Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON.

There is a falling off in the Government estimates for the fiscal year ending June 30. The expenditures have been greater for pensions and deficiencies than was anticipated, so that the surplus will probably be between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000 less than was calculated by Secretary McCulloch in his report to Congress last year.

Richard T. Merrick, who was prominently connected with the star-route trials, Sled at Washington, aged 59. The receipts from internal revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30—says a Washington dispatch—will not exceed $113,000,000, which sum is $2,000,000 short of the estimate made by the Treasury Department. Had it not been for the postponement for seven months of the collection of taxes due on spirits, the receipts would have reached nearly $118,000,000. For the eleven months ending with May the total receipts were over $8,000,000 short of the amount received for the corresponding eleven months of the preceding fiscal year, the entire loss being in the receipts from distilled spirits.

Admiral Porter has designed for submission to the Government a plan for a war vessel which shall be a ram, torpedoboat, and gunboat, and which, he claims, will also be of great sp_’ed.

Commissioner Sparks, of the General Land Office, has refused to issue patents to Western land-grant railroads or permit them to make further selections until Congress takes final action upon the question of forfeiting their grants.

The number of contested election cases before the new House of Kepresentatlve will be smaller than in any Congress for the past forty years, and will not exceed three or four. A crank appeared at the White House, Washington, as “sole representative of the Son of man.” °