NETHERLANDS, THE. 



NEVADA. 



627 



to the Conservative fractions united. The 

 new Chamber was composed of 48 Liberals; 

 1 Savage, who, however, inclined more to the 

 Left than to the Eight; 5 Conservatives; 15 

 Anti-Revolutionists, and 17 Ul tramontanes. 

 The Left, therefore, exceeded the Conserva- 

 tive fractions combined, by 11 or 12 votes, 

 having lost considerably in the elections. The 

 opposition parties have devoted extraordinary 

 efforts to the purpose of ousting the Liberals. 

 The Catholic and the Orthodox parties struck 

 up a temporary alliance for this object. 



The new session of the Legislature began 

 September 29th. One of the principal govern- 

 ment measures was a new army law. The 

 active militia is composed, in peace as well as 

 war, of volunteers and drafted men. The term 

 of service commences with the twenty-first 

 year, and consists of one year's continuous 

 service and periods of six weeks' attendance 

 with the colors in the other four years. The 

 privilege of appearing by substitute and of ex- 

 changing lots is retained, but substitutes must 

 not be over thirty years of age. The maximum 

 strength of the militia is raised from 55,000 to 

 62,400, and the annual recruits from 11,000 to 

 12,600. The National Guard, or reserve, em- 

 braces the entire male population capable of 

 bearing arms between the ages of twenty 

 and thirty. The " dormant " guard, which was 

 subjected to no drill in time of peace, and 

 was not armed, is abolished. The reserve 

 is divided into two classes according to their 

 efficiency, which are required to practice only 

 from 40 to 50 and from 90 to 100 training- 

 hours a year, respectively. The strength of 

 the reserve corps is 142,000 in peace. The 

 force which is estimated to be at any time 

 fully trained and ready for mobilization is 

 81,000. In case of war the fully trained are 

 to serve at once in garrison duty or in the 

 field, while the others are to be instructed in 

 training-camps in the interior of the country. 



A copyright law was enacted, which fixes 

 the term of property-rights in literary pro- 

 ductions at fifty years from the time a copy of 

 the publication is deposited with the Minister 

 of Justice. 



In connection with the adoption of a revised 

 criminal code, a minority were in favor of the 

 restoration of the death-penalty, which was 

 abolished in 1870. The Minister of Justice 

 stated that the convictions for crimes which 

 merited death, according to the law in force 

 up to that time, in the ten years immediately 

 following the abolition of capital punishment, 

 were 57 in number, while the number of those 

 condemned to death in the ten years imme- 

 diately preceding was 82. A comparison of 

 tlio statistics of crime since 1811 showed that 

 the graver offenses have diminished continu- 

 ously. 



The Government projects for the improve- 

 ment of the canals from Rotterdam to the 

 North Sea, and the construction of a new one 

 from Amsterdam to the Merwede, connecting 



that city circuitously with the Rhine, were 

 carried through the Legislature ; but the lat- 

 ter, before passing the Upper House, became 

 the political question of the day. The people 

 of Amsterdam desired a canal direct to the 

 Rhine, and the municipality offered to con- 

 tribute 3,000,000 guilders. The Minister of 

 Public Works, Klerck, had threatened to re- 

 sign if his scheme was rejected, so that the 

 technical question of the practicability of the 

 shorter route was complicated by the oppor- 

 tunity offered to give the ministry a set-back. 

 The merchants of the capital were indignant 

 at the rejection of their demand for a direct 

 eastward connection with the Rhine. 



The Minister of Justice, Moddermann, ex- 

 cited a commotion among his fellow-Liberals 

 by an answer to an interpellation from the 

 Clerical benches on the same question that was 

 raised in England by Bradlaugh. It has been 

 the custom for some time of the freethinking 

 members to decline to take the parliamentary 

 oath as being contrary to their religious prin- 

 ciples, and they have been allowed instead to 

 subscribe to the affirmation provided by stat- 

 ute. The minister delivered the opinion de- 

 sired by the interrogators, to the effect that 

 the affirmation can only be legally elected, in- 

 stead of the oath, by members of those relig- 

 ious sects, like the Remonstrants, whose con- 

 fessional principles are opposed to testifying 

 by oath. The question was raised again from 

 the Liberal side on the occasion of an atheist's 

 having been excluded from one of the munici- 

 pal councils on account of his declining to take 

 the oath. The subject of the discussion was 

 Df. Hartog Heys van Zouteveen, of Assen, 

 The Second Chamber rejected a resolution de- 

 claring it to be the sense of the Chamber that 

 the right to affirm in taking a seat in munic- 

 pal councils is a general one, and, by a major- 

 ity of 62 to 16, adopted instead one proposed 

 by a Catholic member, but approved by the 

 minister, declaring a revision of the law of 

 oaths to be necessary, and that the Chamber 

 was prepared to limit the number of cases in 

 which the oath is made obligatory. A new 

 petition from the Evangelical opponents to 

 secular education, that confessional schools 

 might be re-established in place of the present 

 state schools, was presented to the Govern- 

 ment in October, and received the same nega- 

 tive answer which was given in 1878. 



NEVADA. The material interests of Ne- 

 vada, which were mentioned last year as hav- 

 ing been depressed since 1878, have continued 

 in that condition and manifested a downward 

 rather than an upward tendency. To show 

 the disproportion existing between the actual 

 worth of property and the taxes yet levied on 

 it, a leading local papr remarked, near the 

 close of September: "Property in Virginia 

 City and Gold Hill has depreciated alarmingly. 

 The assessor has made his rounds, and many 

 holders of real estate are now seriously debat- 

 ing in their own minds whether their posses- 



