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at the Khyber pass. The spirit of discontent began to pervade the great Ghilzai nation, upon whose loyalty the power of the Amir mainly rests. These warning signs impelled Abdurrahman not to strain his authority, and he accordingly withdrew the military and yielded to the demands of the Shinwarris.

The British, seeing the power of the Amir broken in the north and threatened in the south, and knowing that the treasure which they had given him three years before, with which he had established his position, was exhausted, thought they could strengthen his hands to maintain his power and at the same time secure his wavering and uncertain attachment by coming to him in the hour of his need with the promise of a stated annual allowance sufficient to support his power and state. Pecuniary gifts and subsidies have been a feature of British policy in Afghanistan from the beginning. Dost Mohammed received, by the treaty of 1856, twelve lacs of rupees per annum during the war with Persia, besides large occasional presents of money and arms. Shere Ali was the recipient of lavish gifts of money and munitions of war, and a treaty to bestow on him a subsidy of twelve lacs a year was in negotiation when his secret understanding with Russia was discovered, and was declared. Sir Louis Cavagnari, whose murder created a fresh rupture, was the bearer of an offer to Yakub Khan of half that amount per annum. When the British set Abdurrahman on the throne, they supplied him with treasure to the amount of over thirty lacs of rupees, or nearly a million and a half of dollars. The offer now made to Abdurrahman by the Indian Government, and accepted by him, was twelve lacs of rupees per annum. The payment of this large subsidy is conditional on his conforming his external policy to the wishes and interests of the British Empire.

ALABAMA. State Government.-The following were the State officers during the year: Governor, Edward A. O'Neal, Democrat; Secretary of State, Ellis Phelan; Treasurer, Frederick H. Smith; Auditor, Jesse M. Carmichael; Attorney-General, Henry C. Tompkins; Superintendent of Public Instruction, Henry C. Armstrong. Judiciary, Supreme Court-ChiefJustice, Robert C. Brickell; Associate Justices, George W. Stone and H. M. Somerville.

Legislative Session. - The Legislature, which was in session at the beginning of the year, adjourned near the close of February. Perhaps the most important act of the session was one "to provide for the assessment and collection of taxes for the use of this State and the counties thereof, and to define the duties of officers engaged about the said assessment and

collection of taxes."

It provides a complete system, and contains stringent provisions requiring individuals and corporations to make return by specific items of their property, and special provisions relating to railroad, telegraph, and telephone companies.

Another systematic act fixes the rate of poll and other taxes, the amount and kind of license fees, and defines the classes of taxable property. By an act "to establish a Department of Agriculture for the State of Alabama," a department of agriculture is created and established "which shall be under the management and control of the Commissioner of Agriculture, who shall be a practical and experienced agriculturist. Said commissioner shall be appointed by the Governor, and shall hold his office for the term of two years, and until his successor is appointed and qualified."

An act "to assist the University of Alabama, and the State Agricultural and Mechanical College, in furnishing additional room for students and facilities for instruction," appropriates the sum of $90,000. It was further enacted that "landlords of storehouses, dwelling-houses, and other buildings shall have a lien for rent, upon such goods, furniture, and effects as may belong to the tenant, and that this lien shall be a superior lien to all other liens on said goods, except for taxes."

An act "to prevent monopolies in the transportation of freight, and to secure free and fair competition in the same," provides that "it shall be unlawful for two or more railroad companies or persons operating railroads in this State to enter into any agreement among themselves, directly or indirectly, for the division among themselves of the freight-carrying business at any station, town, or city in this State, or into any pool arrangement among themselves of the nature and character aforesaid, the object, purpose, and effect of which in either event shall be to prevent free and fair competition among said railroad companies or persons operating said railroads, for said freight-carrying business, and to establish extortionate rates in favor of said companies or persons in doing said business, and which shall have the effect of being in undue restraint of the trade and business at any such station, town, or city of this State"; that "it is the true intent and meaning of this act that any such agreement rates or pool agreement made by any convention or association of freight agents, or commissioner of freight rates or rate-making committee outside of this State, but to be performed in whole or in part in this State, shall as to such part of the same as is to be performed within this State, come within the provisions of this act." Other acts were entitled as follows:

To regulate the hiring and treatment of State and county convicts.

To regulate the business of co-operative and mutual aid and relief associations, societies, and corporations.

To amend an act to revive and complete the Geological and Agricultural Survey of the State of Ala

bama.

To provide for the introduction of the study of the laws of health in the public schools of this State. the general incorporation laws to extend their lines To authorize railroad companies organized under and build branch roads.

To vacate and annul the charter and dissolve the

corporation of the city of Selma, and to provide for the application of the assets thereof to the payment of the debts thereof.

To prevent cruelty to animals.

To empower the Railroad Commission of Alabama to recommend joint local rates on freight to railroad companies and persons operating railroads in this

State.

To provide for the comfort and accommodation of passengers at each of the passenger depots along the line of every railroad operated by every railroad company in this State.

of tax retained in these five counties for the school fund, which of course never reached the State treasury, was $43,435.25, or over 19 per cent. of the whole school fund."

Adding to the tax of the counties mentioned that of Barbour, Bullock, Jackson, Lowndes, Talladega, and Tuscaloosa, all of which pay over $15,000, we have the eleven counties in the State which pay over $15,000 in direct taxes, paying considerably more than half the entire property-tax of $651,156.83. The black belt is still by far the richest portion of the State, especially if we include those black counof ties which are not in the black belt proper.

To provide that a determination of any matter by the Railroad Commission within its jurisdiction shall be prima facie evidence that such determination was right and proper, etc.

To confer police powers upon the conductors passenger-trains in this State."

To make appropriations for the payment of the railroad commissioners and their clerk, and for other expenses of the Railroad Commission.

To incorporate the inhabitants and territory formerly embraced within the corporate limits of the municipal corporation, since dissolved, styled the city of Selma, and to establish a local government therefor. To authorize private corporations to hold stock holders' and directors' meetings outside of this State

in certain cases.

The amount of appropriations for the fiscal year was $1,120,435.

Statistics.-The total taxable property in Alabama in the year 1881, on which the tax for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1882, was collected, is $152,880,069.24. Of this amount the railroads of the State furnished $17,574,583. The total railroad mileage in Alabama is, main track, 1,788 miles; side-track, 131 miles 1,919 in all. The total valuation of track is $15,801,829.78; of rolling-stock, $1,762,753.89. The average value of the main track is $8,643 per mile. Of the several railroads in the State, the Nashville and Decatur has the highest valuation, it being $14,000 per mile. Of the whole taxable property, the railroads furnish over 11 per cent. Variations in land values, shown by the Auditor's report, are as numerous as the counties in the State. In Baldwin, the value is 65 cents per acre. Even in so rich a county as Barbour, the valuation is only $3.50 per acre; in Cherokee, $4.50; in Escambia, less than 50 cents; in Etowah, $6.50; in Limestone, $5.11; in Lowndes, $5.06; in Madison, $6; in Marshall, over $1; in Washington, less than 50 cents.

The whole tax raised on property that reached the Treasury in the fiscal year ending September 30, 1882, was $651,156.83. Of this amount the five counties in the State paying over $20,000 apiece contributed $254,351.56, or 39 per cent. The amounts paid by each of these counties were as follow:

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The entire tax paid by Montgomery county, for general purposes, for the school fund, from licenses and from general taxes, aggregated $93,383.75. The whole amount paid by Mobile county was $109,620.64. The next highest was Dallas, with $40,983. Of the $651,156.83 paid into the treasury from the tax on property, Montgomery and Mobile paid $164,976.57, or

about one fourth.

Congressional Election.—On the 2d of January, Gen. Joseph Wheeler was elected, by a majority of 3,846, to fill the vacancy in the 8th district, caused by the death of Mr. Lowe.

Miscellaneous. In February, Walter L. Bragg was chosen President of the Railroad Commission. James Crook and Charles P. Ball were chosen members. In January, State Treasurer Isaac H. Vincent absconded, leaving a deficit of about $212,000.

ALGERIA. See FRANCE.

AMSTERDAM EXPOSITION. See WORLD'S FAIR AT AMSTERDAM.

work of the Church of England, and the various societies co-operating with it, is given in "The Official Year-Book of the Church of England," the first volume of which was published in 1883, under the sanction of the Archbishops and Bishops of the English, Irish, and Scottish Churches, and of the lower house of the Convocation of Canterbury. The present number of dioceses in the Church of England, including the two archdioceses, is thirty-two. With them are connected 17,970 clergymen, of whom 11,186 are registered as "incumbents resident," 1,509 as "incumbents non-resident," 387 as "curates in sole charge," and 4,888 as assistant curates." In communion with the Church of England are the Church copal Church of Scotland, having seven dioof Ireland, having twelve dioceses; the Episceses; sixty colonial dioceses in America, Asia, Africa, Australasia, New Zealand, and other colonial settlements, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. (See the article on PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH.) The official records of the several dioceses of the Church of England show the number of ordinations to the order of deacons, during the ten years ending in 1881, to have been 6,560. The number of confirmations during the same period was 1,471,718. Five general societies,

ANGLICAN CHURCHES. An exhibit of the

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two of them dating from the last century, aid theological students requiring pecuniary help; besides which a few diocesan societies exist for the same purpose, and special funds are set apart in some of the theological schools. Special theological training is given at ten theological schools, besides the universities. The Society for Promoting the Employment of Additional Curates returns an income of £42,686, and supports, in whole or in part, 620 clergymen; the Church Pastoral Aid Society, existing with the similar purpose of increasing the number of clergymen and lay agents, returns an income of £55,659, and maintains, wholly or in part, 540 clergymen and 168 lay agents. Besides these societies and similar diocesan organizations, societies exist within the Church, whose object it is to support agencies supplementary to clerical work; and numerous special mission agencies are maintained in all the large centers of population, and among particular classes of workingmen, wherever they are congregated; in the army and navy; among British seamen abroad, at seventy foreign ports; among the fishermen of the Mersey and the Thames; among navvies, or laborers on works of public improvement; among hop-pickers; among homeless and friendless women and girls and abandoned women; among emigrants collected at ports of embarkation preparatory to sailing; and among the miscellaneous populations of the lower classes in the larger towns and cities.

According to the report presented by Lord Hampton in the House of Lords in 1874, 1,727 churches and 27 cathedrals had been built, and 7,117 churches restored, from 1840 to that time, at a total cost of £25,548,703. According to a later return, the sum of £4,326,469 was spent in thirteen dioceses upon church building and restoration between 1872 and 1881. Among the larger funds in aid of this purpose are that of the Incorporated Church Building Society, which has expended for it £785,859 since 1818, and which granted £13,690 in 1881, and the Bishop of London's Fund, applicable to the diocese of London alone, of which £588,412 were spent during the eighteen years ending with 1881. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners were the means of securing through their own grants and the benefactions that were called out to meet them, between 1840 and 1880, a total increase in the incomes of benefices of £765,500, representing a capital sum of about £23,000,000; and during 1881 they made 347 grants, amounting to £26,270, to maintain assistant clergy in twenty dioceses. The Free and Open Church Association seeks to multiply free sittings in churches; to spread the doctrine that the offertory is an obligation "for which there is a direct scriptural warrant"; and to have the churches opened daily for private prayer. It is also prepared to receive and hold trust gifts for building, endowing, and repairing free seated churches, and to accept in

trust, exercise, and dispose of the patronage of benefices.

The Church of England Temperance Society, formed in 1862, has organizations in twentynine dioceses, twenty-six of which return 2,443 branch societies. Steps have been taken in later years for making the cathedrals more accessible to the people, and introducing into them services adapted to popular wants, and for encouraging the employment of lay-readers and assigning them a recognized place in the service of the church. Much attention has also been given to the sending out of earnest men and persuasive speakers to interest the masses in religious concerns, or in the work of what are called "Parochial Missions." The Church Parochial Mission Society, organized in 1873, supports eight preachers, and reported, in 1881, that more than 500 missions had been held by its agents. Similar enterprises are sustained by a number of diocesan organizations. Nine deaconesses' institutions have been formed in different dioceses, as homes for women who will devote themselves to religious work and the care of the sick. They returned, in 1881, 190 nurses domiciled within them. The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church has spent, since its formation, in 1811, more than £1,100,000 in furtherance of its object, involving, according to the statement of its secretary, an expenditure of at least twelve times as much from other sources, for the same end. In 1881 it returned 11,589 efficient church schools under government inspection, which afforded accommodation for 2,351,235 children, or more than half the school accommodation of the country. Thirty colleges have been established for the training of teachers, in which two thirds of the entire number of trained teachers in the country have received their professional education. Provision is made for the religious inspection of the schools under the direction of the bishops in the several dioceses, and for the regular examination of students in religious knowledge. A society of fellows of a college has been formed for the promotion of middleclass schools; and eight such schools provide for the education of more than two thousand boys and girls. The interests of Sunday-schools are cared for by the Church of England Sunday-School Institute, which publishes returns from 8,405 of the 14,466 parishes in England and Wales, of 16,498 Sunday-schools with 113,412 teachers and 1,289,273 enrolled scholars. The tendencies of modern thought which are described under the general term of larism" are opposed by the Christian Evidence Society, in which the Church co-operates with other denominations, and which works by means of conferences and meetings, sermons, lectures, open-air lectures, instruction of classes, publication and other agencies; and by the Christian Evidence Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.

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Missionary Societies. The principal foreign missionary societies of the Church are the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," which was organized in 1701 and has missions in all the British colonies among colonists and natives; the "Church Missionary Society for India and the East," organized in 1799, and having missions, chiefly to the heathen, in West, East, and Central Africa, Palestine, Persia, India, Ceylon, Mauritius, China, Japan, New Zealand, Northwest America, and the North Pacific coast and islands; the Zenana Missionary Society, affiliated with the Church Missionary Society, and laboring among women exclusively; the South American Missionary Society, founded in 1844, and having missions in the southern part of South America and among Indians of the Patagonian race; the Universities Mission to Central Africa, founded in 1859, especially to take care of Africans freed by the British Government from slavery, and having its center of operations at Zanzibar and in the neighboring regions of Africa; the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, organized in 1880; the Cambridge Mission to North India, formed in 1876; the Indian Church Aid Association, formed in 1880; the mission in the Diocese of Maritzburg, South Africa; the Melanesian Mission, begun in 1848; the Colonial and Continental Church Society, for providing clergymen, teachers, etc., for the colonies of Great Britain, and to minister to British residents in other parts of the world; and the Anglo-Continental Society, instituted in 1853, "to serve as an organ of the Church of England in dealing with Christians outside of England." Six special colleges or mission-houses exist for the training of missionaries, and twenty "Missionary Studentship Associations" have been formed in different dioceses.

The Colonial Bishopric's Fund was founded in 1841, to promote the growth of the Church in the colonies and distant dependencies of the British Crown, by securing the endowment of bishoprics in them. From its foundation to 1882 it had been the means of raising £635,311 toward the endowment of forty-one sees.

The London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews was founded in 1809, and has been distinctively a Church of England institution since 1815. It seeks to extend its labors among the people of the Hebrew race wherever they may be found, and has mission stations in England, Austria, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Persia, Poland, Turkey, the Principalities, Asia Minor, Syria, and North America, with a special station, comprising schools, an inquirer's home, a house of industry, and a hospital at Jerusalem. It promotes the circulation of the Hebrew Bible, of a translation of the liturgy of the Church of England, and of controversial works, and maintains schools in London, Warsaw, Bucharest, and Jerusalem. It reports that 360 Israelites had been baptized at Warsaw before the mission was broken up, and 767 adults and 784 chil

dren had been baptized in London up to 1881. Its missionaries estimate that there are now 2,000 Christian Israelites in London, and probably a thousand more in other parts of England, and that there are nearly 5,000 Jewish Christians in Prussia.

The ordinary increase of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts for 1882 was £109,041. Including £33,571 additional of gifts for special purposes, the gross receipts were £142,612. The general fund had increased £7,805 in two years. Five hundred and twenty-seven ordained ministers were employed by the society, of whom 161 were laboring in Asia, 129 in Africa, 20 in Australia and the Pacific, 216 in America and the West Indies, and one in Europe. There were also in the various missions about 1,400 catechists and lay teachers, mostly natives, and about 300 students in colleges. An important change had been made in the constitution and administration of the society. A supplemental charter granted by the Crown had removed the various anomalies which in the course of 181 years had surrounded the ancient charter; and the incorporated members scattered over the whole country now possessed by representation that power in the conduct of the society's affairs which a very large proportion of them had not previously enjoyed.

The ordinary income of the Church Missionary Society for 1882 was £200,402; including in addition the special gifts, the gross receipts amounted to £225,231. The total expenditures were £215,483. Missionary work was carried on at 206 stations, under the agency of 227 European ordained missionaries, 244 native clergy, 44 European lay missionaries, 3,106 native lay agents. Of 182,000 native Christian adherents reported, 37,391 were communicants. New work had been taken up, or extended, at the Afghan frontier, at Kok-Ning-Fu in the Fuhkien province of China, among the Esquimaux, at Bagdad, and at Cairo, Egypt, to the Mohammedans. A gift of £72,000 had been received from Mr. W. C. Jones for a "William Charles Jones China and Japan Native Church and Mission Fund."

Convocation of Canterbury.-Both houses of the Convocation of Canterbury met for business, for the first time in the year, April 10th. A minute was unanimously adopted in the upper house, with the expectation that the lower house would concur in it, taking notice of the death of the late archbishop. A "statement" was then made by the committee, to whom had been referred the question of the attitude the Church should assume with reference to the movements of the Salvation Army. The archbishop represented in behalf of the committee that it had not been found possible to make any definite statement or recommendation on the subject, as the committee considered that the movements of the organization were still in a transitory condition, and he suggested that the committee should be consti

tuted as one of inquiry rather than as a committee to make any report or recommendation. In the course of the discussion which followed, while some of the bishops thought that the Salvation Army was doing a good work in particular places, and others conceded that its promoters were actuated by good intentions and motives, the general expression of opinion was, that many of the methods employed by it were unhealthful and likely to lead to immorality. The committee was reconstituted, and instructed to consider whether the Church should take any steps having particular reference to the unsatisfactory spiritual state of large masses of the population, especially in the

towns.

The subject of the " Affirmation Bill," which was pending in Parliament, was brought before the lower house upon a recommendation of a committee that the members of the upper house be requested to oppose the bill. A motion was offered in amendment that their lordships be requested to watch the progress of the bill through the Houses of Parliament, in order to prevent its being enacted with retrospective powers. Some of the members of the house expressed a preference of affirmations to oaths, on grounds of principle. Canon Gregory contended that the real question was, whether the house was anxious to support the introduction into Parliament of Mr. Bradlaugh, or whether they were anxious to prevent people of that description from polluting the legislature of the country. Prebendary Stephens considered that oath-taking was most injurious, in that it had a pernicious tendency to cause a belief in two kinds of truth-oath-truth and ordinary truth. The proposal of the committee was agreed to.

The convocation met again on July 3d. The following address to the upper house was adopted in the lower house:

The lower house of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, in humble thankfulness to Almighty God for the rejection by the House of Lords on Thursday, June 28, 1883, of the bill for legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister, make this their dutiful representation and prayer to the upper house.

They represent that there is reason to apprehend an immediate renewal of the agitation upon this ques tion. That, inasmuch as holy matrimony is the foundation of human society; and inasmuch as there is a wide-spread ignorance of the principles of Christian marriage, the lower house, as in love and duty bound, turns to the Archbishop and Bishops in Convocation assembled; earnestly praying them to exhort all who have cure of souls in the province of Canterbury to set forth plainly, from time to time, in their addresses to their flocks the aforesaid principles; as embodied in the Table of Prohibited Degrees, in the 99th Canon, and in the form of Solemnization of Matrimony; and, in particular, to remind their people that the union of a man with his wife's sister has been forbidden by the Church of Christ from the beginning, as being contrary to the Word of God.

The lower house venture further to call special attention to the injury which would be done to the moral and spiritual welfare of the English people; also to the disruption of domestic and social relations necessarily involved in the success of the agitation

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The subject was referred in the upper house to a committee, whose report, which was adopted, besides minutely setting forth the considerations on which the action was based, embodied a resolution to the effect that "this house concurs with the lower house in their earnest desire for the maintenance in its integrity of the Table of Prohibited Degrees, set forth in the year of our Lord 1563, in order to be publicly set up in churches by the 99th canon." A resolution was adopted that the Church, "though always insisting on the use of wine in the holy communion, has never prescribed the strength or the weakness of the wine to be used, and consequently it is always possible to deal with even extreme cases without departure from the custom observed by the Church, and it is most convenient that the clergy should conform to ancient and unbroken usage, and to discountenance all attempts to deviate from it."

Enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury.— The Rev. Edward White Benson, D. D., Bishop of Truro, having been nominated by the Queen, was formally elected Archbishop of Canterbury at a special session of the Dean and Chapter of the See, Jan. 28th. The election was confirmed by the Bishop of London and a commission of bishops of the Southern Province, March 3d. The new archbishop was enthroned with imposing ceremonies at the Cathedral of Canterbury, March 29th. The proceedings were participated in or witnessed by a large assemblage of clergy and laity, and home, colonial, and foreign bishops, among whom the Duke of Edinburgh represented the royal family, and Bishop Littlejohn, of Long Island, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.

The Ritualistic Controversy.-The late Archbishop Tait, of Canterbury, a short time before his death, in December, 1882, had devised and partly carried into effect a plan for indirectly removing from the courts the suit against the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, of St. Alban's, who was still under prosecution for contumacy, hoping that one of the results of his action might be to help allay the ritualistic agitation. He induced Mr. Mackonochie to resign his benefice in the interest of the peace of the Church, while the Bishop of London offered him another benefice, that of St. Peter's, London Docks, at the same time transferring the incumbent of that benefice to Mr. Mackonochie's former parish of St. Alban's. The Church Association refused to acquiesce in this proceeding. It published a statement showing that illegal acts were still practiced at St. Alban's and St. Peter's, and addressed resolutions of protest against the fulfillment by the Bishop of London of the compromise which had been arranged. The Bishop of London replied to these resolutions:

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