Exchequer Bills

bills of credit i ued by authority of the British Parliament as a means of raising money for temporary purposes. They are of various sums—2£100 or any multiple of £100— and bear interest (generally from 114d. to 244d. per diem on £100) according to a rate fixed at the beginning of each ine These bills pa from hand to hand as money, and form a principal part of tke public unfunded debt of Great Britain, Exchequer bonds are similar. but they run for a definite number of years at a fixed rate of interest. - Excommunication, a word denoting exclusion, whether temporary or permanent, from fellowship in religious rites, involving also, where y= ticipation in such rites is required in the civil order, privation of the rights of citizenship. It is not peculiar to the Biblical religions, but is found in most of the systematized cults, whatever their origin. The early Christian excommunication was primarily, as the word denotes, exclusion from communion in the eucharist and the agape, or love~ feast, including also suspension from office in the case of clerical offenders; and it was distinguished as major and minor, each having various degrees of severity. Various civil disabilities attended excommunication.. Islam forms an exception to the almost universal incidence of the prac~- tice of excommunication. Under the Moslem code every religious offense carries with it a temporal penalty, such as fines, scourging, stoning, or other mode of death, and only in this last manner can an offender be cut off from the congregation.