UNITED BRETHREN". 



UNITED STATES. 



755 



objected to the military convention in the 

 strongest manner, but approved the other ar- 

 ticles of the treaty. The Porte maintained its 

 right to conclude a military treaty with a vas- 

 sal of the Sultan, and denied that the firman 

 appointing Prince Alexander Governor of East- 

 ern Roumelia was an infringement of the Treaty 

 of Berlin, since the appointment to be effective 

 must be ratified by the powers. The Mussul- 

 man villages in Eastern Roumelia are to be ad- 

 ministered under the control and supervision 

 of a commissioner of the Turkish Government, 

 whose appointment will be subject to the ap- 

 proval of Prince Alexander. 



The Agreement with England on the Egyptian 

 Question. Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, who 



wns sent by the Salisbury Cabinet to negotiate 

 with the Porte a settlement of the points of 

 difference with respect to Egypt, finally ar- 

 ranged an understanding on the basis of a 

 clear recognition of the Sultan's suzerain 

 rights. The affairs of Egypt are intrusted to 

 the joint supervision of an English and a Turk- 

 ish commissioner. The finances, the judicial 

 system, and the army are to be reorganized 

 under their direction, and when that is accom- 

 plished the British troops will evacuate Egypt. 

 The southern frontier of Egypt is to be forti- 

 fied. Sir Drummond Wolff went to Egypt as 

 the English special commissioner, andMukhtar 

 Pasha was appointed special commissioner of 

 the Porte, 



U 



UNITED BRETHREN. The statistical returns 

 of this Church, as reported to the General Con- 

 ference in May, give the following numbers: 

 Of bishops, 5; of traveling preachers, 1,347; 

 of local preachers, 920; of members, 168,573; 

 of Sunday schools, 3,228, having a total mem- 

 bership of 195,022 persons. The 2,454 houses 

 of worship and 436 parsonages are valued at 

 $3,603,251. The amount collected for all church 

 purposes in 1884 was $842,470. The educa- 

 tional institutions consist of one theological 

 seminary, ten colleges, and ten seminaries, 

 academies, and schools of a higher grade, 

 which returned 128 teachers and 2,088 stu- 

 dents, with an aggregate of $342,443 of endow- 

 ment funds, and buildings and grounds valued 

 at $372,470. The agent of the Publishing House 

 at Dayton, Ohio, reported that the cash receipts 

 of the establishment during the past four years 

 had exceeded $500,000, while the net profits of 

 the business had been $61,011. 



The Nineteenth General Conference of the 

 United Brethren Church met in Fostoria, Ohio, 

 May 14. Forty-seven conferences were repre- 

 sented by 121 delegates. The five bishops pre- 

 sided by turns. The most important subject 

 of discussion was that relating to membership 

 in secret societies, which is forbidden by the 

 constitution of the Church. Efforts have been 

 making for sixteen years to have the rule modi- 

 fied, without success, in securing the passage of 

 the proposition through the stages required to 

 enact a constitutional amendment. A party in 

 the Church contended that these steps were 

 not required, because the constitution itself 

 was only a creature of a single General Con- 

 ference, which had never been directly voted 

 upon by the people, and had therefore no more 

 force than an ordinary statute repealable at 

 will. The bishops in their address recom- 

 mended that the General Conference deter- 

 mine whether the disposition of the matter 

 is not still within its hands, and if it find that 

 to be the case, that it " transfer the whole sub- 

 ject from the realm of constitutional law to the 

 field of legislative enactment, which would be 



to expunge the whole question from the con- 

 stitution," The subject was disposed of by 

 appointing a commission to prepare a revision 

 of the constitution and submit the same to a 

 vote of the Church ; while the rule against se- 

 cret societies was modified so as to read : 



A secret combination, in the sense of the constitu- 

 tion, is a secret league or confederation of persons 

 holding principles and laws at variance with the 

 "Word of God, as evidenced in individual life, and in- 

 fringing upon the natural, social, political, or religious 

 rights of those outside its pale. Any member or min- 

 ister of our Church, found in connection with such 

 combinations, shall be dealt with as in other cases of 

 disobedience to the order and discipline of the Church, 

 as found in the pages of the Discipline. 



UNITED STATES. The New Administration. 



Before going to Washington to enter upon the 

 duties of the office of President, Mr. Cleveland 

 had consultations at Albany with several promi- 

 nent leaders of his party, including Vice-Presi- 

 dent-elect Hendricks, Speaker Carlisle, ex- 

 Speaker Randal], and Senators Gorman, of 

 Maryland ; Garland, of Arkansas; and Lamar, of 

 Mississippi, He also visited Mr. S. J. Tilden, 

 at Grey stone-on- the- Hudson. In reply to a let- 

 ter signed by several members of Congress, on 

 the subject of silver coinage, he sent the fol- 

 lowing, which was published on Feb. 27 : 



To the Hon. A. J. Warner and others, members of the 



Forty-eighth Congress. 



GENTLEMEN : The letter which I have had the honor 

 to receive from you invites, and indeed obliges ? me 

 to give expression to some grave public necessities, 

 although in advance of the moment when they would 

 become the objects of my official care and partial re- 



Your solicitude that my judgment shall have been 

 carefully and deliberately formed is entirely just, and 

 I accept the suggestion in the same friendly spirit in 

 which it has been made. It is also fully justified by 

 the nature of the financial crisis which, under the op- 

 eration of the act of Congress of Feb. 28, 1878, is now 

 close at hand. By a compliance with the require- 

 ments of that law all the vaults of the Federal Treas- 

 ury have been and are heaped full of silver coins, 

 which are now worth less than 85 per cent, of the gold 

 dollar prescribed as " the unit of value " in section 14 

 of the act of Feb. 12, 1873, and which, with the silver 

 certificates representing such coin, are receivable for 



