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of the annual meeting in tolerating "grave departures from ancient principles," and a platform of principles, among which were declarations in favor of baptism by trine immersion, both administrator and candidate going into the stream, accompanied by the laying on of hands and prayer in the water, there being no gospel for baptizing either sick or well persons in a mechanical vessel, in a house or outside"; feet-washing by the double mode; the Lord's Supper a full meal; sisters to have their heads covered with the plain white cap, brethren to have their heads uncovered in time of praying or prophesying; "plainness in all things by all, and uniformity in non-conformity to the world; ... colleges and high-schools, being of the world, belong not to the church, nor to the humble followers of Christ"; Sundayschools not of Gospel authority; "taxation for missionary purposes unscriptural; salaried or paid ministry unscriptural, as understood by our ancient brethren; special educational preparation for the ministry not according to the Gospel, as understood by our ancient brethren"; no life insurance; no oath-bound or secret orders; non-resistance; non-swearing; brethren not to be permitted to engage in political affairs by voting and holding oathbound offices under the civil laws. The several churches and meetings have been considerably agitated in consequence of these differ

ences.

V. BAPTISTS OF THE MARITIME PROVINCES.The thirty-sixth annual convention of the Baptistsof the Maritime Provinces met at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, August 20th, and was attended by an unusual number of delegates. F. II. Rand, LL. D., was chosen president. The statistical reports showed that 1,260 persons had been baptized during the year. The convention sustained three foreign mission stations in the Teloogoo country of India, at which eight converts had been baptized since the previous year's report. The income of the Board of Missions had been $5,409, and its expenditures $6,150. The Board of Home Missions had employed 48 missionaries, who supplied 86 churches and 206 out-stations at an outlay of $5,204. The "convention scheme" of finance, which contemplates the raising for benevolent purposes of a sum equivalent to a dollar a person for the entire membership of the churches, had been nearly successful.

VI. PARTICULAR BAPTISTS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.-The annual meetings in connection with the Baptist Union of England and Ireland were held in London in April, beginning on the 26th. The Rev. Henry Dowson was chosen president of the Union for the year. The financial reports showed that the number of churches and of single members contributing to the funds of the Union had considerably increased. A resolution on public affairs was adopted expressing satisfaction with the domestic and foreign policy of the Government, the belief that it would persevere in its determina

tion to do what is just and right, and the assurance that if it pursued that course it would have the support of the masses of the people. A petition to Parliament was adopted in favor of the suppression of the opium-trade. A petition coming from members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge asking that the Baptist Union, in connection with the Congregational Union, would arrange for the delivery of lectures or sermons in the university towns on the principles of non-conformity, was referred to a committee.

The managers of the Baptist Building Fund had granted thirty-five loans, amounting to £8,032, and reported twenty-two new chapels opened and six chapels enlarged and improved. The receipts of the Bible Translation Society had been £2,392. The invested capital of the Baptist Annuity Fund had been increased to £78,000.

The Union met in its autumnal session at Portsmouth, October 26th, and was opened by President Dowson with an address on "Spiritual Life in Connection with the Assemblies and Operations of the Union."

The eighty-ninth annual meeting of the Baptist Missionary Society was held in London, April 26th. The receipts of the society had been £51,459, the largest amount of income reported in its history. Of this amount £11,915 had been contributed for special purposes, including £4,000 given by Mr. Arthington, of Leeds, for the Congo mission, and £3,421 which had been given by the churches for the benefit of sufferers by a cyclone in Jamaica. The missions of the society are in India, Ceylon, China, Japan, Africa, the West Indies, and Jamaica, and parts of Europe, and returned 95 missionaries and assistants wholly, and 18 partly, supported by the society, 61 pastors of self-supporting churches, 258 evangelists, 536 stations and sub-stations, 3,373 persons baptized during the year, 38,397 members, 172 teachers, 5,815 day-scholars, and 5,828 Sunday-scholars.

In India, two editions of the New Testament in Bengali (one with references), and one edition in Hindi, had been completed, and a large number of Scriptures and tracts in the Kaithi language had been printed. The revision of the Singhalese New Testament, begun in 1876, had been completed. The thirty-two native churches in Shansi and Shantung were all selfsupporting and ministered to by Chinese pastors, and had received a large number of converts. In Western Africa a branch station from Bukundu had been established, nearly a hundred miles in the interior. The missionaries to Central Africa had not yet reached their destination at Stanley Pool, on the Congo, but had labored with effect in San Salvador and the neighboring towns.

VII. GENERAL BAPTISTS IN GREAT BRITAIN. -The one hundred and twelfth annual meeting of the General Baptist Association was held at Norwich, June 21st. The Rev. Dawson Burns presided. Reports were received from 154

churches of 1,368 additions by baptism, of a clear increase of 441, and a total of about 26,000 members. The receipts for foreign missions had been £7,766, and the expenditures £8,518.

A "Local Preachers' Conference" was held during the meeting of the association, at which a paper was read on the need of increased and better organized local preachers' work in the churches. The establishment of home-mission centers, to be under the direction of the conference to which they belong, was recommended. In a Sunday-school conference, the establishment of weekly services for children, a union for young converts, and special evangelistic services, were recommended. Numerous services for children of the kind suggested were already held weekly in London, Liverpool, and Paris. The "association letter" on the adaptation of the church to the wants of the times, suggested that such modifications in creed and practice as were made necessary in the light of modern discoveries should be accepted, that a wider policy should be allowed in baptism, and that open fellowship should be permitted. Another "association letter" was read upon the subject of "open fellowship." BEACONSFIELD, EARL OF. (See DISRAELI, BENJAMIN.)

BELGIUM, a kingdom of Europe. Leopold II, King of the Belgians, born April 9, 1835, is the son of King Leopold I, former Duke of Saxe-Cobourg, and ascended the throne at his death, December 10, 1865. He was married August 22, 1853, to Marie Henriette, daughter of the late Archduke Joseph of Austria (born August 23, 1836), who has borne him three daughters. The heir-apparent to the throne is the brother of the King, Philip, Count of

YEAR.

Births,

Flanders, born March 24, 1837, lieutenantgeneral in the service of Belgium, who was married, April 26, 1867, to Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (born November 17, 1845), and has two sons, Baldwin, born July 3, 1869, and Albert, born April 8, 1875. The oldest daughter, Princess Louisa, born February 18, 1858, was married on February 4, 1875, to Prince Philipp, Duke of Saxe-Cobourg and Gotha.

The area of this kingdom is 29,455 16 square kilometres (1 square kilometre = 0·386 square mile) or 11,373 square miles. The population, according to the census of December 31, 1876, was 5,336,189, and in December, 1879, according to a calculation based upon the movement of population, 5,536,654. The following table exhibits the population of each province at the close of 1878:

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1873.

1674.

1875.

1576.

1877.

1873.

1379.

Deaths,

Marriages.

Still-born chil-
dren.

Surplus of births.

Inclusive of still-born.

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Francs.

219,959,682

Of the total births in 1879, 168,724 were

legitimate, and 14,059 were illegitimate. The Two and a half per cent debt..

number of divorces amounted to 151.

The number of representatives in the Lower House of the Chambers is 132, the number of senators is 66. In order to be eligible for election to the Chamber of Representatives, it is necessary to be twenty-five years of age, and a citizen of Belgium. On the other hand, no one is eligible to the Senate who does not pay direct taxes to the amount of 1,000 florins (2,116 francs). Under this law there are at present but 507 Belgians eligible to the Senate. The number of persons entitled to vote at general elections was, in 1881, 116,090.

The public debt on August 1, 1880, was as follows:

Three per cent loans from 1878 to 1878.
Four per cent debt (1571 to 1879).
Four per cent loan of 1880..
Rentes funded at 3 per cent..
Rentes funded at 5 per cent..

Five per cent annuities to the Netherlands.
Annuities for repurchasing railroads at 4 per
cent.......

Total....

......

883,707,100

672,741,852

134,719,000

1,409,685

7,611,960

2,539,680

318.511,378

1,741,200,267

The immigration into Belgium has since 1871 always exceeded the emigration from the country. In 1879, there were 14,234 iminigrants and 12,474 emigrants.

The budget for the years 1879 and 1880 estimated receipts and expenditures as follows (in francs):

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The Chamber of Deputies, which adjourned December 24, 1880, resumed its sittings on the 25th of January. The conflict between the Church and the Liberals, on the educational question, continued in and out of Parliament. By the gain of a seat by the Clericals, the Liberal majority in the Senate was reduced to four. A parliamentary investigation into the condition of schools and the character of the instruction imparted excited the indignation of the Clericals, who appealed to the article of the Constitution which leaves it free to any one to open a school and receive pupils. The purpose of the investigation was to show by the testimony of experienced pedagogues and schoolinspectors, whose judgment would have weight in the country, that the schools which had been hastily established everywhere by the clergy to compete with the state schools, were taught by incompetent and ignorant persons. The majority in Parliament were moved, by the obstructions cast by the Church party in the way of the new system of education, to take reprisals in the form of a reduction of the budget of Public Worship.

The Minister of Justice, by request, laid before the Chamber of Deputies a statement of the amount of the stipends paid to the clergy as compared with 1832. There are 4,997 of the lower clergy, whose salaries amount to 4,384,937 francs, against 2,335,795 for 3,870 stipendiaries fifty years ago. The lower clergy consists of 91 parish priests of the first and 140 of the second class, 2,804 curates, 179 chaplains, 1,667 vicars, and seven coadjutors, with ten chaplaincies and ninety-nine vicarships unfilled. The higher clergy and seminaries draw from the state 321,000 francs against 235,232 in 1832.

In the discussion upon the proposed revision of the annual fund for ecclesiastical maintenance, Minister Bara laid down the principle that the granting of the budget for Public Worship was purely a state act, to be determined from motives of public policy, and that it was based upon no convention between the Church and the state. Jacobs, the Clerical champion, argued on the contrary that the budget was a poor and inadequate indemnity repaid to the Church for the property of which it was robbed in the Revolution. The Government refrained from retaliating the hostilities of the clergy by cutting down the salaries of the bishops and the parochial clergy. A motion of the Radicals to do this was voted down by 95 to 26 majority. In the budget, which was voted in March, a large aggregate reduction was effected by abolishing chaplaincies, suppressing the pay of supernumerary assistant clergy, and withholding the annual grants to the ecclesiastical seminaries. The last retrenchment was justified on the ground that these institutions have abundant revenues of their own. Bara announced that the care of souls in the army would devolve upon the parochial clergy. The army he declared to be no more in need of re

ligious ministers of its own than the judicial bench or the Legislative Chamber. If the parish vicars in the garrison towns refused to extend their spiritual ministrations to the military, their pay would be stopped. A provision in the budget cuts off the salary or stipend attached to any place in which a foreign priest officiates who has not received the permission of the Government.

The Government declared, in response to an interpeliation, in May, that no overtures had been made by the Vatican toward the reopening of diplomatic relations. During King Leopold's visit to Vienna, on the occasion of his daughter's wedding, he met the former nuncio, Vanutelli, in the presence of his cabinetchief, Frère-Orban, but was not approached on the subject of resuming diplomatic intercourse. An angry controversy broke out among the Clericals between the extreme Ultramontanes, represented by Professor Périn, of Louvain, and the moderate portion. The former held persistently to the doctrine advanced in the Syllabus of Pius IX, and would not acknowledge the secularized Belgium, in which the therein defined relations to the Church were disregarded, to be a legitimately constituted state. The Clerical representatives in Parliament were bitterly assailed for accepting the new order of things and seeking a modus vivendi with the state. This contest called forth a reproof from Pope Leo, who significantly admonished the Catholics of Belgium that the Church, while maintaining unalloyed its holy teachings and principles of jurisprudence, preserves always a "discreet attitude," has "due regard for the right mode suited to the time and place," and often finds itself obliged "to submit to evils which it finds it almost impossible to prevent without exposing itself to still worse evils and complications." The bishops felt impelled by the Pope's letter to remove Périn, the pragmatical upholder of the Syllabus, from the chair of Civil Law in the University of Louvain.

A law has been made providing that the glebe-lands shall be administered in the same manner as the other state demesnes, and may also be alienated by the Government. Clergy who have received the revenues of the church estates are to be paid entirely out of the public treasury. The vicar Yserbyt, and villagers of Heule, near Courtrai, who created a disturbance in the latter part of 1880, were sentenced to prison.

President Guillery, of the House of Deputies, was overruled by the vote of his own party on a question of order, March 10th, and conceiving the action of the House to be an infraction of his authority, he resigned. A member of the Right had stated that the army had resented partisan orders of the War Minister. The president accepted as sufficient a declaration of the member, Woeste, that he would retract the words, but still held to the opinions; but the House demanded a completer apology for the

insult to the army. The Deputies elected in Guillery's place Descamps, the first vice-president..

The Government carried a measure for the reorganization of secondary schools. A proposal brought forward by the advanced Liberals to abolish religious instruction in the middle-class schools was not accepted by the Government, and was defeated in the Chamber. The motion was to rescind the provision of the law of 1850, according to which the clergy are invited to impart religious instruction in secondary schools, and leave religious teaching to the families of pupils.

The Government has established 12 additional colleges and 100 intermediate schools, 56 for boys and 44 for girls.

The election registry for 1881 contains about 9,000 names less than in 1879, the number of voters in a total population of 5,536,654 souls being 116,090. A large number of names were dropped from the lists in 1880, and an additional number in 1881, on the ground that the omitted persons did not pay the amount of taxes which legally qualifies them for the franchise. They were mostly peasants and men in holy orders. At the rate of progression which took place anterior to this strict construction of the law, the number of voters would be 131,000 or over. The lists of communal electors have, by a like rigorous application of the election laws, been reduced from 384,549 names in 1879 to 373,666 in 1881. The fees for naturalization have been reduced by Parliament from 1,000 and 5,000 francs for the two grades, to half those amounts.

In the summer an agitation was commenced in favor of universal suffrage, or for the establishment of an educational instead of the tax qualification. Mass-meetings were held in Brussels, Antwerp, and elsewhere. The Radical, Janson, demanded in the Chamber that the Government show its colors on this question. For communal and provincial elections to begin with, the abolition of the limitation or the substitution of an intellectual test was asked for. The Minister of Finance replied that the question was not yet ripe, that the Constitution prescribed the cense, and that if the matter were carried before the country the Liberal party would be divided and the Clerical opposition would succeed to the helm. The subject was brought forward again when a law relating to the provincial assemblies was under consideration. The Prime Minister proposed to defer Janson's proposition, to which the mover agreed; but the seconder, Dufuisseaux, deserted by his friends, felt called upon to resign his seat. An extension of the franchise would benefit the Clerical and Social-Democratic parties; for which reason the Liberal ministry, though not opposed to the reform, will not take the step without cautiously measuring the effects. The elections of delegates to the municipal councils in October resulted in a marked victory for the Liberals.

Stéphanie, daughter of the King of the Belgians, was married, May 10th, to the CrownPrince Rudolph of Austria. (See AUSTRIA.)

The Minister-President, Bounder de Malsbroek, was transferred in January from Copenhagen and Stockholm to Washington.

The German commercial treaty of 1865 was renewed, and is to continue in force until one year after one of the contracting powers has given notice of dissolving it.

Count Auguste Van der Straaten-Ponthoz was transferred from his post at the Hague to succeed the venerable Baron Nothomb (see OBITUARIES) at Berlin. Baron d'Anethan, former Belgian representative at the Vatican, was appointed minister to the Hague.

The latest law for military organization provides for an army of 46,277 men, including all officers, police, and non-combatants, with 10,014 horses and 204 guns, in time of peace; and for a war force, of 103,683 men, not counting officers, gendarmery, etc., with 13,800 horses and 240 guns. The army comprises 18 line regiments of infantry, with 3 line and 1 reserve battalion each, and 1 rifle regiment with 4 line and 2 reserve battalions, every battalion consisting of 4 companies, and the company of 100 men in peace and 225 in war, exclusive of officers. The cavalry consists of 8 regiments, of 4 line and 1 reserve squadron each, the squadron having 120 horses in time of peace and 154 in war. The field-artillery consists of 2 regiments with and 2 without mounted batteries, each regiment containing 10 batteries of 6 guns, with 94 men and 64 horses in time of peace and 155 men and 152 horses on a war-footing. There are 3 regiments of standing artillery of 18 batteries, each battery being manned with 78 men in peace and 176 in war; 1 engineer regiment of 3 battalions with 10 companies each, 85 men strong in peace and 300 strong in war. The Belgian Citizens' Guard, or militia, has 120,000 men enrolled, of which 30,000 are active. The King, in an address on the occasion of the opening of the new dock at Ghent, declared that the secure establishment of national military defenses ought to keep even pace with the advancement in material prosperity, referring to the development of a strong military reserve, which has been the aim of the Belgian Government for many years.

BI-METALLIC STANDARD. The International Monetary Congress,, which was held in connection with the Paris Exposition of 1878, having produced no practical result, the Government of France endeavored during the two years following to initiate a movement for bringing the nations together for some more formal action. France and other members of the Latin Union still maintained the double, or bi-metallic, monetary standard; Great Britain persisted in the single gold standard, ex-, cept for India, where silver constituted the currency; Germany, having recently adopted the gold standard, continued to dispose of her

surplus stock of silver; and the United States, which had resumed the coinage of legal-tender silver dollars, was apprehensive of derangement of her financial system by a further decline in the value of silver. France and the United States were disposed to adhere to bimetallism, but it was generally recognized that some broader international agreement was necessary in order to maintain the relative value of the metals and give it stability. Great Britain showed no disposition to yield its single-standard policy, but was interested in sustaining the value of silver on account of its extensive use as currency in her Eastern colonies. Germany had given no evidence of a desire to recede from its action of 1873, but was apparently willing to discuss the subject, and to submit her sales of silver to restrictions. Austria was inclined to a cautious policy, dependent on the future action of Germany and Great Britain.

An effort was made in 1880 by France to secure a monetary conference at Paris in November of that year. This effort failed, but the co-operation of the United States was obtained, and on the 8th of February the Foreign Secretary was able to announce, in a council of ministers, that the Government of the United States had agreed to the proposition of France for an International Monetary Conference to consider the question of a more general adoption of the double standard of gold and silver. Invitations would be addressed to the other powers, and the question then was whether it should be in the name of France alone or France and the United States jointly. Subsequently, early in March, a joint note of the two Governments was addressed in identical terms to their ministers in other countries, to be by them communicated to the several governments to which they were accredited. The note was as follows:

The Government of the Republic of France and the Government of the United States, having exchanged views upon the subject of a conference between the powers principally interested in the question of establishing internationally the use of gold and silver as bimetallic money and securing fixity of relative value between those metals, and finding themselves in accord as to the usefulness and importance of such a conference, and as to the time and place at which the same should be held, have the honor now to invite the Govern

ments of

to take part in a conference by such delegates as each government may appoint, to be held at Paris on Tuesday, the 19th of April next, to consider and adopt for presentation to the governments so represented for their acceptance a plan and system for the establishment by international convention of fixed relative value between those two metals. the use of gold and silver as bi-metallic money at a

Messrs. William M. Evarts, Allen G. Thurman, and Timothy O. Howe were promptly appointed as delegates on behalf of the United States, and Mr. S. Dana Horton was subsequently added. The French Government appointed M. Magnin, the Minister of Finance; M. Dumas, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and President of the Mint Commission;

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