question between capital and labor, for it touches the interests and the prejudices of the land-owners. The class of cottagers who are half peasants and half laborers, and who have sunk into abject proletarianism, is increasing. When their useless parcels of ground are ever given up, they do not pass into the hands of the farming class, which is too poor to acquire them, but are added to the estates of great land-owners or the country-seats of city residents. The effect of overgrown estates, a numerous dependent proletariat, and taxes which bear heavily upon the small farmers, who are already handicapped by an uncertain climate and a dearth of credit facilities, is to perpetuate negligent methods and a stationary routine which leave Austria ill prepared to stand the stress of American competition.

School Laws.-An amendment of the school law was carried in the Reichsrath, which makes some alterations in the system of elementary instruction of a reactionary character, to meet the views of the clerical and feudalistic elements in the majority of the House of Deputies. The number of days of obligatory attendance can be greatly reduced at the request of a commune. Religious iustruction is made a more important branch, and is to be imparted in the faith of the majority of a commune. The Poles, who, because they hold the balance of power in the Reichsrath, can usually impose their will on the Government, secured the exemption of Galicia from the provisions of the new school ordinance.

Hungary. The kingdom of Hungary possesses an ancient constitution, consisting of fundamental statutes enacted at various dates since the foundation of the kingdom in the ninth century. The Constitution was abrogated after the rebellion of 1848, restored in 1860, and extended to its ancient limits in 1867, when the national independence of Hungary was finally re-established. The Hungarian Diet consists of an upper chamber, called the House of Magnates, and a lower, called the House of Representatives. The House of Magnates was composed in 1882 of 2 royal princes, 50 archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, 672 peers and dignitaries of Hungary and Transylvania, 5 regalists from Transylvania, and 2 deputies of Croatia-in all, 731 members. The House of Representatives, elected directly by all citizens who pay eight florins in direct taxes, consisted in 1882 of 334 deputies from Hungarian districts and towns, 75 from Transylvania, 34 delegates from Croatia, and 1 from Fiume.

The executive power is exercised by a responsible ministry, composed as follows: President of the Council, Koloman Tisza de Boros-Yeno, who has been chief minister since Feb. 25, 1877; Minister of Finance, Count Gyula Szapary, appointed Dec. 6, 1878; Minister of National Defense, Count Gedeon Raday, appointed Oct. 10, 1882; Minister ad latus to the King, Baron Bela d'Orczy, appointed Aug. 12, 1879;

Minister of the Interior, Koloman Tisza; Minister of Education and Public Worship, Dr. August de Trefort, appointed Feb. 26, 1877; Minister of Justice, Dr. Theodor Pauler, appointed Dec. 6, 1878; Minister of Public Works and Communications, Baron de Kemeny, appointed Oct. 14, 1882; Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce, Count Szechenyi, appointed Oct. 14, 1882; Minister for Croatia and Slavonia, Count de Bedekovich, appointed Feb. 26, 1877.

Political Chronicle.-One of the first acts of the Hungarian Parliament, which met in October, 1882, was to remove from the committee of education the elements that opposed making the Magyar tongue the national language of instruction. The chief contest was over the classical and scientific intermediate schools of Transylvania, and the educational supervision of the Evangelical Church in that province. The bill, elaborated in the committee, and carried March 17th by a large majority, prepares the way for the substitution of Hungarian for German in these schools, and Roumanian for the intermediate schools in which Roumanian is the language of instruction. It requires all candidates for teachers' positions in the intermediate schools of the monarchy to submit to a government examination conducted in the Magyar tongue. Three of the four years of preparatory study may be passed in foreign universities, but the final examination must be passed in a Hungarian university, and requires a literary training in the national language.

The Ritual Murder Case.-A criminal trial which was held in June shows that the antipathy against the Jews in eastern Europe, though springing from economical motives, contains an element of superstitious hatred known elsewhere only from the legends of the middle ages. In the village of Tisza-Eszlar, a Christian girl, named Esther Solymossy, suddenly disappeared in the spring of 1882. The rumor was started that the Hebrews of the village had murdered her to obtain the blood of a Christian virgin, which, according to the ancient fable, they mix in their Passover cakes. A malicious petty magistrate, Bary, who had charge of the preliminary examination, influenced or suborned a Jewish boy, named Moritz Scharf, to accuse Salomon Schwartz, and some other Jewish butchers, of cutting her throat, and a number of others, among them his own father, of being witnesses and accomplices in the crime. The girl had been sent to a neighboring village to purchase dye. The last that was seen of her was in the vicinity of the synagogue on her return. The Jews were in the temple that morning trying candidates for the office of butcher to the congregation. Moritz Scharf testified that he saw the murder through the key-hole of the entrance-door. Two women declared that they heard cries and sobs. On this evidence the accused were brought to trial. The body of a drowned girl was found in the river Theiss three months after Esther

Solymossy's disappearance. It was clad in her garments, and was recognized as her remains by her father and others; but her mother, pastor, school-teacher, and numerous acquaintances denied the identity. A commission of medical experts reported that it was the corpse of an older person than Esther, and of one not accustomed to hard labor. A second commission, composed of university professors, found that the marks of physical development did not indicate an age of more than fourteen years. The evidence of the body, the modification of the statements of neighbors who heard cries, and the confused and contradictory testimony of the Hebrew boy under cross-examination, would have abundantly exculpated the prisoners if additional suborned testimony had not strengthened the theory that the corpse was a spurious one placed in the river by members of the Jewish congregation to defeat the evidence against the accused. Two Jewish raftsmen confessed that they had been employed to convey the dead body and deposit it in the water where it was found. The public prosecutor, Szeyffert, declared in taking the case that he did not believe in a ritual murder, and only took part in order to have the evidence sifted and the truth brought out. Beyond this the Government did not intervene in the proceedings. The prosecution was conducted by lawyers retained by anti-Semitic partisans. The trial was interrupted by exhibitions of popular passion, and an anti-Semitic outbreak was feared. The trial ended in the acquittal of the ten prisoners. The effect was eventually to confine the anti-Semitic movement in Hungary more within logical bounds. The excitement continued, however, for some time after the trial, and in various places in North Hungary outbursts of fanaticism occurred. At Tisza-Eszlar there were incendiary fires. At Presburg, riots, like those of the preceding year, required the services of the military to suppress. The Scharf family were mobbed out of Pesth, and their advocate, Dr. Eötvös, was the object of angry demonstrations at Nyiregyhaza. At Zala Egersseg, in Western Hungary, serious riots, in which the neighboring peasantry took a prominent part, began Aug. 23d, and lasted several days. The garrison of the town were unable to preserve order or to prevent the mob from sacking the Jewish quarter. In a riot at Szegitvar, Sept. 2d, artisans broke into and wrecked the stores of Jewish shopkeepers, and were fired upon by the police, but not cowed until the arrival of troops. The Hungarian Government maintained throughout the anti-Jewish agitation a firm attitude, and not only employed every means to quell disorder, but gave no countenance to the popular demands for the repeal of Jewish emancipation or any class legislation directed against the Jews. Yet Minister Tisza acknowledged that there was a Jewish question of an economical nature, and that the evils would not cease until the social causes

were removed. The public-houses throughout the country are kept by Jews. They combine with their trade that of the moneylender, and with other usurers, all of the Hebrew race, keep the peasantry in a condition of economical subjection. The Government brought in bills designed to abate the evils, one of which deprives wine and liquor sellers of legal remedies for the collection of debts for drink, and another is a usury law with severe penalties and elaborate safeguards.

The Croatian Troubles.-The Hungarians, who have observed with a feeling of indifference if not with sympathy the victories of the Czechs over the German Centralists, and the federalistic movement among the other Slav nationalities in Austria, were confronted in 1883 with a Slavic question of their own. The results of the Russian War, and the provisional occupation of Bosnia by Austria, were to arouse in Servia the ambition of uniting the Serbic race into one kingdom; then, since Austria was not likely to relinquish the occupied provinces, to excite hopes in Montenegro of becoming the head of a great Serbic nation under the protection of Russia; and, next, of stirring with similar aspirations the petty nationality of the Croats. The Great Croatian idea looks to the creation of a third member of the Dual Monarchy, a South Slav monarchy with its capital at Agram. The Croats have certain grounds for considering themselves the fittest instrument for the mission of Austria among the South Slavs. Their fidelity and attachment to the Hapsburg dynasty are proverbial. They claim to have been of great assistance in rescuing the dynasty in the conflict with the rebel Magyars in 1848. Since then the Croats have progressed in intelligence and culture as much as or more than the Magyars. The development is in the direction which was given it under German control before their incorporation, sorely against their inclination but in obedience to the will of the monarch, in the kingdom of Hungary. They have not been treated with oppression by the Hungarian Government, but have been permitted to retain their old laws as to land, inheritance, and the election of magistrates. They are not fairly represented in the Hungarian House of Magnates, owing to the same electoral system which denies to the Germans their just quota of representatives in the Cisleithan legislative bodies. The Croatian deputies in the lower house have, however, exercised an influence on the Hungarian Government which is out of proportion to the importance of their province, because they have always voted with the ministry, and on several occasions when the opposition was strong their vote saved the Government from defeat. The incorporation of the Military Frontier, which operation was completed in 1882 and 1883, increased the importance of the province, and gave an impetus to the movement for the union of the districts inhabited by Servians and

Croats. in Dalmatia, Slavonia, Istria, Carniola, and Carinthia, with Croatia and the Military Frontier, to form a Croatian kingdom under the Austrian crown, to which Bosnia and Herzegovina could be added, with the expectation that the other Balkan lands inhabited by the Serbic race would gravitate toward this great state in the future permutations of the Eastern question. The Servians of Croatia and the Austrian provinces, who differ from the Croats, not in language or race, but in religion and political tendencies, were strongly opposed to the occupation of Bosnia. They sympathize with the idea of a Great Servia.

In August began a series of violent Croatian demonstrations in Agram and different parts of the country. The first act was the tearing down of the Hungarian arms from the door of the Finance Office in the capital. These escutcheons with bilingual inscriptions had recently been put up an act which was suspected of being the commencement of a policy for the suppression of the Croatian language and institutions. Magyar inscriptions and signs were destroyed by rioters in all the towns. The military were called into requisition, and, in consequence, the disturbances became more violent. Some districts were placed under martial law. In Maria Bistrica, in a collision between gendarmes and Croat peasants, several rioters were killed. The Ban of Croatia, Count Prejacsevich, who had not been a popular administrator, showed sympathy with the movement and declined to replace the Hungarian arms with the obnoxious Magyar inscription on the front of the government buildings. He was obliged to resign his office in consequence, and now received popular ovations as a great patriot. There were signs of the Slavic ferment in the neighboring Austrian provinces. In the beginning of the year Baron Jovanovich created an uproar in Dalmatia by ordering the official communications between civil servants to be made in German. By an act of the Reichsrath this order was subsequently rescinded. In Darenzo, where the Istrian Provincial Diet meets, a Croat deputy made an attempt to debate in his national tongue instead of in Italian, which is the official language. The Dalmatian deputies obtained the enactment by the Reichsrath of a law directing judicial proceedings in their province to be held in the Servian or Croatian dialects, instead of in Italian. The troubles in Croatia attained the magnitude of an insurrection. The Emperor did not nominate a Ban to succeed Count Prejacsevich, but appointed a royal commissioner with extraordinary powers to restore civil order. The Minister for Croatia, Bedekovich, resigned his portfolio. Gen. RamVOL. XXIII.-4 A

berg was selected for this service. In the Zagorien district, encounters took place between the military and the rioters, and the troops were repelled at Krapina, Töplitz, and Sopo. The commissioner issued a proclamation stating that the bilingual official notices would be continued, to demonstrate the fact that political questions were not to be settled by street riots. The escutcheons were replaced on the government buildings at Agram on the 7th of September, and on the following day occurred another riot. The economic distress of the people made them more susceptible to the enticements of agitators, and complicated the movement with socialistic and anti-Semitic demonstrations. The men at the head of the Imperial and Hungarian governments were not inclined to proceed to extremes, and the troops used great forbearance. The suspension of executions for the collection of taxes caused a partial subsidence of the agitation.

After Agram was tranquillized, an insurrection broke out in the Military Frontier, which, like the one in Zagorie, was of an agrarian nature. At Farkasevinez an anti-Magyar riot occurred on the 20th of September, and ten peasants were killed by the soldiery. Persons concerned in the riots at Agram were brought to trial and, September 30th, sentenced to short terms of imprisonment. At the meeting of the Hungarian House of Deputies on the 1st of October, the Croatian deputies refused to take part in the proceedings pending the settlement of the question of the escutcheons. They formulated the national demands, which embraced the restitution of the escutcheons with Croatian legends only, the recall of the royal commissioner and the appointment of a Ban, the establishment of constitutional government, the convocation of the Croatian Diet, and the immediate discussion of the compromise law under which Croatia was attached to Hungary. The Premier announced a policy of conciliation and of willingness to discuss and remedy any grievances. The complaints of unfair taxation were shown to be groundless as far as the Central Government was concerned, but not as regards the local authorities. Peculations of the magistrates of their own appointment aggravate the burden of taxes. All intentions of suppressing the language, nationality, or antonomic rights of Croatia were disclaimed. After a spirited debate, the Parliament approved the proposal of the ministry to replace the demolished escutcheons without any inscriptions, letting those remain which bore Croatian inscriptions. The royal arms were accordingly erected on the 16th of October, after the disturbances were over, without either Magyar or Croatian legends.

organization, and turn over its work to the Publication Society and the Missionary Union. The other societies concerned in the proposed scheme also resolved to accept the functions which its execution would impose upon them. American Baptist Missionary Union.-The annual meeting of the American Baptist Missionary Union was held at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., May 24th. The Rev. George Dana Boardman, D. D., presided. The receipts of the Union for the year had been $327,800, and its expenditures $316,410. The condition of the missions is exhibited in the following table:

Baptized.

129

Members.

1,685 239

4,066 50,146 429

485 471

87

27

95

89

48

89

19

9

69

188

684

2

1

585 7

Grand totals..... 190 1,864 1,082 10,645 102,145

A newspaper statement had charged the treasurer of the society with taking advantage, in settlements with the missionaries, of the differences in exchange in the valuation of dollars and rupees at the expense of the missionaries and to the profit of the treasury. This charge was answered by the chairman of the committee of finance, who, after a special examination of the subject and of the treasurer's accounts, reported that "for twentythree years previous to 1878 the changing of dollars into rupees favored the missionaries on the field by the appreciation of the rupee, while for three years afterward the Union gained by the depreciation of the value of the rupee. To remove all cause for dissatisfaction by the missionaries in 1879, the Union now changes its dollars into pounds sterling and then into rupees, so that the missionaries now receive the full amount of their salary of dollars in rupees. All of the gain during five years in the depreciation of the rupee is strictly accounted for by the treasurer's report." Resolutions were adopted expressing satisfaction with the statement, and "unqualified confidence" in the late treasurer.

American Baptist Home Mission Society.-The annual meeting of the American Baptist Home Mission Society was held May 25th. The Hon. James L Howard presided. The total receipts of the society for the year had been $283,944; the permanent and trust funds held by it amounted to $497,535; and an indebtedness was returned of $49,967. Six hundred and

women.

The Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society had received during the year $22,000 in cash and $4,524 in goods, and had disbursed $22,348. It had employed 26 missionaries, 6 missionary teachers, and 10 Bible-women, who were laboring among the Indians, the freedmen, Scandinavians, Germans, and Mormons.

American Baptist Publication Society.-The anniversary of the American Baptist Publication Society was held May 28th. The receipts of the society for the year had been $399,673 in the business department, and $122,246 in the missionary department. Forty-five new publications had been issued, and 122,300 Bibles had been distributed.

Southern Baptist Convention.-The Southern Baptist Convention met at Waco, Texas, May 11th. The Rev. P. H. Mell was chosen president. The principal business of the meeting consisted in a review of the progress of the missionary and benevolent work of the Southern Baptist churches. The income of the Board of Missions for the year had been $56,805, and the board had a balance of $6,100 in its treasury. Reports were made of the condition of the several missions, as follow: The Mexican mission had 65 church-members, of whom 13 had been baptized during the year. Two missionaries, with three assistants, besides native helpers, were employed at eight stations. In Brazil, four missionaries, all foreign, were employed at the stations of Santa Barbara and Bahia, where were 50 church-members, and in which five persons had been baptized during the year. Three missions were sustained in China, employing 34 missionaries, and with them were connected 587 church-members. In Africa were seven missionaries, at five stations, with 100 church-members and 194 pupils in schools. The missions in Italy included ten stations, at which were 14 missionaries and evangelists, and with which were connected 220 members. Seven missionaries had been sent out by the board during the year.