{"newspaper_name": "The New York herald.", "edition": "01", "page": "p2", "byline": ""}
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they less common sense and prudence than former.
ly! Is human nature degenerating to level with
the lower animals, and lower, in not retaining ability
to take of and provide against and avoid dan
ger.


1t can hardly be. There must be more than acci-
dent in all these fires, hurricanes of destruction and
explosions. Ana yet 1t is not easily that the mind
entertains these suspicious. Dishonesty vice, and
wrecklessness do unhappy abound in this city, but
what fragrant and abandoned degree of criminal-
y must prevail in society, if it can produce ready
instruments of entaillng wholesale misery on unof
Tending communities. The footpad can reve in his
spos-the assassin may have plea in the wild ius
tice ofrevenge-bad men rarely, in any case. to-
talybere ofsome preext to offer in extenuationwhen
arraIgned for their acts but the utmost ingenuity
can say nothing to charge or account for the malice
of the incendiary. And yet there is no aenyInp it.
there have been incendiarles-such miracles of vii
lany have been detected, and punished, and exposed
before an amazed public, too clearly even for the
conscientious scrupes of the foes of capital punish
ment to doubt and cavi as is their custom.


II is hard to come to any definite conclusion as 10
the cause of the various fires we have adyerted TO-
Regarding them as accidental invoices the assump
ton of beastly stupidity; belief in their being pro-
duced by design implies the admission of a degree
of ferocious wckedness as existing in society. such
would be repudiated as not even plausible in ro
nance AT present the matter is involved in a sort
of mystery; and after all, the simple Canadians. who
fancied they saw the destroying angel lowering over
the devoted suburbs Of Quebec, may be pardoned
the superstition in consideration Of the gloom and
mystery in which the real cause of this, as well as
all the recent calamities Of similar kind are vet
enveloped