Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub
[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

contending societies, each of which claimed to be the White Lick quarterly meeting of Friends. If those who had withdrawn from the Western yearly meeting to form a new yearly meeting had never been recognized in accordance with the usages of the Society of Friends as a regularly and properly organized yearly meeting, they had no rights, powers, or authority which the civil courts could recognize as such; and if, as was also alleged, the defendant society had never been recognized by the established Western yearly meeting, within whose territorial jurisdiction they seemed to have attempted to organize, as properly organized, then they had no rights as such organization which the civil courts could protect or enforce. It might appear to the court or jury that the recognized Western yearly meeting, or the recognized White Lick quarterly meeting, had utterly abandoned the ancient faith and practices, doctrines and teachings of the Society of Friends; yet when the superior organizations have decided otherwise, when they continued to recognize and fellowship these organizations, notwithstanding such apparent change, as regular and orthodox, and refused to recognize or admit to fellowship the new organization which might appear to adhere strictly and tenaciously to such ancient faith and practices, courts and juries must respect their action, and in the judgment of the court could not go behind it.

Issue was afterward joined upon the questions of facts involved in the suit.

FUSION DISK. A simple apparatus has

GAMBETTA, LEON MICHEL, a French statesman, born April 3, 1838, at Cahors, where his father, a Genoese of Jewish origin, was engaged in commercial pursuits. After attaining high honors at the lyceum of his native town, he studied law in Paris, and was there admitted to the bar in his twenty-second year. For some time secretary to the late M. Crémieux, the young advocate's talents soon won for him the admiration and friendship of the veteran democrat, in whom he afterward found a firm supporter. During the interval between 1859 and 1868 he gained notice and distinction both as an eloquent forensic orator and as a writer, alternately pleading the causes of political offenders (mostly journalists), publishing essays on eminent members of the Paris bar, and contributing to the daily press articles on politics, finance, art, and other topics. In the electoral campaign of 1863, the first in which he took an active part, he acquired considerable popularity as an ultra-Liberal. But 1868 found him popular and left him famous. The empire, which sprang from the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, and silenced for a time the nation's voice, had now become an impossible thing.

G

been invented by Jacob Reese, of Pittsburg, which is found very useful in its industrial applications, while the principle of its action is a puzzling problem to scientific men. It is a circular, revolving saw, with which steel bars are cut in two. The material of the circular saw is soft iron. It fuses steel bars which are brought into close proximity to it without touching. The bar to be cut is made likewise to revolve, in the contrary direction, with a speed of 200 revolutions a minute. The revolving disk is 42 inches in diameter and inch thick. It turns with a velocity of 2,300 revolutions, equal to a tangential velocity of 25,250 feet a minute. The circular disk is mounted on an arbor and set in motion with pulleys and belts, like an ordinary circular saw. When the bar is brought almost into contact with the revolving disk, a small drop of molten metal first appears on its surface. In a few seconds a notch is made, the molten metal flowing downward in a streain of sparks, and being thrown in sparks in all directions. A singular circumstance is the fact that the incandescent sparks, when they first leave the bar, are not hot. These sparks or drops of fused metal are of dazzling whiteness, yet their temperature differs but little from that of the surrounding atmosphere. In their path through the air those sparks which are projected sidewise acquire heat from the friction. At the distance of five feet or more they burn like a red-hot poker, while their vivid incandescence has given place to a dullred color.

The luster of a period marked by military successes in the Crimean and Italian Wars, and efficient to repress but not subdue the opposition, had been dimmed by the sorry issue of the Mexican expedition, and the disastrous Treaty of Prague; both indicative of the enfeeblement, or, as it has been aptly termed, the precocious dotage, of the head of the dynasty. Public discontent was at the full, and the people looked forward to a solution not long to be deferred, and already foreshadowed in overt democratic demonstrations of hostility to the Government. As an instance of such manifestations, we may cite the popular tribute to the memory of Deputy Baudin, the circumstances of whose death while endeavoring to shield the people from the fury of the troops on December 2, 1851, had been vividly recalled in a recent publication on the coup d'état. Numerous arrests followed; the press protested, and a subscription for a monument to Baudin was opened in the columns of "Le Réveil." Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of that journal, was prosecuted, and Gambetta called to his defense. In his speech on that occasion (November 14, 1868), the cause of

"Le Réveil" was to some extent overlooked, doubtless by design; but the authors of December 2d were lashed unsparingly in a torrent of eloquence unparalleled for impetuosity and daring since the days of Mirabeau:

Why talk here of plebiscites and ratifying clauses? A specious argument, in sooth, to draw from article 1338 of the civil code, and drag to this gloomy domain where it was little expected! Ah! you are not content with five million votes! After a reign of seventeen years, you perceive that it would be well to prohibit the discussion of your deeds by means of a posthumous ratification emanating from a criminal court? No; it shall not be. No; you shall not, you can not have that satisfaction. For such a cause there exists no court of appeals. It has been judged already, yesterday it will be judged to-morrow, and the day after, and for ever, until justice shall have received her supreme satisfaction. The cause of December 2d, do what you may, will survive indelible in Paris, in London, in Berlin, in New York, and the verdict of the human conscience everywhere will be the same. But our adversaries have, besides, another accuser. Hearken: For seventeen years you have been the absolute masters of France. We would not ask what use you have made of her treasures, her blood, her honor, her glory; nor speak of her integrity jeopardized, or of what has become of the fruits of her industry: for no one needs to be told of the financial catastrophes now, at this very moment, springing as mines beneath our feet. Your most relentless accuser, because it is the attestation of your own remorse, is the fact that you have never dared to say, "We will celebrate, we will add to the list of solemnities in France, the 2d of December, as a national anniversary!" Yet each successive régime in our country has so honored the day of its birthi. July 14th and August 10th have had their fetes; and the days of July, 1830, and February 24th, in like manTwo anniversaries only-the 18th Brumaire and 2d of December-have never been included among the solemnities of accession; for you know that the nation could not in conscience sanction them. Hear, then! that anniversary, which you have neglected, we will take for ourselves; we will celebrate it year after year; and it shall be the anniversary of our dead, until the day when the nation, once more in possession of her sovereignty, shall visit upon you the great national expiation in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

ner.

racy, but twice the age of Gambetta; and those for the second, such men as Thiers, the civil engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, and the Marquis de Barthélemy. He chose to sit for Marseilles, and took his place on the Extreme Left. After an absence of several months, occasioned by a severe throat affection brought on by the fatigues of an arduous electoral campaign, he returned to the Corps Législatif and made a series of remarkable speeches, especially one in which he protested (February 7, 1870) with indignation against the arrest of his colleague Henri de Rochefort, deputy-elect for Belleville in the place of Gambetta; and more particularly the memorable one in which (April 5th) he denounced the plebiscitum as unconstitutional; juridically reviewed the value, essence, and economy of the various political systems; and, pointing out why the republican system ought to be preferred, seemed to invite that avowed anti-republican assembly to make the trial. It was no small triumph to be heard on such a theme for the space of three hours, with admiration and almost without interruption, by a House notoriously hostile no less to the person than to the ideas of the speaker. He could charm, but not persuade. But events already in preparation would soon place him in a sphere of action with the difficulties of which only abilities of a superior order, united to an indomitable energy and marvelous activity, could cope.

M. Gambetta's opposition to the war with Prussia was at first more measured than that of many of his colleagues; so much so, that he refused to seek, in the embarrassments to the Government consequent upon the early disasters of the campaign, a favorable opportunity for revolutionary movements. After the capitulation at Sedan, however, hesitancy gave place to decision: the republic was now to be established, and he joined the ranks of its zealous promoters. On September 3d he signed, Rather than a defense of Delescluze, there as member of the Provisional Government of was here an indictment of Cæsarism, and the the National Defense, Jules Favre's proposition knell of the second empire; for the structure, declaring the Napoleonic dynasty deposed; the still so brilliant without, must be decayed with- next day saw him in possession of the portfolio in and tottering to ruin, when the very judges of the Interior; and on the 7th he signed the whose first duty it was to silence the seditious convocation of the electoral colleges for the orator, heard him, as if spell-bound, to the 18th of October, for the purpose of appointing end. Unanimous acclamations of the Liberals a Constituent Assembly. The new Minister of throughout France signified the adhesion of the Interior remained but a short time at Paris. that party to the young advocate, thencefor- His colleagues counting, and with reason, upon ward one of its chieftains. During the ensuing his energy and the magic power of his elosix months he won new laurels, in the defense quence to rouse the inhabitants of the provof the "Progrès du Nord," at Lille, and of the inces against the invader, and meet the cruel "Emancipation," at Toulouse. In the general necessities of the hour, he was attached, by elections of 1869, M. Gambetta was pre-decree of October 7th, to the delegation (Crésented as a Republican candidate to the Legislative Assembly for Belleville (first electoral district of Paris) and Marseilles, he announcing that he would accept no mission but that of an opposition irréconciliable. He was elected in both districts by an immense majority, the rival candidate for the first being M. Carnot, one of the favorite names of the democ

mieux, Glais-Bizoin, and Fourichon) already sent to Tours, and whose tardiness in the organization of the national defense in that region was a source of anxiety to the Central Government. He set out from the capital in a balloon on the 8th of October, and, reaching Tours on

* On the 16th, an earlier date, October 2d, was fixed upon; but the elections were in the event postponed indefinitely.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »