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News and Miscellany

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 23, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 29, No. 20.

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News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi, 3.
New Epidemic.—A fatal disease termed Meningitis has prevailed for some time past in several places on Long Island. It attacks persons in robust health, and is generally fatal in forty-eight hours. The membranes of the brain and spinal chord are inflamed, and the whole muscular system is subjected to strong contraction. Reaction and stupor follow, into which the patient sinks and dies. In every case, so far as heard from, except one, death has supervened.
Diseased Chickens.—We learn that there is very prevalent now, among barn-yard fowls, a disease that is particularly fatal to the chickens. They are dying by hundreds all over the country. It is possible that some of these diseased fowls are brought to our daily markets. Our citizens should be very careful in making purchases of defunct chickens.—Cincinnati Commercial.
—The cholera is expected at St. Louis this summer—several cases have even been reported already—and the Board of Health of that city are making every effort to ward it off.
—The London Times, while recognising the right of Russia to cede possessions on this continent to the United States, thinks its exercise indicates a disposition on the part of the Russian Bear and the American Eagle, to form an alliance against the rest of the world, and especially against England and France. It asserts that American politicians “admire Russian autocracy and manage to discover strange affinities between it and their own form of government,” and that they “fancy that French Imperialists and English Constitutionalists are in conspiracy with each other to propagate despotic principles in the New World.”
France.—Trade throughout France is very dull and great popular discontent prevails. Apprehension of war, disappointment in regard to the effects of the great exhibition upon trade, and the oppressiveness of the new army organization, are the leading causes of the discouragement.
Prince Napoleon, Joseph, son of Jerome Bonapart by his second wife, Miss Patterson of Baltimore being his first, has not got over his quarrel with the Emperor. In order to avoid being present at the opening of the Paris Exhibition he left a day or two previously for Havre, where he was to remain a month. It will be recollected that the Prince is son-in-law of Victor Emanuel, King of Italy, and in the event of the death of the little Prince Imperial, stands most conspicuous as the Emperor’s successor.
—The Moniteur, the official organ of the French government, yesterday contained a pacific editorial on European politics. The cable does not inform us whether it squarely denied the reports that have been circulated relative to the Luxemburg negotiations, which it would of course have been easy to do, were they untrue. Meanwhile the latest dispatches have a more warlike look than anything previously received. Bismark has sent a peremptory demand to Napoleon for the reason of the military preparations going on in France; and at the same time the garrisons of the German fortresses are being strengthened, and preparations are making for the rapid transportation of troops. Still it is to be remembered that the authority for all these statements is not given. They may be false. They may be dreadfully true. The life of the Princess of Wales is despaired of. The Sultan has sent Omar Pacha to command against the insurgents in Thessaly.—Det. Trib., April, 13.
Military Re-organization in South Germany.—The military reorganization of the Southern forces is being seriously taken in hand. The Baden Government has borrowed 6,000 needle guns from Prussia, to exercise their soldiers with until those ordered are delivered. The Bavarian Government, too, is stated, in a Berlin paper, to have bespoken 60,000 helmets of the Prussian pattern, of a Berlin manufacturer. That the Hanover military question has been ultimately disposed of by the acceptance of Prussian commissioners on the part of the great majority of the ex-officers is another victory of unity ideas over military prejudices.—Berlin Correspondence of the London Times.
—The rumors of a European complication, which have been rife for some days past, are thus explained by a dispatch from London: “It is now known that the Emperor Napoleon, deeming the possession of Luxemburg indispensable for the military security of the French frontier, not long since commenced negotiations with the King of Holland for the purchase of the Grand Duchy and its incorporation with the French Empire. But as the fortress of Luxemburg, which is one of the strongest fortifications in Europe, is held by a Prussian garrison, and the Prussian Government, backed by the whole of Germany, firmly objects to the transfer of the Duchy to France, the King of Holland has withdrawn from any further negotiations on the subject. The French Emperor insists that his propositions shall be carried out and the treaty completed. The national pride of France has been deeply wounded, and a wild anti-Prussian feeling has seized the country. Meantime, while the dispute is pending, both Prussia and France are making military preparations.”
Important Revolution in South America.—Advices from Panama present a picture of anarchy and military despotism in Columbia.
Mosquera had finally broken up the Congress by military force and imprisoned sixty-eight Senators and Representatives, among them ex-President Murillo, his rival at the next election.
It was expected that his next object of attack would be Panama, and that the State of that name would in all likelihood declare itself free and independent.
The Re-Opening of the Eastern Question.—There seems to be a general expectation in Europe that the “eastern question,” which never stays long settled, is to be reopened this summer, and possibly to assume larger proportions than ever before. All the governments are increasing their armaments, and with every motive to peace among themselves, they are vigorously preparing for war. It is the eastern question that thus puts them on the alert. They foresee the prospect of a general revolt in the European provinces of Turkey, and they mean to stand ready to interfere for the proper reconstruction of the map of Europe after the Turk is finally driven out. This would seem to be the next great step in the restoration and consolidation of nationalities, which is now the conspicuous tendency everywhere. European Turkey is Turkish only by conquest, and by a permanent process of subjugation. Of the sixteen millions of people inhabiting the Turkish provinces in Europe, less than one-fourth are Turks. The rest are chiefly Greeks and Armenians, with a few Jews, the Greeks being the prevailing race in all the western and southern provinces, which were formerly part of the Greek empire. There is no assimilation of the races, nor is likely to be if they live together for many centuries to come. They are still as unlike in religion, customs, manners, modes of thought, and every characteristic, as when first the crescent supplanted the dominion of the cross, and scarcely less hostile. Society is a state of perpetual warfare; the Christians have no adequate protection against the rapacity and cruelty of the Mussulmen, and the poor Jews are victims to both Christians and Mohammedans.
The Cretans still hold out bravely, and there are preparations for revolt in Servia and Thessaly. There would be a general rebellion in the principalities that are properly Grecian, if there were only the Turkish power to be resisted. But the European governments are likely to interfere, not from love of Turkey, but jealousy of each other. This is the security of the Porte, and has been for a long time. If the other great powers could agree as to the partition to be made of the principalities, they would stand aside and allow Turkey to fall to pieces, as is the tendency, and must ultimately be the fact. Greece ought to recover the principalities that were once her own and are still predominantly Greek in population and interest. Russia covets the principalities south of her own territory, and would not know where to stop short of Constantinople itself. Austria would put in claims to the principalities “convenient” to her own border, but is hardly strong enough now to press her claims with any great urgency, unless backed by France and England for the sake of holding in check the ambition of Russia. The latter power is supposed to be secretly instigating the Turkish populations to revolt, with a view to the promotion of her own designs in that quarter. What the result will be, or what the course of France, England and Prussia, if there shall be a general revolt in European Turkey, must for the present remain open to conjecture. For the time the eastern question bids fair to be a prominent one on the other side of the Atlantic. It is possible that the idea of the extension of her dominion in the East is one of the considerations that makes Russia willing to relinquish her territory upon this continent.—Springfield Repub.