OCCASIONAL NOTES.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 41, 17 July 1874, Page 3

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

(From the “ Pall Mall Gazette.) M. de Lesseps, we arc glad to learn, has given way, and withdrawn his threat to close the Suez Canal to the commerce of the world. The firm attitude of the Porte and the Khedive, and the probability that they would act upon their intention as notified to M. Lchseps, and take possession of the canal in the event of bis attempting to close it, seems to have inspired wiser counsels in the President of the Suez Canal Company. He has now agreed without any reservation to levy from the 29th ult. only the dues fixed by the International Commission ; while at the same time protesting in due form against the order given by’thc Porte to the Khedive to take possession of the canal, and summoning a “ general meeting which will require to take the measures necessary under the circumstances.” His practical submission, however, has absolved ns from what would have been a most unpleasant duty. The Powers interested in the maintenance of the canal, and England as the most deeply interested of them, would have been bound to support the action taken by the Turkish Government through the Khedive, and, in the present disposition of the French press to make a national grievance out of M, de Lesseps’s complaints, ill-feeling would have been certainly generated. The French newspapers arc already complaining that “ England, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Holland, the customers of the canal, have been allowed to fix the tariffs on their own authority,” and have compared them to debtors fixing the amount of their debt without consultation with the creditor. Ihey would hardly, therefore, have approved of the debtors seizing the creditor’s estate, even though compelled to do so. As matters stand, however, this has been avoided, and the creditor is to be heard in support of his claim. “The Powers interested will, it is said, consent to discuss the conclusions of the International Commission with a properly authorised representative of the company.” A letter from the shores of the Caspian in the “ Moscow Gazette.” says that the estimated expenditure of the newly-formed Transcaspian military district is 40, 100 roubles, including 9000 roubles for schools, roads, markets, promotion of medical science, improvements at Krasuovodsk, and colonisation. The cost of the central administration

is estimated at 18,703 roubles, and that of the administration of Mangyschlak at 10,200 roubles, which is relatively much less than the cost of the administration of Turkestan. The estimated revenue of the new territory is 41,000 roubles, to be derived from imposts levied on the Khirgiz and the Turkomans. The latter still continue their plundering expeditious iu the Khanate of Khiva, and a detachment has again been sent, at the request of the Khan, from fort Petra-Alex - androvsk to the town of Khiva and Khodjc-ili ; but the Tckko Turkomans on the Attrek and Gorgeu arc beginning lo show a more pacific dispos'd ion. and it is hoped that their influence over the Turkomans iu the Khanate may also induce the latter to cease their depredations. Seventy elders of the Yomud tribe have assembled on the island of Tcheleken, in the Caspian, to make arrangements for “a lasting peace with Russia,” and they are urging the Khivan Turkomans not to provoke the Russians, as by so doing they will ouly risk the loss of their independence. General Lomakyn, who has been appointed Governor of the Tran sens pi an district, proceeded on the 25th of March to the above island in order to conclude the necessary arrangements with the Yomud elders. Some interesting information respecting the Black Parliament of Sott.h Carolina given by Mr Pike, who lately travelled through the State, appears in the “Nation.” In the House of Representatives sit 124 members. Of these 30 are pure wldte men, and the remainder black ; but as 7 out of the 30 white men vote with the black, the real strength of the opposition is ouly 23. The Speaker is black, the clerk is black, the doorkeepers arc black, the pages arc black, and the chaplain is black. “At some of the desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of Congo ; whose costume, visages, attitude, aud expressions ouly befit tho forecastle of a buccaneer.” The Lieutenant-Governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the Treasurer, are all blacks. The Governor alone is a white, elected by black votes. Tho manner in which business is conducted in this black parliament is thus described by Mr Pike. “They are quick as lightning at detecting points of order, and they certainly make incessant and extraordinary use of their knowledge. No one is allowed lo talk five minutes without interruption, and one interruption is the signal for another and another, until the original speaker is smothered under an avalanche of them. Forty questions of privilege will be raised in a day. At times nothing goes on but alternating questions of order and privilege. The inefficient coloured friend who sits in the Speaker’s chair cannot suppress this extraordinary clement of the debate. Some of the blackest members exhibit a pertinacity of intrusion in raising these points of order and questions of privilege that few white men can equal. Their struggles to get the floor, their bellowings and physical contortions baffie description. The Speaker’s hammer plays a perpetual tattoo all to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with tho utmost license. Every one esteems himself as good as his neighbour, and puts in his oar apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for anything else. It is easy to imagine what are his ideas of propriety and dignity among a crowd of his own color, and these are illustrated without reserve. Tho Speaker orders a member whom ho has discovered to be particularly unruly lo take his scat. The member obeys, and with the same motion that he sits down throws his feet on to his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots. In an instant he appears again on the floor. After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call ‘ the gemman ’ to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round, and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever ; one hand being employed iu fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator.” A letter from La Paz, dated the 10th of March, in the “ Cologne Gazette ” says that the late President of the Bolivian Republic, Adolphus Ballivian, who died at Sucre on the 11th of February, is universally lamented as an honest and patriotic citizen who worthily responded to the appeal of an enlightened majority of the Bolivian people to initiate a government of reform at a dangerous crisis in its history. Though a soldier by profession, he was not one of those who fight their way through streams of blood to gain the object of their ambition or avarice, but was praised even by bis enemies for his disinterestedness and calm good sense. After the murder of Morales there were three candidates for the presidency, and the whole Republic resembled a great battle-field ; but ihc pacific proclamations of Ballivian and his supporters prevented the civil war which threatened to break out, and ho was elected president by a large majority. Since then the country has been at peace, aud the Government is occupied with liberal reforms, Ballivian, after obtaining the rank of colonel in the Bolivian army, had served for some time as diplomatic envoy at Buenos Ayres and iu London, and the experience which ho thus obtained was of great service to his country when he became president. The correspondent adds that the revolutionary movement begun by Santa Cruz in the department of Atacama with the object of establishing a Federal Government in Bolivia similar to that of tho United States has completely failed. The Prefect of Atacama, assisted by the citizens and foreign merchants of Gobija, organised a national guard, and this force, accompanied by a few regular troops, attacked the insurgents on the 17th of February at Punta Ncgra. Santa Cruz was shot down from his horse and fell, severely wounded, into the hands of his adversaries, while the remainder of tho insurgents dispersed after plundering a small town in the vicinity. It is not often that a prisoner is brought to trial upon the charge laid against Father Baronius, when he appeared before the tribunal at Treviglio, in Lombardy. This worthy ecclesiastic was accused of putting a strong emetic into the wine which some of his brother priests were about to use in the celebration of mass, and his ouly defence was that he wanted to play a practical joke upon two of them who had recently come to Treviglio. They belonged to an opposite school of theology, and Father Baronius, who seemed surprised that his application of emetics to religion should have caused so great a scandal, thought that if he could not convert them he might at least punish them. It would have been useless for him to have denied the main facts of tho accusation, as the dose was so strong that one of the victims was ill for a week, while the doctors at Treviglio, possessing but a very elementary knowledge of the healing art, thought that

he had been poisoned, and submitted him to so severe a diet that he was reduced to a skeleton. The offending priest was charged upon the double count of misdemeanour and sacrilege, and was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment. It is to be hoped that the appeal which the Privy Council has just granted in the case of Mount and Morris, the two men hist convicted at Melbourne for complicity in the Carl murders, and subsequently released under a writ of habeas corpus, may lead to a reversal of the judgment under which they were discharged. It would be at least something to remedy the last of that series of blunders which began with the admission of the principal in the murders as approver against the accessories, and concluded with an irregularity in carrying out the sentence on two of the accessories which was deemed fatal to their conviction by the Supreme Court at Melbourne. In sentencing the prisoners in the first instance the judges expressed an opinion that on the true construction of the Act under which the proceedings were taken, “ tke execution of the sentence would seem to be a matter of imperial duty,” and would involve a reference to one of her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State. The AttorneyGeneral of Victoria, however, subsequently advised that this reference was unnecessary —a piece of advice which, whether accurate in law or not, seems hardly to have been sound in policy, seeing that the same court which would ultimately have to adjudicate on the question had already indicated its adverse opinion. This opinion they adhered to on the question being raised before them upon a writ of habeas corpus, and the prisoners were ordered to be discharged. It is against this order that the Governor of Victoria has now obtained leave from the Privy Council to appeal; and both in its relation to a humiliating failure of justice and as settling an important point of constitutional law, the case will be one of much interest.

It has already been mentioned that Namur was recently the scene of some rather serious disturbances which took place upon the condemnation of a man called Jauraart for the forgery of a will. The trial, which resulted in his conviction, was a somewhat remarkable one, having lasted twenty-five days, “the ptxrplc” espousing his cause with as much warmth as a certain sectiou of the English public exhibited in behalf of the Claimant. At the death of Baron Rasquct d’Alosse, a Belgian nobleman of great wealth, a will was discovered, by which Jaumart was named as sole legatee, to the exclusion of the testator’s own relations. The latter though morally certain that the will was a forgery, consented to a compromise, but the public prosecutor instituted an inquiry into the facts of the case, the result of which was that he determined to bring Jaumart to trial. More than 150 witnesses were called upon each side, and, the “ experts ” in handwriting took very conflicting views of the matter. Two questions were left to the jury : “ Did Jaumart commit the forgery ? ” or, “ Did he make use of the will knowing it to be forged ? ” They answered the first in the negative, but found him guilty on the second count; and the court, after two hours’ deliberation, sentenced him to ten years’ imprisonment. The crowd, on his removal from the court to the Namur prison, attacked the van and endeavored to rescue him ; the judges and the counsel the prosecution had to be escorted to the railway station by a strong body of police, and the advocate for the defence was received with shouts of applause on returning to his hotel. A good deal has been heard lately of the way of getting rid of the bodies of the dead by means of fire, a process which seems to be thought less ugly when it is spoken of by the Latin name “ cremation ” —though it might be hard to find the word used in that sense by any classical writer — than when it is called by the plain English name “ burning.” It may be worth while to mention that such a way of disposing of their forefathers had at least presented itself to men’s minds in the orthodox, though not very orderly, days of King Stephen. Robert, Bishop of Hereford, being much troubled by the sacrilegious doings of his neighbour, Miles, Earl of Hereford, laid his whole diocese under an interdiet of the strictest kind. In such cases it was usual to forbid the burial of the dead with any religious rite ; but Bishop Robert went further, and forbad the dead to be buried at all. The biographer of Stephen tells how it was unlawful either to put the body in the ground, to throw it into the water, to consume it by fire, or in any way to remove the dead man from the place where he died. At first sight it would seem that the state of the diocese of Hereford must have been, while the interdict lasted, something at which a sanitary officer would stand aghast. But it should be remembered that a certain proccfs of embalming, or at any rate of salting the dead was usual in those times ; so it would seem most likely that all the people who died just then within the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Hereford must have remained, as it were, in pickle till the Earl came to a better mind, and pledged himself to restore to the uttermost farthing all that he had unlawfully taken. The Earl was presently shot by accident while hunting, muclf' after the manner of William Rufus, and he is said to have died without confession ; but whether his body was buried, drowned, or burned, or left in the place where he fell, the biographer forgets to tell us.

A letter from Warsaw, in the “ Borsenzeitung,” says that the introduction of the new law establishing universal military service in Russia continues to occupy public attention in every part of the Empire. The numerous regulations which are constantly being published on the subject arc discussed in the newspapers with an amount of care which shows the absorbing interest that has been excited among all classes by the new measures. The reform has, on the whole, been well received, but it meets here and there with opposition. Numerous German colonists have already emigrated to America in order to escape the obligation of serving in the Russian army. Their example is being followed by the Tartars of the Crimea, whose traditional antipathy for the Russians renders it peculiarly distasteful to them to put on the Russian uniform. Apart from this, they have a horror of military service, and they fear that as soldiers they would be compelled to abjure Mahoramedanism, and to eat pork. The Tartars who are eligible for service in the army are therefore leaving their country in largo numbers and emigrating to Turkey. Some of them have for the present left their women and children behind, while others, after selling all their immoveable properly, have taken their families with them. The

emigration to Turkey is especially popular in the Caucasus, where it is feared that the whole population of the Kuban, amounting to about 70,000 persons, will rise against the Russian authorities if the Government should make any opposition to their departure. The arms for this purpose have, it is said, already been secretly purchased, and the Circassians arc subscribing to a fund which is destined to cover the expenses of the proposed emigration.

A decidedly novel excuse for a breach of promise of marriage was put forward in a case tried the other day before Mr Justice Denman at the Liverpool Assizes. The defendant, Mr Eccles, a cotton broker in Liverpool, bad engaged himself to the plaintiff, Miss Mathieson, in the month of June last, but on the 31st of August he wrote to her father at Glasgow, informing him that his affection for her, he was pained to say, was growing weaker instead of stronger; and hinting, in fact, that the engagement had better be broken off. Mr Mathieson immediately left Glasgow for Carlisle, where he telegraphed to the plaintiff to meet him, and on the way he drew up, on the “back of a railway guide,” a series of “ interrogatives ” which he “administered” to the defendant at the Station Hotel, Carlisle. They were answered by him, without exception, in the negative. He had never said anything to the defendant to indicate a change of feeling towards her, nor had there been anything in her letters to indicate a change of feeling on her part. Nothing had been done or said by her to warrant a change of feeling on his part. No rumour, report, or letter had been received by his friends calculated to offend him or her. No gossipping story had ever reached him affecting the plaintiff. He made no other engagement, nor got into any entanglement. " On being further pressed, however, be admittedtbat “ there was one thing," and that was “ I have discovered that she does not take a sufficiently lively interest in cricket.” The plaintiff’s father, who was probably no cricketer, refused to admit the sufficiency of this plea ; the present action was brought, aud Mr Eccles has been cast in damages to the amount of £2OOO. Unhappy, however, as would have been a marriage from which the bond of a common sympathy in cricket was absent, it must be admitted that Mr Eccles has paid very dearly for his escape. The services of a trustworthy professional who might have instructed Miss Mathieson in the rudiments, and awakened in her mind the requisite “ lively interest ” in it, might been retained at a much more economical rate.

Among the ressels in course of construction at a ship yard in East Boston, United States, is one on an entirely novel principle. In building this vessel the use of the usual oaken frame was discarded. The keel, of hard pine, was first laid, and then, commencing on either side, sticks of timber 12 inches wide and 6 inches thick were bolted to.it by 1| inch bolts from 30 to 36 inches long. To these timbers others,hewn to meet the curves, were bolted in turn, gradually building upward to the deck a compact shell, 12 inches thick, composed of timbers of spruce fir arranged longitudinally, the ends overlapping like the courses of blocks in a stone building. It is estimated that the vessel can be built with 40 per c ent. less timber, that she will, in consequence of the buoyancy of the spruce used in the hull, carry 25 per cent, more cargo, and will cost 25 per cent, less for labor and materials of the hull, than any vessel of the ordinary build. Another enterprising citizen of Bast Boston built a ship some years ago of riba made of a single timber extending from keel to deck, and bent by machinery to the required curves, but the destruction jof material consequent on this process proved fatal to the acceptance of the invention by practical men, and the plan, though ingenious, is greatly excelled by that of the present variety of the frameless ship. Mr Sumner’s literary executors have, says the “ Nation,” thought proper to publish a speech which he composed in for delivery in the Senate in explanation of his quarrel with the President and Mr Fish, but which was suppressed by the advice of Mr Sehnrz and others. The sum and substance of the story he tells is that he was on very friendly terms with the President and Mr Fish until the San Domingo aifair came up; that his opposition to this caused Mr Fish to remonstrate with him earnestly, and finally to offer him as a bribe the English mission; that Mr Motley’s dismissal was due to the fact that he was Mr Sumner’s friend, and that Mr Fish in ascribing it to his improper presentation of the Alabama case departed from the truth, as a reference to dates would show. Mr Fish he compares to “ Jean Paul Richter—the only one,” and likewise to “ Hercules Furcns ” as described by Seneca. The objections to summoning a dead man to bear witness against the living are, adds the “ Nation,” numerous and obvious. The principal one is that if the living man is not disposed to submit to the imputations thus cast on him—and he ought not to be—there arises forthwith “ a question of veracity ” of the most painful kind, which ought to be avoided by all friends of decency. As a general rule, a man’s quarrels ought to be closed by his death.