SUEZ MAIL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9104, 12 July 1888, Page 6

SUEZ MAIL NEWS.

WRECK OF A FISHING FLEET.LOSS OF 102

LIVES. ■A telegram from Dunkirk says that four fishing schooners of Dunkirk and Gravelines are fully believed to have gone down with all hands in the great storm last month off the coast of Iceland. As each of these boats carried 18 men, and 30 more are positively known to have perished, the total loss of life in this great disaster is brought up to 102. THE WE?LEYANS' FINANCES.ACCUMULATED DEBT CREATES ANXIETY. The Wesleyan body is at the present moment very greatly exercised about missionary finance. The accumulated debt of the Society is a source of great anxiety to the secretariat, and it is feared by many that in the presence of so many new schemes which are now before the Wesleyan Church, and which make great demands upon the resources of the people, the claims of the Missionary Society will be pushed into the background. The subject has (the London Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian is told), occupied a good deal of attention in several of the most important district meetings which have just been held, and a commission of inquiry is being talked of. However, at the present moment, a searching investigation is already being made by the ■ committee into the financial condition of the Missionary Society, with a view to placing things on a more satisfactory basis. It is rumoured that one result of this inquiry will be the recommendation of a measure of retrenchment all round, and this rumour is already creating some dismay among the friends of the Society. At the same time there is a deep conviction on the part of a minority that the whole difficulty has arisen in consequence of the decay of the local missionary organisations, and a resolute attempt is being made in some quarters to revive the old organisations, and secure their efficient working as the only satisfactory solution ol the problem.

DEATHS FROM STARVATION IN LONDON. A Parliamentary return, asked for by Mr. J. Talbot, M.P., is issued, giving the number of deaths in the metropolitan district in the year 1887 upon which a coroner's jury have returned a verdict of death from starvation, or death accelerated by privation. The figures given are as follows : —Central Division of Middlesex, 11 deaths; Eastern Division of Middlesex, 8 ; Western Division of Middlesex, 0; City and Liberty of Westminster, 4; Greenwich Division of the County of Kent, 4 Newington Division of the County of Surrey, 1; Camberwell Division of the County of Surrey, 2 ; City of London and Borough of Southwark, 2 ; Liberty of Duchy of Lancaster, 0 ; Liberty of Tower of London, 0; Queen's Household, 0: total, 32.

A WINDFALL. M. Guignard, a working mechanic, living in St. Ouen, just outside Paris, has just inherited, through his wife, who was made the sole legatee of a wealthy old lady to whom she had once been a servant, 4,000,000 francs, or £160,000, and sundries in the way of real estate. Among the latter is a spacious hotel, with a garden, close to the Bois de Boulogne, which the Guignatd family will now inhabit, after their long sojourn in a dingy logement in the most unhealthy of the Paris suburbs.

A REPORTED ROYAL ROMANCE. The London correspondent of' the Irish Times says : — It was hinted some time ago that one of the Royal Princes had fallen in love with a lady not only of less exalted degree, but of British birth, and the misplaced tenderness had caused much anxiety in circles very near the throne. From the pecuniary point it is almost a case of Cinderella, the pretty aristocrat being absolutely mm dot. Prince George, like a true British sailor, does not mind the monetary matter but his Royal relatives regard the business with more worldly eyes, and have adopted such measures to part the pair that the lady has lost her health, a consequence which aggravates the bitterness with which her father, one of the proudest, if , also one of the poorest, of our nobility, has resented what he has declared in a letter on the subject to be the insult inflicted upon him and his. It is further averred that the young Prince steadfastly refuses to tear the image from his heart. BITTEN TO DEATH. A remarkable illustration is furnished of the cruelties by which Chinese trade societies enforce their laws. According to a report from the American Minister at Peking, a man belonging to an association of gold-beaters at Soochow recently took more apprentices than one. This is forbidden ; so the local trade union took up the matter, and condemned the man to be bitten to death, and the sentence was literally carried out. " One hundred and twenty-three men had a bite at him before he expired."