News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 19, 1871

News and Miscellany.

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

Persia.—The Levant Herald says the deaths at Tabreez, Persia, still average 240 per day. The Christians and Mussulmen are camped in the mountains, and business is entirely stopped. The Persian army has been disbanded. Storms and inundations have almost entirely destroyed the bazars and gardens in the vicinity of Tabreez.

The West Indies.—The hurricane of the 21st ult. occasioned immense damage. In the island of Antigua every estate was damaged. In the island of Tortola, five churches were blown down or shattered by the hurricane. In the island of St. Kitts, 800 houses were destroyed, and 40 estates were nearly ruined. In the island of Saba, the growing crops were destroyed.

From Rome we learn that the Clerical party are preparing for a demonstration on the 20th inst., and that the “Reds” are resolved to make a counter demonstration. Trouble is anticipated. The Alfier Society threatens to burn the Vatican. Precautions have been taken against the execution of the design; but, in case an attempt should be made and anarchy should ensue, the residence of the pope will be protected by the flags of the foreign ambassadors. . . . The pope has sent a letter to M. Thiers congratulating him upon the continuance of his term of office. . . . The papal journals contain severe criticisms upon Napoleonism.

The Susquehanna Valley Home, an institution for orphan children at Binghamton, N. Y., has been brought into questionable repute. On Tuesday, August 29, Elijah Castle, a citizen of Binghamton, discovered a boy about nine years old on Oak St., walking slowly along, his motion being impeded by a heavy piece of wood, which was chained to his neck. The boy was taken to the city jail, where the rivets were filed away and his neck released. The superintendent of the Home is the Rev. Mr. Van Epps. Two committees, one of nine gentlemen and the other of ten ladies, are now engaged in examining the affairs of the Home. A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Van Epps, who is in Boston. The principal charges are made by a respectable widow, Mrs. Mary Backnam, who worked at the Home for a month, and then left because she could not endure to see the inmates abused as they were.

Judge Bedford, in his charge to the Grand Jury on Wednesday, denounced emphatically the crime of abortion, which recent developments show to be rife in the community, exhorting the jury to deal with it in the most uncompromising way. “Let the warning word this day go forth, and may it be scattered broadcast throughout the land, that from this hour the authorities, one and all, shall put forth every effort and shall strain every nerve until these professional abortionists, these traffickers in human life, shall be exterminated and driven from existence, and the majesty of the law be fully vindicated in all cases of this fiendish character.”

Great Britain.—A terrible explosion occurred on Wednesday morning in a coal mine near the town of Wigan, in Lancashire. Some fifty persons who were in a seam of the mine at the time of the catastrophe were cut off from communication with the outer world, and suffocated by foul air. A party sent down to ascertain the condition of the men who had been buried alive, also perished.

Mrs. Margaret Finley, living near Wabash, Ind., murdered her three children on the 6th inst. She took her babe by the feet and beat its brains out on a stone, and cut the throats of her two eldest children, aged nine and eight years respectively. The woman was arrested and lodged in jail. She is a widow, her husband having died last winter. She seems perfectly sane, and says she killed the children to get rid of them.

The northern forts around Paris are about to be evacuated by the German troops, after which the Army of Occupation will be withdrawn from French territory at the rate of 3,000 per day; the Department of the Seine alone remaining in possession of the Germans until the third half milliard francs of indemnity is paid. . . . An interview has been arranged between M. Thiers and Prince Gortschakoff, to take place soon, at Lausanne, in Switzerland. . . . The Assembly has adopted a bill laying the burden of the losses caused by the war on the whole nation, and providing for the immediate distribution of 106,000,000 francs among the sufferers by the insurrection of the Commune. Several of the females engaged in firing buildings in Paris during the last days of the Commune have been sentenced to death, while others have received sentences to solitary imprisonment in a fortress.

The Tammany Ring of N. Y. city has, at last, broken up and come to grief. Last week Judge Barnard granted a temporary injunction against their further use of the city treasury; and a motion for making the injunction perpetual is now being argued, with a fair prospect that it will be granted. In the meantime, there is dire consternation among the Ring Officials. Some of them are placing their property out of their hands; the mayor has officially called on the comptroller to resign his office; and the amazing announcement is made that the comptroller’s office has been robbed of many important vouchers, which were to be used in the pending suits against them.

Our Commerce.—The Bureau of Statistics has compiled tables of the foreign trade of the United States during the year 1870 as compared with former years. An examination of them shows that over seventy-three per cent of our entire foreign trade in 1869 and over seventy-nine per cent in 1870 were carried in foreign bottoms; that the excess in value of imports over exports was, in 1869, $68,692,422; while last year it was only $2,214,493; and that the value of foreign commodities remaining in warehouse December 31, 1870, was $55,620,635, as compared with $51,763,412 in 1869.