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Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1381, 1 April 1865, Page 6

The revenue accounts for the year and quarter ending December have been published. They are most satisfactory. The total revenue for the year is £70 125 374, against £70,433,G20 in the previous year. This decrease of ,4308,246, in the face of the reductions of taxation which have taken place, is remarkablv small. The principal decrease is in the property tax" which has yielded £1.807,000 less than in the previous year. The other head under which there is a decrease is customs —to the extent of £886,000. The reduction of the income-tax and tea and sugar duties, fully account for these. All the other sources of revenue show an increase—that of excise no less than £1,598,000. The revenue for the quarter ending Dec. 31 was £11,069,596, being £248,570 less than in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. This decrease is in customs, stamps and pro-perty-tax, in all of which there were reductions of taxation. The death is announced of the Rev. George Harper, M.A., formerly a clergyman of the Church of England, but of late years a priest of the Church of Home The reverend gentleman, who was a brother of the Right Rev. Dr. H. J. C. Harper, the Protestant bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand, was educated at the University of Oxford, and was ordained in 1843, shortly after which time he ob'ained ecclesiastical preferment in Kent. In 1850, however, he abandoned the communion of the Church of England and entered the Catholic faith, allying himself with the Society of Jesus, and being ordained in due course a priest of the Church of Rome. In that capacity he went to Prescot, Lancashire, and continued to perform his ecclesiastical duties there until the time of his death, which was caused by a severe illness contracted in the course of his ministrations amongst the poor.