The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1879-05-09
WHAT is GOING ON In EUROPE.

WHAT Is GOING ON In EUROPE.
The effort to abolish property quail
fication for Office in municipal corpora
tons in England has been defeated in
Parliament, but by so small majority
that it is supposed the bill will pass
next session.
The telegraphic cable to connect the
European and Asiatic telegraph systems
with Cape of Good Hope will be 1000
miles long, extending from the Red sea
cable, at Alden, around Cape Guardafui
and along the east coast of Africa to
Port Natal, where it will make juno
ton with the present land line to Cape
Town.
Four years ago capital punishment
was abolished in Switzerland. Crime
has increased, and especially that of
murder, to such degree that there has
been great reaction in public senti-
ment, and a petition, signed by over
10000 persons, begs the Federal Coun-
Gil to re-enact the death penalty. The
Council, after full investigation, have
resolved that four years was insufficient
to fully test the law. They account for
the increase of crime not so much upon
the fact that the law was changed as
upon the large increase of poverty and
wretchedness of the last four years.
BULGARIA has at last become princi-
paity in fact. The Assembly in session
at Tirnova has elected the Prince Of
Battenburg to preside over the desti-
MES of the new state. There appears
to have been little discussion preceding
the choice of ruler, unanimous vote
being accorded the successful candi-
date. The new Prince, with an eye to
the permanency of his administration,
has had the good sense to name as one
of the conditions of his acceptance q
requirement that the Russian troops
now in Bulgaria shall remain for term
of five years, and upon the expiration
of that period shall have the option to
depart or become naturalized citizens.
A sTUPENDoUs amount of improve
ments is contemplated in France. The
Minister OF Public Works has out
lined scheme of railway, canal, and
harbor extension for 1879, which will
cost the enormous sum of $780, 900, 900,
and will probably have Legislative sane
ton for it in its entirety. The money
for these unparalleled works he pro-
poses to raise by an issue of per
cent, bonds, redeemable in seventy five
years; and that he can get the whole
amount without any trouble the ex-
perience OF all recent French loans
affords abundant proof. One of the
main features of the plan, and that
which will consume the greater part Of
the appropriation, is the extension of
the railroad system of France. The
rest of the money will mainly go to the
construction of new harbors and the
improvement of old ones.
FROM accounts published in the Lon
don papers we gather that the internal
condition of affairs in Egypt is about as
bad as it can we'll be. Taxation is piled
upon the people with crushing force,
and the state of the peasantry is one of
absolute slavery. Added to this, pecu-
lation reigns supreme, and official cor
ruption seems to honeycomb the entire
administration in almost every one of
its phases. The London Spectator says
"The people are simply being stripped
Of everything by the tax-gatherers, and
this often under the bastinade. Men,
women and children have been taken
from their distant homes, and compelled,
on the cotton and sugar estates, to work
in the mill-horse grind of compulsory
labor, without pay, often almost without
food" The present Viceroy has bur
dened his country with a debt of
$500, 600, 900, being thirteen times as
much as existed on his accession.
The condition of the Turkish prov
ince of Roumelia is remarkable. The
Russians have occupied it for more
than year, and are about to leave it in
state of instruction and anarchy.
The Bulgarian portion of the people,
undoubtedly encouraged by the Rus
slams, are organized to resist the Turk
ish army, if it attempts to enter the
province and occupy its frontier de-
lenses, according to the terms of the
treaty of Berlin, while the Mohamme-
dan people. inundated by the warlike
attitude of their christian neigh
bors, are again fleeing from their homes,
from which they were driven last year
by the Bulgarian banditti following the
Russian army, and to which they have
but lately been restored. The project
for joint occupation of this trouble
some province having fallen through,
there seems to be every probability of
civil war following the withdrawal of
the Russians, and that of course would
necessitate further Intervention.