News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 28, 1873

News and Miscellany.

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

Financial and Commercial.

ONLY a light business is done in stocks. Foreign exchange is dull and nominal. Money is in better supply, and lent on call loan and on renewal at 7 per cent, gold. A better demand is reported in discounts. Greenbacks command a nominal premium of only ⅛ to ¼ per cent. Government bonds are quiet. The amount of English gold thus far received at New York is about $7,500,000; the amount on the way, $8,500,000. Of the sums received, over 5,000,000 have gone into the Assay Office for reco[in]age.—The Methodist.

In Brooklyn, last week, A. B. Trowbridge brought an action to recover the amount of a bill for furniture sold to Mrs. Barnum about two years ago. It was shown that T. W. Barnum, husband of the defendant, was insolvent, and that all he had was in his wife's name. He asserted that he purchased the goods, and that his wife had nothing to do with it, but the jury found a verdict for the plaintiff. This is a just judgment. We do not know a meaner act than that of a man who puts his property into his wife's hands, then contracts debts and refuses to pay them on the ground of his poverty. A prison is the proper place for such a man.—Golden Censer.

A DISPATCH dated Mexico, Oct. 2, says: “The priests of the Church of St. Lorenzo and all parishes have excommunicated all who recognize the constitution and reforms instituted by the government. The Jesuits have been ordered to leave the country at the first opportunity. The President issued a decree the day following the publication of the reforms and additions to the constitution proclaimed on the 25th ult., commanding all functionaries and government employees to affirm without reservation the reforms and guard, and cause to be guarded the additions to the constitution under penalty of forfeiture of position. Church and State shall be separated. Congress cannot make laws establishing or prohibiting any religion. Matrimony is to be a civil contract. Religious institutions cannot hold property.”

INSTEAD of abating its ravages at the approach of cool weather, the yellow fever is worse than ever at Shreveport, La. We print the following appeal from the Howard Association, as setting forth the state of affairs in authoritative language:—

To our fellow-citizens: Yellow fever, an epidemic that has already swept away more than 400 of the community, is still raging with unabated fury in our midst. We have now at least 700 sick of all ages, sexes, colors, and nationalities, all of whom, from the peculiar character of the disease, require constant and skillful nursing. In addition to this, there are hundreds of people left without a cent and without employment. Among these are many women and little children. All of them must for the present be provided for and fed by the Howard Association, for there is no work to do and no money to be had. The destitution in our midst is as heartrending as the disease itself, and there is a fearful number of deaths. The drain upon the funds of the Association has thus far been enormous, and the liberal aid sent us by our sister cities is nearly exhausted. Under these painful circumstances we are forced to make this general appeal to the country for additional aid. We have people among us suffering, in want, and dying, from all sections of the Union and from all nations, and we feel that the great public heart will respond to this appeal, extorted by the most dire necessity. Our own resources are nearly exhausted. The wealthy are broken down, the poor are threatened with actual starvation, the sick and dying are about to be deprived of the commonest comforts humanity can offer them. We appeal, not to our fellow-countrymen, but to our fellow-men, for aid.

L. E. Simmons, President Howard Association.

THE Committee of Liquidation of Ecclesiastical Property, appointed under the law for the abolition of religious corporations in Italy, yesterday took possession of six convents in Rome. The rectors read protests, which the committee accepted, and then handed to each inmate a certificate for his future income. The United States and Portuguese Consuls also protested against the seizure of certain portions of the Franciscan convent, on the ground that they were the property of citizens of their respective countries.

The General of the Society of Jesuits was officially notified by the Government that the order must immediately vacate the premises now occupied by them in Rome.

A Contrast.

A ROMAN CATHOLIC paper published in New York furnishes the following testimony to the difference between the Methodists and the Roman Catholics as to the intelligence of the people:—

“The sales of the Methodist Book Concern amount to nearly one million dollars per annum—a sum more than equal to the receipts from all the Catholic books published in the United States by the English Catholic publishing houses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Then look at the circulation of their Sunday-school papers—304,000 copies of one—while with us the Young Catholic has only reached 154,000 copies, and the other two or three papers do not reach 3000 each; yet be it remembered the Catholics number twice as many as the Methodists. Within the last three years, leaving out school books and a few controversial books, one could count on the fingers of one's two hands all the Catholic books within a year after publication, which reached a bona fide sale of 1500 copies. After the first year they circulate at the rate of 250 per year, hardly enough to pay interest on the capital invested. The Catholic laity, as a body, buy no books. Those that would buy are too often without money, and those who have the money are too often without taste for reading.”