Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1874 — THE NEWS. [ARTICLE]

THE NEWS.

Dispatches were received fit" Greenwich Observatory, London, on the 9th, announcing the successful observation of the transit of Venus in India, and at Cairo, Suez and Thebes. There were no observations at Shanghai on account of the unfavorable weather. The Government has directed the District Attorney to enter a not prot. in the safe-burglary conspiracy case at Washington, and the defendants have been discharged. Mias Proctor has compromised the libel suit against Moulton on the receipt of $5,000, the accrued costs. She swears that the statement is untrue so far as it relates to her, and Moulton swears that he made it solely on hearsay evidence. The news relating to the Vicksburg troubles received on the 10th was to the effect that the excitement was subsiding and business generally had been resumed. The observations in regard to the transit of Venus failed atOrmsk, Orensburg, Kasan, Uralsk, Astracban. Kertch and Tiflis, and succeeded at Teheran, Hobartstown, Adelaide, Melbourne, and at points in India, China and Japan. The Republican Gen. Loma on the 19th issued a proclamation calling on the Carlists to surrender within eight days, and threatening to lay waste the country occupied by them if they did not. The lowa Episcopal Convention in session at Davenport on the 9th elected Rev. H. C. Potter, of New York, Bishop of lowa. Mr. Potter telegraphed his declination, and on the 10th Rev. W. R. Huntington, of Worcester, Mass., was elected on the third ballot. On "the Bth the lowa State Grange assembled at Des Moines, about 200 delegates being in attendance. Grand Master Smedley delivered the annual address. The number of subordinate Granges in the State was stated to be 2,ooo—an increase of 162 during the year. The Treasurer submitted his report on the 10th, showing the receipts during the year to have been $88,393.82; expenditures, $81,507.71; balance on hand, $1,833.11. The State Agent reported the business of his office for the year, at $90,000. The saving to the Grange by the State Agency is over $27,000. The Committee on the Railroad Tariff Law reported that it had proved impracticable. According to dispatches received on the 10th the actual number of negroes killed in the fight at Vicksburg on the 7th is reported at 150, forty-eight of whom were buried in one field on the 9th.

Gov. Woodson, of Missouri, has ordered an election on the 26th of January for delegates to the Constitutional Convention. It transpired during the trial of Count von Arnim, on the 11th, that Bismarck had directed his secretary to act as a spy upon his conduct. The steamer Pelican was recently lost off the coast of England with all on board. The Administration approves of the course of Gov. Ames, of Mississippi, in the Vicksburg troubles, in endeavoring to supress the disorders without calling upon the General Government. The trial of Jesse Pomeroy, the boymurderer, was concluded at Boston on the 10th by a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. The jury recommended that he be imprisoned for life. An earthquake shock was felt in New York and Connecticut on the night of the 10th. The trial of the case of Tilton v». Beecher has been postponed until the first Monday in January. Charlestown, W. Va., lost $200,000 worth of property by fire on the night of the 10th. Julia A. Garretson has been elected State Lecturer of the lowa Grange. On the ld!h the Frankfort (Ky.) Grand Jury found an indictment against Jones, Clerk of the Court of Appeals, charging him with usurping an office established by the Constitution, by being ineligible from the fact that he accepted a challenge to fight a duel. Jones gave bond in the sum of $20,000. Another cremation ceremony was recently successfully performed in Dresden. There was nothing offensive in it, it is said. The insurrection in the Argentine Republic is over and political offenders have all been amnestied. A total amount of $750,000 has been awarded on about 1,000 claims by the Southern Claims Commission. Tilton’s attorneys have appealed from the order of Judge McCue granting a bill of particulars in the Beecher case. A boy eight years old, named John Neville, was recently kidnaped from near his parents’ residence in West Hoboken, New Jersey. Some of the prominent citizens of Vicksburg have issued an address, giving a statement of the troubles there, in which they charge a vast amount of official corruption, and defend the action of the citizens in the recent warfare, claiming that they were obliged to take up arms in self-defenfee. King Kalakaua reached Washington on the 12th. The constitution of the lowa State Grange has been so amended as to reduce future membership to 100 delegates, and to provide for districting the State in proportion to the number of subordinate Granges. Five children of John Datterich, of Preakness, N. J., were drowned on the 18th by the breaking of the ice on the

pond, near their father’s house, on which they were sliding. The New York Republic gut up the ghost on the 13th. Fears were entertained in New Orleans, on the 14th, of an attack by White Leaguers upon the Election Returning Board. r The attempt to introduce colored girls into the girls’ upper high school at New Orleans, on the 14th, caused the immediate withdrawal of fifty of the graduating class. Hon. Marshall Jewell was confirmed as Postmaster-General on the 15th. King Kalakaua was formally presented to the President and Cabinet on the 15th. A destructive fire broke out in Plympton street, Boston, on the night of the 14th, which consumed several large warehouses and their contents. About four o’clock on the morning of the 15th another alarm was sounded for the same neighborhood, when it was discovered that the fire had broken out in Wareham street, where sparks from the previous fire had lodged unperceived by the firemen. Owing to the combustible nature of the building in which this last fire started the flames spread in all directions, and in a short time Wareham .street was almost entirely devastated, everything being swept away that lay in the path of the fire between the point of starting and the wharf, except a large piano factory. The loss from both fires is variously estimated from $600,000 to $750,000. During the progress of the Boston fire, on the morning of the 15th, the neighboring city of Charlestown suffered a loss of $150,000 from fire. Two men were recently shot at Bay Ridge, L. L, while in the act of robbing the residence of Judge Van Brunt. Before he died one of them gave information which, it was thought, would lead to the recovery of Charlie Ross, who was kidnaped by the two men, and has since been in the possession of one of them. The Champion cotton-press and over 2,000 bales of cotton, valued at $250,000, were burned in Charleston, S. C., on the 15th. Early on the morning of the 15th, at Des Moines, lowa, a party of men to the number of over 190 forced their way into the jail and took possession of Charles Howard, sentenced to imprisonment for life for the murder in June last of John Johnson, in that city. They found Howard in bed, and when they undertook to lay hold of him his wife made desperate attempts to protect him, but despite her entreaties and agonizing screams they put a rope about his neck, led him into the street and hung him to a lamp-post.