News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 12, 1872

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times!”

The Financial Exhibit.

The ninth census returns give an aggregate of $9,261,775,121 as the true value of the farms of the United States. Adding $336,890,871 for agricultural implements, and $1,524,271,714 for domestic animals, and we have a total agricultural capital of $11,122,937,706 in 1870 against $7,983,301,641 in 1860, an increase in ten years of $3,139,636,065, or about 40 per cent. The total value of the agricultural productions of 1869 was $2,445,602,379, or about 22 per cent, upon the entire capital.

Four hundred and forty-five vessels belonging to or bound to or from ports in the United States were reported lost or missing during the year 1871, and their estimated value was $11,985,000.

Another Atlantic Cable.

A new company, which proposes to lay a telegraph cable direct to New York, has been registered. One of the features of its prospectus promises to fix the tolls on dispatches at twenty shillings per ten words.

Iron Steamships.

The House Committee on Naval Affairs have agreed to report a bill for the construction of 10 iron steamships at a cost of $3,000,000.

If the Russian newspapers represent public opinion, the Russians are delighted with the prospect that England and America will not be reconciled by the Washington Treaty. “England,” says one of them, “humiliated in Europe and America, loses her influential position in the West, while America continues to form bonds of friendship with Russia, and promises to be an important element in all future European questions. Russia can only congratulate herself on such a change in the situation.” The Moscow Gazette says the Catacazy affair has had no unpleasant consequences, so far as Russia and America are concerned.

England can hardly be so blind as not to become reconciled with this country, completely and speedily.

As an illustration of the personal interest which leads the House of Lords to look with disfavor on any movement for the separation of Church and State, it is computed that the two English archbishops dispose between them of 328 livings, of the total annual value of £111,872. The 25 bishops, 24 of whom sit in the House of Lords, have in their hands the appointment to 2,018 livings, with an aggregated annual income of £577,702. Of the temporal peers, nearly 300 are patron’s livings, and they divide between them 1,720 livings—an average of nearly six livings to each peer. The annual value of these livings is £461,362. The Lord chancellor has 800 livings at his disposal, of a total annual value of about £197,552. Add to these various items the stipends of the bishops and archbishops, amounting to £157,900, and the total annual value of the patronage exercised or enjoyed by the peers, spiritual and temporal, amounts to very nearly £848,000 a year.

The Moscow Gazette publishes a remarkable article upon the naval forces of Russia in the Baltic. It affirms that unless the Russian government should take decisive measures to fix the just limits of the influence of Germany, the Russian fleet in the Baltic will be rendered as decidedly useless, as it was formerly in the Black Sea.

The revolution in Mexico has assumed alarming proportions. In a recent battle between the government forces and the revolutionists, the former were routed and Zacatecas was occupied by the latter who levied a forced loan. The government has put a large army in the field to suppress the revolt.