreasonable and unjust. Whenever the ruling of the law is such the people may be sure it forms no part of the actual law of En- gland.
 The investigations made by the Prussian Firedamp commission to ascertain the causes of explosions in mines show among other things that many explosions attributed to fredamp, or outbursts of gas, are really due to the fine coal dust in mines. It appears that all kinds of dust are capable of sxp1od- ing violently when ignited by such means as the electric spark and that the explosion ex- tends much further with coal dust than with firedamp. The experiments relative to this infammability of coal dust are stated to have been devised as nearly as possible in accord ance with the conditions prevailing in prac- tice and were carried on at the Koenig mine, Neunkirchen, Sarrebruck. A gallery, or drift, driven from the surface, was chosen as the place for treating the dust, means being also provided for keeping the particles in 8 state of violent agitation by currents of air. To provoke ignition of the dust the electric spark was made use of, means that is far from furnishing that volume of flame found by the French experimenters to be necessary to explode coal dust. The tests were many times repeated, more than two hundred times in all, explosions occurring in every case
 In his great speech at Rochdale John Bright discussed the business depression in England. He ascribes it to the overriding of business in certain branches where there have been, within few years, enormous profits made. He said: If you were to ge back ten years you would probably find that the num- Der of ships-largsr ships than ever before that has been built is so great as to astonish all men understanding the matter, as to how those ships were by any possibility to find eargoes. Things were very prosperous. Il know gentleman who told me that his firm, ship-owners, made profit of ZIG, ,000 on a single cargo-of single ship laden with wheat coming from San Francisco to this country. Take the trade in iron. I know a gentleman who has large iron works and col lieries and I recollect in the year 1S73-12 years ago-he told me that in the last year the dividend upon those works was 120 per cent.-that is that for every e1O0 of capital that he had in this business during that year he had cleared e120; and he said, "Things are pettinC very bad indeed for this year,,-