HE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN
GENESEE EVANGELIST.
A. Religions and Family newspaper,
IN’ THE IKTMHItft OF THE
Constitutional Presbyterian Church.
PUBLISHED EVEBY THURSDAY,
AT THE PRESBYTERIAN HOUSE,
1334 Chestnut Street, (2d story,) Philadelphia.
Rev. John W. Hears, Editor and Publisher.
®* B* Hotchfcin, Editor of Bfows and
family Departments.
Bev. C. jp. Basil, Corresponding Editor
Rochester, W. T.
Utamratt
THURSDAY, AUGUST 81, 1866.
CONTENTS OF INSIDE PAGES.
Second Page— The Family Circle :
Chamouny—Snagsby: a Story for Young Clerks—
r -oTn Bnd Boy”-Tho Wind and the Breeze-
Lifted Over—How a Drunkard was Cured—Closer
Looking. '
For the Little Folks • Thy Will be done on Earth
as in Heaven—The Stolen Ring.
Third Page—Miscellaneous :
Providence of God in the Preparation and Career of
DtarlM P^er-m^tfn^ 011 ° f 3 e
Sixth Page—Correspondence :
Onr London Letter-Sowing and Reaping—Rev. A.
ln th .? 0U Regions—The Reward of Ear
nest Eflort: or, the way Reuben was led to Jesus.
Seventh Page—Scientific :
The Nile Discovery.
: Infiltration—Salt for the Gar-
w — .nL to fe a ? p . for Mutton—lt is important to
Sal i lns , Wheat Band— To Reserve
Uroharda—Horses Feeding one Another.
THE LAST PORTRAIT OF VOLTAIRE.
Although Carlyle is famous for his hero
worship, and although he believes there
were worshipful qualities in Voltaire, the
picture he draws of this profane and yet
gifted man of letters, contains some of the
most humiliating traits that ever were
raised into notoriety by the fame of their
possessor. Voltaire was one of the French
savants whom Frederick the Great took
pride in attaching to himself, and in weav
ing into the honors and brilliancies of his
Court. Hence Carlyle, in his Life of the
Prussian Monarch,* is frequently callecfon
to speak of the witty Frenchman, in fact
gives us quite a graphic and interesting
portrait of him. It is a subject which has
apparently strong attractions for Carlyle; he
returns to it again and again in many an
extract and comment, and yet the resulting
impression, and perhaps the one after all
designed to be left on the reader’s mind, is
not mainly one of power, nor of wit, nor of
eminence any way, but rather of disgust
and amazement, not unmixed with pity for
the subject. We see a restless, dissatisfied,
jealous, thoroughly unhappy man, unable
to gain a position accordant with his ambi
tion at the French court, unable by the
sheer follies and extravagances of his tem
per, to retain such a position gladly awarded
him by the Prussian monarch. We see a
man regardless of the sanctities of domestic
life ; incapable, apparently, of being wound
ed by the grossest offences in his domestic
relations —if, indeed, the word “ domestic”
could be used in reference to his—a man
of the hollowest sort of friendship towards
his truest benefactor, eulogizing the king
in his most skilful verses to his face, and
deriding him behind his back; shamefully
abusing the king’s kindest and most inti
mate confidences and straining his royal en
durance to the utmost, and then, when
discovered, whining most piteously for for
giveness ; —all such and other contemptible
traits are brought to light, and made most
indubitably clear by contemporary docu
ments, until one must admit that no small
part of the Voltairian nature is infected
with utter and radical meanness and dis
honesty.
It is quite impossible for us to speak
fully of what we have called the domestic
relations of Voltaire. As represented by
Carlyle, he seems to have had no more con
science upon the most sacred of these rela
tions than the most besotted of heathens,
or than a brute. An offence of the most
aggravated kind committed against himself
in these relations, does not appear to have
excited in him the slightest flush of indig
nation against the guilty parties. They
still enjoyed his friendship and maintained
their places in his circle. No other infer
ence is possible, than that Voltaire’s moral
sense was steeped in utter debasement.
From another source quite friendly to Vol
taire, we learn that during his visit to Eng
land, his conversation at Pope’s dinner table
was such that the mother of Pope was com
pelled to retire from the company.
Voltaire appears in these sketches insa
tiably eager for courtly and scientific recog
nition. fle hung about the court of Louis
XV. until, by the help of Madame Pompa
dour, he gained a precarious footing there as
historiographer. By favor of the same
all-powerful beauty, Voltaire, in 1747, saw
himself one of the forty Academicians. This
elevation of a known infidel, however, cre
ated unusual commotion, and Voltaire
found himself a target for a perfect tempest
of ridicule, which he had no patience to
endure. He accordingly plunged into a
lawsuit with an obscure person, found him
self even then mistaken in the party, and
was entangled for above a year in all the
pettiness and the mortification of appeals,
informations, and processes, which really
seem to have harmed no one but" himself,
bven Carlyle ridicules him in these pro-
“History of Friedrich the Second, called
ie Great by Thomas Carlyle, Vols. 1.-IV.
W York: Harper & Brothers. 12mo, with
Cravings.
New Series, Vol. 11, 35.
ceedings, as an Academical gentleman taking
a poor dog by the ears, as “ Olympian Jove
iu distressed circumstances “ Phoebus
Apollo going about as mere Cowherd of
Admetus, and exposed to amuse the popu
lace by his duels with dogs that have bit
ten him.” And in spite of all his humili
ating manoeuvres, he is unable to keep in
the good graces of Majesty, led, as it is, by
Capricious Beauty. The king passing out
in company with Richelieu, after the repre
sentation of a triumphal piece by Voltaire,
in which the king is called “ divine Tra
jan,” overheard the eager flatterer ask
Richelieu whether Trajan was pleased ?
(Trajan, est il content?) and returned.an
angry glance; as much as to say, “ Imper
tinent Lackey !” “Oh my Voltaire,” ex
claims Carlyle, “to what dunghills do you
stoop with homage, constrained by their
appearance of mere size !” Soon, in spite
of all these abasements and flatteries, he
finds himself practically supplanted at the
French court and retires into private life.
But Frederick the Great, who, when
Crown-Prince, had known and admired Vol
taire, and who was on no very friendly
terms with Louis XV. at this time, now in
terposed and brought the discarded philos
opher to his court, where he was treated
with truly royal friendliness, frankness,
and liberality. Here he might have held
positions of eminent influence and renown.
Or his great talents might have employed
themselves with every advantage in the un
interrupted and peaceful pursuits of litera
ture. A truly noble mind • would have
known how to reciprocate the generous sen
timents of the king, and to improve the op
portunity of great achievements presented by
the royal favor. On the contrary, the whole
period of Voltaire’s stay at the court of Prus
sia, almost iTom the beginning, is one scene of
intrigues, of small jealousies, of despicable
transactions, of disloyalty to the royal friend
ship, of restlessness and misery amid shows
of greatness, constituting, as drawn by the
graphic hand of -Carlyle, one of the most
humiliating and convincing pictures iu the
whole history of human depravity.
Of course our limits forbid the attempt,
which, in any case, would be unedifying, to
enter into the details of this period. But
we must dwell for. a. few moments on a
scandalous piece of stockjobbing, in which
Voltaire was caught and exposed to the
world, soon after his appearance at ..the
court of Frederick. For it must be remem
bered'that Voltaire was a practiced /hand in
money-making, and a successful peculator
in an earlier period of his lift At the
peace of Dresden, agreed to just before
Voltaire arrived, between the governments
of Saxony and Prussia, it had been stipu
lated by Frederick, that Saxony, which was
then employing a depreciated currency,
should pay all Prussian subjects then hold
ers of Saxon Exchequer Bills, principal and
interest, in gold; whatever became of hold
ers in other countries. As was to be ex
pected, a contraband traffic in these bills
threatened to spring up, by which they
might all in time have been transferred to
Prussian hands, and become payable in
gold. But Frederick, rightly regarding
this as a breach of faith, denounced the
tariffie and menaced it down. At this
juncture Voltaire appeared at Berlin, and '
being at least quite as keen for gain as for
position, saw the opportunity to make
twenty-five to thirty-five per, cent, on his 1
money, in this contraband speculation in the
bills of the Saxon Treasury. Totally in
different to the severe rescripts of his royal
friend on the subject, and ignoring all the
moral principles involved, he determines to
invest a sum amounting to over eleven
thousand dollars in the speculation. To
cover up his tracks, he employs a Jew, fur
nishes him with negotiable bills to that
amount, takes security for the bills in jew
els, and speaks of the business as a transac
tion in ‘- furs” and “ diamonds.” The
Jew agent then leaves for Dresden. All
might now have been accomplished to the
satisfaction of the philosopher-speculator,
and the world never the wiser of it, but for
the failure of the Jew to fulfil his part and
the consequent stoppage of the principal
draft by Voltaire. Hence arose the most
vehement disputes and tutile attempts at
settlement, followed by a law-suit between
the parties, and all Berlin and all Europe
rang with the scandal. Such shuffling,
such overreaching, such close-fisted bar
gaining, such cur-like snapping and snarl
ing, such melancholy littleness as were
exhibited in these transactions between the
“ Olympian" Voltaire and the Jew Hirsh,
one does not often see among the hucksters
in our fish and provision markets. We do
not know whether to believe it—Carlyle
does not charge us to discredit, the accusa
tion of the Jew, that Voltaire had changed
(for the worse) the diamonds left in his
hands by Hirsh for security; but Car-
PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, AUGUST 81, 1865.
lyle does believe and admit that Vol
taire —upon his oath it seems —did lie, and
did in these transaction commit forgery!*
The king himself writes to his sister that
“ Voltaire picks Jews’ pockets !”
Other quarrels and scandals followed this
law suit with the Jew. As Carlyle says :
“ Voltaire has a fatal talent of getting into
quarrels with insignificant accidental peo
ple ; and instead of silently, with cautious
finger, disengaging any bramble that catches
to him and thankfully passing on, attacks
it indignantly, with potent steel implements,
wood-axes, war-axes; brandishing and hew
ing—till he lias stirred up a whole wilder
ness of bramble-bushes and is himself
bramble-chips all over.” Of these petty
quarrels, nor of that greater one over the
perpetual President ol Frederick’s Academy
of Sciences, Maupertuis, which led to Vol
taire’s overthrow, we can say but little; in
fact but a word or two of the last.
Voltaire, perpetually jealous of the influ
ence of the Academician with the king, and
despising what he considered his pompous
dullness, after many lesser demonstrations,
wrote a powerful satire upon his character
and performances. The king read the satire,
'and enjoyed it, but commanded Voltaire
to withhold it entirely from the public.
Voltaire promised, but his word to a royal
benefactor was as nothing in comparison
with the gratification of his jealous and
vindictive nature. Soon Dr. Ahakia, as
the satire was called, appeared in Holland,
appeared in Berlin under the king’s nose,
and all the world was in conversation about
it. Thirty thousand copies were sold in
Paris alone. Voltaire’s dishonesty being
actually without limit, he declares that its
publication was by accident; “ fatal treach
ery and accident Frederick answers that
such effrontery is astonishing, and asks
•whether he imagines he will make people
believe that black is white ? And so, after
many more shufflings and discreditable ma
• noeuvres, the unprincipled, ungrateful, pas
sionate man leaves the court and territory
of Frederick'in disgrace. '
But enough, enough. We must conclude
this lamentable picture of human wicked
ness and weakness, which we take no plea
sure in reproducing. Read finally a single
paragraph of €bDM&4 show it to
who may be inclined to respect the memory
ol the profane Frenchman, andsay, “These
be thy gods, O Israel!”
Quoting first some of Voltaire’s expres
sions descriptive of the externals of his po
sition at the Prussian court—“ Potsdam
is Sparta and Athens joined in one; a camp
of Mars and the Garden of Epicurus;
trumpets and violins, War and Philosophy.
I have my time to myself; am at Court and
in freedom—Carlyle proceeds to look at
the facts from within. “ Alongside of these
warblings from a heart grateful to the first
of kings, there goes on a series of utteran
ces to Niece Denis (Voltaire’s niece and
correspondent in Paris) remarkable for the
misery driven into meanness that can be
read in them. 11l health, discontent, vague
terror, suspicion that dare not go to sleep ;
a strange vague terror, shapeless or taking
all shapes; a body diseased and a mind
diseased. Fear quaking continually for
nothing at all, is not to be borne in a hand
some manner; and it passes often roughly
(in these poor Letters') into transient ma
lignity, into gusts of trembling hatred, with
a tendency to relieve ones self by private
scandal of the house we are in. A man
hunted by the little devils that dwell un
chained within himself, like Pentheus by
the Maenads, like Actaeon bv his own
dogs.”
* A curious and painstaking German has
published facsimiles of documents produced
in evidence by Voltaire on the trial, one of
which, in Voltaire’s hand, bears indisputable
marks of having been tampered with and
falsified by interpolations, after it 'had been
signed by the other party. “No fact,” says
Carlyle, “is more certain, and few are sadder
in the history of M. de Voltaire. . . . When
the judges, not hiding their surprise at the
form of the document, asked, ‘ Will you
swear it is all genuine?’ Voltaire answered,
1 Yes, certainly!’”
A PINCH.
“ How do you brethren manage about
money ? I have been praying for money
for these two weeks, and have not re
ceived any yet,” said a worthy and
laborious minister to us this morning.
“ I have read Muller’s Life to strengthen
my faith, but I hardly know what to do.
I have blacked my buttons and darned
my coat, and my vest is so shabby that
I dare not raise my arms when I preach.”
“Ah I” responded a brother minister,
“you have not got to my point yet; I
button up my vest to my chin, so as not
to show my shirt.” And so the good
men had a cheery, jovial chat over their
shortened, purses, and went back, each
to his work, cheerful, happy, and uncom
plainiDg, yet, after all, pinched. Let
our good laymen look around and ease,
the pinch, if it be in their neighborhood.
THE UNSATISFACTORY POLICY OF
THE GOVERNMENT.
It is of no use to attempt to conceal it.
The people are more than disappointed,
they are fast becoming disgusted, scan
dalized, and alarmed by the policy of the
Government in dealing with its conquered
rebel subjects. Looking at the attitude of
the President for the past five months,
they are reluctantly compelled to admit
that he is not showing himself the man of
iron nerve, of earnest and indignant pur
pose, of inflexible justice, suited, to deal
with rebels, whose last weapon—assassina
tion —had elevated him to the position he
holds. Tjhat prompt aSS rigorous policy
which the universal voice of the astonished
and afflicted people demanded upon the
death ot the late President, and confidently
expected at the hands of his successor —for
which, indeed they regarded his successor
pre-eminently fitted and providentially desig
nated, has not been followed, save in the
punishment of the miserable and contemp
tible agents in the assassination. Beyond
this, not one visible attempt to execute
justice upon the unspeakably guilty authors
of our great national calamities, of our
barely escaped national ruin ! No 1 but a
headlong haste to resore to these bitter and
implacable enemies of their country, fresh
from fields of carnage or from traitorous
councils, almost every political privilege
and right they ever before enjoyed; a vast
bill of amnesties, whose very exceptions
are fast becoming a mockery; all the wheels
of Government clogged, and the health of
the President sacrificed in the rush for
pardons and the zeal to restore to excepted
parties and flaming rebels their entire
political status ; men tainted with treason
raised to high positions in the process of
reconstruction; the whole rebel machinery
of State Government, as it existed at the
close of the war, with exception of the
legislative and gubernatorial department,
recognized and confirmed in one instance,
by a semi-loyal Provisional Governor; and
the whole political, social, and ecclesiasti
cal reconstruction of the South falling
rapidly back into the hands of the very
class of mes. whom we have spent three
thousand millions in money and half
a million' or-lives in conquering on the
field.
It is egregious trifling with ourselves to
hide, to ignore, or to extenuate the facts.
The classes, who, under the pardoning and
reconstructing policy of the President and
his counsellors are coming into power in
the South, who are editing its papers, re
organizing its churches, leading its voters
and shaping its civil affairs, are beaten but
unrepentant rebels; rebels malignant and
mortified by their defeat, rebels determined
to save all of their old civilization and
status which the amiability and the weak
ness of the North will yield; rebels ani
mated with murderous hatred toward the
race which has nominally escaped from
their power, and which has so largely con
tributed to their defeat; rebels who have
long ago calculated the value of Northern
sympathy, and whose plans of co-operation
with Northern traitors at the polls are well
matured and deep and startling enough,if we
but knew them. This, is the case in the
larger part even of Tennessee, it is the case
in much of North Carolina, it is true of the
South as a whole; the elements of society
hostile to the North, to the Union, to
emancipation are reforming their shattered
ranks, and under the hasty, inconsiderate
policy of the Government, are hurrying to
seize upon positions where they can securely
entrench tikmselves under the Constitu
tion, fro or \hence they can beat back
Norther:: immigration, Northern news
papers, iNorthern teachers and preachers,
and from w hence signalling to their old allies
: in Churcn and State at the North, they
hope to wrest from the country half the
advantages which it had gained for good
government and freedom in the war.
Why, oh why, after all our bitter expe
riences must these things only threaten to
be ? Why, when we have, at the price of
such numerous and such overwhelming vic
tories, so amply secured ourselves against
it, must the bare possibility of a partial
revival of pro-slavery domination be suffer
ed to haunt us ? Is any State necessity laid
upon us of re-constructing the South in a
single summer ? Have rebellious commu
nities any such immediate and urgent claims
upon us, that even -with the disappearance
of the last battle-cloud of their unsuccess
ful war against the Government, should go
our arrangements for restoring to them all
the conveniences and amenities of the social
order they have destroyed ? Shall there
be no time allowed first to weigh the meas
ure of guilt belonging to the movers in
such a formidable and costly out-break of
utter lawlessness? Shall not a pause be
allowed sufficient for outraged authority to
Genesee Evangelist, USTo. 1006.
put on her judicial robes, and to mark with
her most solemn and deliberate proceedings,
and her most weighty sentence, her con
demnation, of such a supreme instance of
guilt? What business, indeed, has justice
among the generations of men, if she is to
be set aside, postponed, ignored, in dealing
with the authors of such a carnival of
crime as unjustifiable rebellion, as this re
bellion ?
President Johnson has allowed himself
no such pause ; has given justice no such
precedence. The absorbing business of the
Government has been re-construction ; it
has plunged at once, without consulting
the. legislative arm, into all the intricate
and momentous processes of that under
taking without experience or example to
guide it; it has allowed itself to be over
whelmed and exhausted with applications
from excepted cases for pardon ! Whaf a
spectacle. The successor of the assassina
ted Lincoln, the magistrate ordained of God
to be a terror to evil doers, the ruler of ten
or a dozen provinces lately in bitter and
bloody rebellion, before he carries through,
or fairly initiates process against a single
rebel, as such, allows himself to be tasked
to the very limits of physical endurance,
until health and life are in peril by the
rush of pardon seekers whom he has en
couraged to make such appeals !
Plainly, there is no room for the calm,
deliberate processes of justice here. The
President and his Law officer are otherwise
employed. The bayonets which once sur
rounded justice, and under which they
triumphed, are down, and in the name of
peace and re-construction, a greedy crowd
of hypocritical oath-takers are rushing in
and trampling her in, the mire. But are
we opposed to the exercise of the pardon
ing power? Do we wish indiscriminate
vengeance visited upon the rebel popula
tion ? By no means. Amnesty and pardon
are good things, are necessary things in
their place and order ,■ out of it, they are
mischief and poison to the State. President
Johnson’s grievous blunder is not in par
doning, but in not ~ administering justice
first ; in not exhausting his physical ener
gies, (if that were necessary,) first, in bring
ing to light by judicial process the enor
mous crime of the rebellion, and visiting
its penal consequences upon the heads of
the most guilty; in not overwhelming the
departments, (if that were necessary,)
first, with such numerous and urgent details
as a righteous magistrate with the authors
of the greatest mischiefs ot the century in
his grasp, might well press upon his subor
dinates. And what has followed, but results
easily foreseen to be inevitable? Must
not rebels, hearing much of pardon, but
not a word of justice, necessarily grow
bold and hopeful ? With all the old paths
to power laid open before them, with place
and position near, and punishment for re
bellion remote, with no warning example
before their eyes, can we expect them to
take a different course from what we now
see them everywhere preparing to pursue ?
Is it wonderful that they are arrogant, that
they publish their convictions of rectitude
in their rebellion, that they advise one
another to pretend loyalty for the sake of
sharing in the Government, and retaining
such “ rights,” as they still may, that they
speak of choosing only true Southerners to
represent them, that they turn from their
labors in provisional convention to petition
for the pardon of Jeff. Dayis, that they
offer Lee the Presidency of aUniversity,
that they starve, cheat, oppress and murder
their former slaves ?
A dispensation of justice on but a mod
erate scale, as a preliminary to all this re
constructing and pardoning, would most
certainly have changed the whole appear
ance of things. Had but two or three
severe examples been made of prominent
rebels in each State, first, then the olive
branch might, have been held out in safety.
Then, pardoned citizens would have gone
about their provisional elections with a keen
sense of responsibility to the central Gov
ernment. Then, even bitter rebels would
have been cooled, and have schooled them
selves not merely to a different policy, but
to a different line of thinking. Then, the
spirit of justice honored and appeased,
would have walked the South with stately
presence, would have restrained the rem
nants of rebellious feeling by her calm but
stern brow, would have quieted arrogant
pretensions and factious expectations by
the sight of'her unsheathed sword, and
would have shielded the weak and defence
less freedmen by the far off rumor of her
mighty indignation. Mr. Johnson’s ex
periment is a failure, because it is an ex
periment. Justice is dishonored and weak
ened by experiments, where right and
wrong are so heaven-wide from each other
as here. At least, let there be an end of
them until plain duty is done.
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THE LONDON TIMES AGAIN.
At last the Times has found it needful
to procure a truthful and tolerably loyal
correspondent in this country. So long aa
there was any possible ground for expect
ing the success of the rebellion, this repre
sentative of the average sentiment of the
the newspaper reading public of England,
hired men to vilify, misrepresent, and
abuse us, and to reiterate the most confi
dent prediction%of our downfall. But the
truth can no longer be bid. The Republic
and the essential principles of its polity are
overwhelmingly triumphant. The bats and
owls in of the Times, that hung
about persistently far into the twilight,
have at last fled. They have not even the
small consolation of a guerrilla warfare to
report to the British haters of America,
and secret skeptics of the success of the
National arms. The British mind is not
incapable of receiving unpalatable truth
when emphasized by the fact of de
cisive victory and undisturbed peace. It
may grow dangerously indignant at deceit
too palpable, even if practiced in the line
of its dearest prejudices. The honest core
of John Bull’s heart has been reached, and
the Times is too shrewd not to know and
act upon the fact.
The new correspondent has been stating
in plain and unvarnished language the facts
of the rebel treatment of our prisoners,
facts, which to our astonishment, seem to
have been utterly ignored by the English
public hitherto. They are likely to become
fully acquainted with them now, and to
learn the responsibility of Davis and Lee
for the crime. The correspondent is tem
perate and calm, but he declares that “the
evidence upon which the charges of cruelty
rest is overwhelming and unanswerable.”
One of the sufferers was pointed out to him.
“ There were still traces of a robust and
strong man about him, but he was physi
cally a wreck, and his mind was utterly
gone.” He describes Andersonville briefly,
says the prisoners had not food enough “ to
keep a dog alive.” Describes the shooting
at the windows—“this crime proved to
have been committed in scores of cases”—
refers to the withholding of stores sent from
the North to the starving prisoners—“ the
prisoners died with hunger in the sight of
plentydeclares'it proved beyond doubt—
“ every Confederate soldier, private or offi
cer, who.is questioned on the subject ad
mits it—that in the Northern prisons no
distinction whatever was made between
Federal and Confederate; both were care
fully looked after , and always had proper
clothing and food. * * * *
‘ It is very easy for you Englishmen to talk
abont mercy and forgiveness,’ said a lady
talking of this subject, ‘ but how would you
have felt toward the Russians if they had
starved and murdered fifteen thousand of
your soldiers in one prison.’ ”
“ Davis,” he says, “ lived within a stone’s
throw of Libby Prison, whence corpses of
starved men were daily carried out in large
numbers. It may be asked, did Davis and
General Lee know of the manner in which
Southern were treated ? The
North believe they did, and, therefore, as I
have said, the cry for their lives, however
repulsive it may sound, is not a cry raised
without provocation.”
Nor does the correspondent fail to quote
some of the strongest expressions current
among loyal people on the responsibility of
the civil and military heads of the rebellion
for these dire and inhuman practices. Lee
could undoubtedly have prevented this
stravation had he seen fit, and Davis’s just
title would be Prince of Assassins. These
revelations must assuredly get “through
the hair” of the obstinate readers of the
Times, and will contribute largely to dis
infecting the public sentiment of its
virulent%md false humors.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CHILI.
We clip the following paragraph from
one of our daily exchanges, hoping that
the facts are indeed as represented.
There is hope for the countries in Soyjph
America, from the moment they are.
fairly quit of the religious tyranny of
the Pope.
The Chilian Congress has passed, with great
unanimity, a bill prepared by the government,
giving to those who do not profess the Roman
Catholic faith liberty to offer worship within
the precincts of individual property. Dis
senters are also allowed to found and estab
lish private schools for instructing their own
children in the doctrines of their religion. By
this legislation, free worship, which has ex
isted in fact in some of the towns of Chili,
more especially in Valparaiso, will have the
required legal sanction _ which it lacked;
and edifices of ail denominations may be put
up and protected by law.
British Methodism —The Reports of
the British M. E. Conference, in session
during the early part of August, show
no increase of membership at home, and
a falling off of 2832 in the mission
field, chiefly in Jamaica.