We feel so strongly on one point, that - we must rtfer to it, before describing the conflagration which has now to be lamented. ho long immunity from great confla grations—no difficulties that may be sug gestible as arising from the existing state of the law—ought to be held as an excuse if the next session of the General Assembly is allowed ,to pass without step* being taken »to etiable some authority in each town in the Colony to di rect the pulling down of buildings wheat a fire is raging, and to hold that authority harmless from action for damages in any conceivable shape. The question may be a difficult one to deal with*; but it is some thing horribly ludicrou?, that the Fire Bri gade, the police, and the other authorities-, should be hand-tied, for the want of autho rity, and the consequent liability to pecu niary damage?, when all human probability is declaring that by pulling down or blow ing up some buildini, which must be burned if not otherwise destroyed, a large amount of other property may be saved. The matter should be discussed at once. Last night, when the chances were less than a "toss-up" in Javor of the flames extending across Moray Place, the certainty was that such a spread could have been prevented by using; one of the Armstrong puns, with blank cartridge, against the Criterion Hotel, in its then haJf- burned state. Down in the Octagon, —where the Brigade could not get, be cause the daaper was enormously greater on the of her side of the fire—several build ings were burned slowly down, which might now have been safe if one there had been levelled before the flames reached; it. There were those who were ready to undertake both the works we have in-

dicated; but all who were willing were paralysed. Nobody could give "authority:* most knew that the captain of the Fire Brigade had been sued lor puiling iowa a house, ami that some merchants had had to pay heavily for directing the pulling; down^ of a shanty which, if left standing, would probably have been the one link necessary to spread the Stafford street fire into Princes-street South. The alarm last night was given about twenty minute.? before eleven o'clock. Our reporter was in the Princess Theatre at the time. 