Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

In the year 1867 the United States government had purchased from Russia all her territorial rights in Alaska and the adjacent islands. The boundary between the two powers, as laid down by the treaty for purchase, was a line drawn from the middle of Bering Strait south-west to a point midway between the Aleutian and Komandorski Islands dividing Bering Sea into two parts, of which the larger was on the American side of this line. This portion included the Pribiloff Islands, which are the principal breeding-grounds of the seals frequenting those seas. By certain acts of congress, passed between 1868 and 1873, the killing of seals was prohibited upon the islands of the Pribiloff group and in "the waters adjacent thereto" except upon certain specified conditions. No definition of the meaning of the words "adjacent waters" was given in the act. In 1870 the exclusive rights of killing seals upon these islands was leased by the United States to the Alaska Commercial Company, upon conditions limiting the numbers to be taken annually, and otherwise providing for their protection. As early as 1872 the operations of foreign sealers attracted the attention of the United States government, but any precautions then taken seem to have been directed against the capture of seals on their way through the passages between the Aleutian Islands, and no claim to jurisdiction beyond the three-mile limit appears to have been put forward. On the 12th of March 1881, however, the acting secretary of the United States treasury, in answer to a letter asking for an interpretation of the words "waters adjacent thereto" in the acts of 1868 and 1873, stated that all the waters east of the boundary line were considered to be within the waters of Alaska territory. In March 1886 this letter was communicated to the San Francisco customs by Mr Daniel Manning, secretary of the treasury, for publication. In the same summer three British sealers, the "Carolena," "Onward" and "Thornton," were captured by an American revenue cutter 60 m. from land. They were condemned by the district judge on the express ground that they had been sealing within the limits of Alaska territory. Diplomatic representations followed, and an order for release was issued, but in 1887 further captures were made and were judicially supported upon the same grounds. The respective positions taken up by the two governments in the controversy which ensued may be thus indicated. The United States claimed as a matter of right an exclusive jurisdiction over the sealing industry in Bering Sea; they also contended that the protection of the fur seal was, upon grounds both of morality and interest, an international duty, and should be secured by international arrangement. The British government repudiated the claim of right, but were willing to negotiate upon the question of international regulation. Between 1887 and 1890 negotiations were carried on between Russia, Great Britain and the United States with a view to a joint convention. Unfortunately the parties were unable to agree as to the principles upon which regulation should be based. The negotiations were wrecked upon the question of pelagic sealing. The only seal nurseries were upon the Pribiloff Islands, which belonged to the United States, and the Komandorski group, which belonged to Russia. Consequently to prohibit pelagic sealing would have been to exclude Canada from the industry. The United States, nevertheless, insisted that such prohibition was indispensable on the grounds--(1) that pelagic sealing involved the destruction of breeding stock, because it was practically impossible to distinguish between the male and female seal when in the water; (2) that it was unnecessarily wasteful, inasmuch as a large proportion of the seals so killed were lost. On the other hand, it was contended by Great Britain that in all known cases the extermination of seals had been the result of operations upon land, and had never been caused by sealing exclusively pelagic. The negotiations came to nothing, and the United States fell back upon their claim of right. In June 1890 it was reported that certain American revenue cutters had been ordered to proceed to Bering Sea. Sir Julian Pauncefote, the British ambassador at Washington, having failed to obtain an assurance that British vessels would not be interfered with, laid a formal protest before the United States government.

Thereupon followed a diplomatic controversy, in the course of which the United States developed the contentions which were afterwards laid before the tribunal of arbitration. The claim that Bering Sea was _mare clausum_ was abandoned, but it was asserted that Russia had formerly exercised therein rights of exclusive jurisdiction which had passed to the United States, and they relied _inter alia_ upon the ukase of 1821, by which foreign vessels had been forbidden to approach within 100 Italian miles of the coasts of Russian America. It was pointed out by Great Britain that this ukase had been the subject of protest both by Great Britain and the United States, and that by treaties similar in their terms, made between Russia and each of the protesting powers, Russia had agreed that their subjects should not be troubled or molested in navigating or fishing in any part of the Pacific Ocean. The American answer was that the Pacific Ocean did not include Bering Sea. They also claimed an interest in the fur seals, involving the right to protect them outside the three-mile limit. In August 1890 Lord Salisbury proposed that the question at issue should be submitted to arbitration. This was ultimately assented to by the secretary of state, James Gillespie Blaine, on the understanding that certain specific points, which he indicated, should be laid before the arbitrators. On the 29th of February 1892 a definitive treaty was signed at Washington. Each power was to name two arbitrators, and the president of the French Republic, the king of Italy, the king of Norway and Sweden were each to name one. The points submitted were as follows:--(1) What exclusive jurisdiction in the sea now known as Bering Sea, and what exclusive rights in the seal fisheries therein, did Russia assert and exercise prior to and up to the time of the cession of Alaska to the United States? (2) How far were her claims of jurisdiction as to the seal fisheries recognized and conceded by Great Britain? (3) Was the body of water now known as Bering Sea included in the phrase "Pacific Ocean," as used in the treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia, and what rights, if any, in Bering Sea were held exclusively exercised by Russia after the said treaty? (4) Did not all the rights of Russia as to jurisdiction and as to the seal fisheries in Bering Sea east of the water boundary, in the treaty between the United States and Russia of the 30th of March 1867, pass unimpaired to the United States under that treaty? (5) Had the United States any and what right of protection over, or property in, the fur seals frequenting the islands of Bering Sea when such seals are found outside the three-mile limit? In the event of a determination in favour of Great Britain the arbitrators were to determine what concurrent regulations were necessary for the preservation of the seals, and a joint commission was to be appointed by the two powers to assist them in the investigation of the facts of seal life. The question of damages was reserved for further discussion, but either party was to be at liberty to submit any question of fact to the arbitrators, and to ask for a finding thereon. The tribunal was to sit at Paris. The treaty was approved by the Senate on the 29th of March 1892, and ratified by the president on the 22nd of April.

The United States appointed as arbitrator Mr John M. Harlan, a justice of the Supreme Court, and Mr John T. Morgan, a member of the Senate. The British arbitrators were Lord Hannen and Sir John Thompson. The neutral arbitrators were the baron de Courcel, the marquis Visconti Venosta, and Mr Gregers Gram, appointed respectively by the president of the French Republic, the king of Italy, and the king of Norway and Sweden. The sittings of the tribunal began in February and ended in August 1893. The main interest of the proceedings lies in the second of the two claims put forward on behalf of the United States. This claim cannot easily be stated in language of precision; it is indicated rather than formulated in the last of the five points specially submitted by the treaty. But its general character may be gathered from the arguments addressed to the tribunal. It was suggested that the seals had some of the characteristics of the domestic animals, and could therefore be the subject of something in the nature of a right of property. They were so far amenable to human control that it was possible to take their increase without destroying the stock. Sealing upon land was legitimate sealing; the United States being the owners of the land, the industry was a trust vested in them for the benefit of mankind. On the other hand, pelagic sealing, being a method of promiscuous slaughter, was illegitimate; it was _contra bonos mores_ and analogous to piracy. Consequently the United States claimed a right to restrain such practices, both as proprietors of the seals and as proprietors and trustees of the legitimate industry. It is obvious that such a right was a novelty hitherto unrecognized by any system of law. Mr J.C. Carter, therefore, as counsel for the United States, submitted a theory of international jurisprudence which was equally novel. He argued that the determination of the tribunal must be grounded upon "the principles of right," that "by the rule or principle of right was meant a moral rule dictated by the general standard of justice upon which civilized nations are agreed, that this international standard of justice is but another name for international law, that the particular recognized rules were but cases of the application of a more general rule, and that where the particular rules were silent the general rule applied." The practical result of giving effect to this contention would be that an international tribunal could make new law and apply it retrospectively. Mr Carter's contention was successfully combated by Sir Charles Russell, the leading counsel for Great Britain.

The award, which was signed and published on the 15th of August 1893, was in favour of Great Britain on all points. The question of damages, which had been reserved, was ultimately settled by a mixed commission appointed by the two powers in February 1896, the total amount awarded to the British sealers being $473,151.26. (M. H. C.)

BERIOT, CHARLES AUGUSTE DE (1802-1870), Belgian violinist and composer. Although not definitely a pupil of Viotti or Baillot he was much influenced by both. He was very successful in his concert tours, and held appointments at the courts of Belgium and France. From 1843 to 1852 he was violin professor at the Brussels conservatoire. Then his eyesight began to fail, and in 1858 he became blind. His compositions are still often played, and are good, clean displays of technique.

BERJA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Almeria; on the south-eastern slope of the Sierra de Gador, 10 m. N.E. of Adra by road. Pop. (1900) 13,224. Despite the lack of a railway Berja has a considerable trade. Lead is obtained among the mountains, and the more sheltered valleys produce grain, wine, oil, fruit and esparto grass. These, with the paper, linen and cotton goods manufactured locally in small quantities, are exported from Adra.

BERKA, a town and watering-place of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar, on the Ilm and the Weimar-Kranichfeld railway, 8 m. S. of Weimar. Pop. 2300. It has sulphur baths, which are largely frequented in the summer. Berka was once celebrated for its Cistercian nunnery, founded in 1251. Two m. down the Ilm is the curious castle of Burgfarth, partly hewn out of the solid rock.

BERKELEY, the name of an ancient English family remarkable for its long tenure of the feudal castle built by the water of Severn upon the lands from which the family takes its name. It traces an undoubted descent from Robert (d. 1170) son of Harding. Old pedigree-makers from the 14th century onward have made of Harding a younger son of a king of Denmark and a companion of the Conqueror, while modern historians assert his identity with one Harding who, although an English thane, is recorded by Domesday Book in 1086 as a great landowner in Somerset. This Harding the thane was son of Elnod or Alnod, who is recognized as Eadnoth the Staller, slain in beating off the sons of Harold when they attacked his county. But if Harding the Berkeley ancestor be the Harding who, as the queen's butler, witnesses King Edward's Waltham charter of 1062, his dates seem strangely apart from those of Robert his son, dead a hundred and eight years later. Of Robert fitz Harding we know that he was a Bristol man whose wealth and importance were probably increased by the trade of the port. A partisan of Henry, son of the empress, that prince before his accession to the throne granted him, by his charter at Bristol in the earlier half of 1153, the Gloucestershire manor of Bitton, and a hundred librates of land in the manor of Berkeley, Henry agreeing to strengthen the castle of Berkeley, which was evidently already in Robert's hands. In his rhymed chronicle Robert of Gloucester tells how--

"A bourgois at Bristowe--Robert Harding
Vor gret tresour and richesse--so wel was mid the king
That he gat him and is eirs--the noble baronie
That so riche is of Berkele--mid al the seignorie."

Later in the same year the duke of Normandy granted to Robert fitz Harding Berkeley manor and the appurtenant district called "Berkelaihernesse," to hold in fee by the service of one knight or at a rent of 100 s. Being at Berkeley, the duke confirmed to Robert a grant of Bedminster made by Robert, earl of Gloucester, and in the first year of his reign as king of England he confirmed his own earlier grant of the Berkeley manor. About this time Robert, who had founded St Augustine's Priory in Bristol, gave to the Black Canons there the five churches in Berkeley and Berkeley Herness. In their priory church he was buried in 1170, Berkeley descending to his son and heir Maurice.

Berkeley had already given a surname to an earlier family sprung from Roger, its Domesday tenant, whose descendants seem to have been ousted by the partisan of the Angevin. But if there had been a feud between the families it was ended by a double alliance, a covenant having been made at Bristol about November 1153 in the presence of Henry, duke of Normandy, whereby Maurice, son of Robert fitz Harding, was to marry the daughter of Roger of Berkeley, Roger's own son Roger marrying the daughter of Robert. In his certificate of 1166 Robert tells the king that, although he owes the service of five knights for Berkeley, Roger of Berkeley still holds certain lands of the honour for which he does no service to Robert. This elder line of Berkeley survived for more than two centuries on their lands of Dursley and Cubberley, but after his father's death Maurice, son of Robert, is styled Maurice of Berkeley. Robert of Berkeley, the eldest son of Maurice, paid in 1190 the vast sum of L1000 for livery of his great inheritance, but, rising with the rebellious barons against King John, his castle was taken into the king's hands. Seizin, however, was granted in 1220 to Thomas his brother and heir, but the estate was again forfeit in the next generation for a new defection, although the wind of the royal displeasure was tempered by the fact that Isabel de Creoun, wife of Maurice, lord of Berkeley, was the king's near kinswoman. Thomas, son of Maurice, was allowed to succeed his father in the lands, and, having a writ of summons to parliament in 1295, he is reckoned the first hereditary baron of the line.

Even in the age of chivalry the lords of Berkeley were notable warriors. Thomas, who as a lad had ridden on the barons' side at Evesham, followed the king's wars for half a century of his long life, flying his banner at Falkirk and at Bannockburn, in which fight he was taken by the Scots. His seal of arms is among those attached to the famous letter of remonstrance addressed by the barons of England to Pope Boniface VIII. Maurice, his son, joined the confederation against the two Despensers, and lay in prison at Wallingford until his death in 1326, the queen's party gaining the upper hand too late to release him. But as the queen passed by Berkeley on her way to seize Bristol, she gave back the castle, which had been kept by the younger Despenser, to Thomas, the prisoner's heir, who, with Sir John Mautravers, soon received in his hold the deposed king brought thither secretly. The chroniclers agree that Thomas of Berkeley had no part in the murder of the king, whom he treated kindly. It was when Thomas was away from the castle that Mautravers and Gournay made an end of their charge. Through the providence of this Thomas the Berkeley estates were saved to the male line of his house, a fine levied in the twenty-third year of Edward III. so settling them. Thomas of Berkeley fought at Crecy and Calais, bringing six knights and thirty-two squires to the siege in his train, with thirty mounted archers and two hundred men on foot. His son and heir-apparent, Maurice of Berkeley, was the hero of a misadventure recorded by Froissart, who tells how a young English knight, displaying his banner for the first time on the day of Poitiers, rode after a flying Picard squire, by whom he was grievously wounded and held to ransom. Froissart errs in describing this knight as Thomas lord of Berkeley, for the covenant made in 1360 for the release of Maurice is still among the Berkeley muniments, the ransom being stated at L1080.

Being by his mother a nephew of Roger Mortimer, earl of March, the paramour of Queen Isabel, Maurice Berkeley married Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh Despenser, the younger of Edward II.'s favourites and the intruder in Berkeley Castle. With his son and heir Thomas of Berkeley, one of the commissioners of parliament for the deposing of Richard II. and a warden of the Welsh marches who harried Owen of Glendower, the direct male line of Robert fitz Harding failed, and but for the settlement of the estates Berkeley would have passed from the family. On this Thomas's death in 1417 Elizabeth, his daughter and heir, and her husband, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, the famous traveller, statesman and jouster, seized Berkeley Castle. Earl and countess only withdrew after James Berkeley, the nephew and heir male, had livery of his lands by the purchased aid of Humphrey of Gloucester. But the Beauchamps returned more than once to vain attacks on the stout walls of Berkeley, and a quarrel of two generations ended with the pitched battle of Nibley Green. Fought between the retainers of William, Lord Berkeley, son of James, and those who followed Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle, grandson of the illustrious Talbot and great-grandson of the countess of Warwick, this was the last private battle on English ground between two feudal lords. Young Lisle was shot under the beaver by an arrow, and the feud ended with his death, all claims of his widow being settled with an annuity of L100. Bitter as was the long quarrel, it kept the Berkeleys from casting their interest into the Wars of the Roses, in which most of their fellows of the ancient baronage sank and disappeared.

The victorious Lord Berkeley, whose children died young, was on ill terms with his next brother, and made havoc of the great Berkeley estates by grants to the Crown and the royal house, for which he was rewarded with certain empty titles. Edward IV. gave him a viscount's patent in 1481, and Richard III. created him earl of Nottingham in 1483. His complacence extending to the new dynasty, Henry VII. made him earl marshal in 1485 and marquess of Berkeley in 1487. For this last patent he, by a settlement following a recovery suffered, gave the king and his heirs male Berkeley Castle and all that remained to him of his ancestors' lands, enjoying for his two remaining years a bare life interest. At his death in 1491 the king took possession, bringing his queen with him on a visit to Berkeley.

Here follows a curious chapter of the history of the Berkeley peerage. When Thomas, Lord Berkeley, died in 1417, it might have been presumed that his dignity would descend to his heir, the countess of Warwick. Nevertheless, his nephew and heir male was summoned as a baron from 1421, apparently by reason of his tenure of the castle and its lands. When the marquess of Berkeley was dead without surviving issue, the castle having passed to the crown, Maurice, the brother and heir, had no summons. Yet this Maurice's son, another Maurice, had a summons as a baron, although not "with the room in the parliament chamber that the lords of Berkeley had of old time." The old precedence was restored when Thomas, brother and heir of this baron, was summoned. This Thomas, who had a command at Flodden, held his ancestors' castle as constable for the king. A final remainder under the marquess's settlement brought back castle and lands on the failure in 1553 of the heirs male of the body of Henry VII., and Henry, Lord Berkeley, had special livery of them in his minority. Yet although seized of the castle he took a lower seat in the parliament house than did his grandfather who was not so seized, being given place after Abergavenny, Audley and Strange.

By these things we may see that peerage law in old time rested upon the pleasure of the sovereign and upon no ascertained and unvarying custom. Of the power behind that pleasure this Henry, Lord Berkeley, had one sharp reminder. He was, like most of his line, a keen sportsman, and, returning to Berkeley to find that a royal visit had made great slaughter among his deer, he showed his resentment by disparking Berkeley Park. Thereat Queen Elizabeth sent him a warning in round Tudor fashion. Let him beware, she wrote, for the earl of Leicester coveted the castle by the Severn.

At the Restoration, George, Lord Berkeley, who had been one of the commissioners to invite Charles II.'s return from the Hague, petitioned for a higher place in parliament, claiming a barony by right of tenure before 1295, but his claim was silenced by his advancement on September 11, 1679, to be viscount of Dursley and earl of Berkeley. James, the 3rd earl, an active sea captain who was all but lost in company with Sir Cloudesley Shovel, became knight of the Garter and lord high admiral and commander-in-chief in the Channel, he and his house being loyal supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty.

The last and most curious chapter of the history of the Berkeley honours was opened by Frederick Augustus, the 5th earl of Berkeley (1745-1810). This peer married at Lambeth, on the 16th of May 1796, one Mary Cole, the daughter of a small tradesman at Wotton-under-Edge, with whom he had already lived for several years, several children having been born to them. In order to legitimatize the issue born before the marriage, the earl in 1801 made declaration of an earlier marriage contracted privately at Berkeley in 1785. On his death in 1811 the validity of this alleged marriage was tested by the committee of privileges of the House of Lords, and it was shown without doubt that the evidence for it, a parish register entry, was a forgery.

Under the will of his father, Colonel William Berkeley, the eldest illegitimate son, had the castle and estates, and on the failure of his claim to the earldom he demanded a writ of summons as a baron by reason of his tenure of the castle. No judgment was given in the matter, the king in council having declared in 1669 that baronies by tenure were "not in being and so not fit to be revived." But Colonel Berkeley's political influence afterwards procured him (1831) a peerage as Lord Segrave of Berkeley, and ten years later an earldom with the title of Fitzhardinge. He died without issue in 1857. His brother, Sir Maurice Fitzhardinge Berkeley, who succeeded to Berkeley under the terms of the 5th earl's will, revived the claims, and was likewise given a new barony (1861) as Lord Fitzhardinge, a title in which he was succeeded by two of his sons, the 3rd baron (b. 1830) being in 1909 owner of the Berkeley and Cranford estates. The earldom of Berkeley was never assumed by the eldest legitimate son of the 5th earl, and was in 1909 enjoyed by Randal Thomas Mowbray Berkeley, 8th earl, grandson of admiral Sir George Cranfield Berkeley, second son of the 4th earl. In 1893 Mrs Milman (d. 1899), daughter and heir of Thomas Moreton Fitzhardinge Berkeley, 6th earl _de jure_, was declared by letters patent under the great seal to have succeeded to the ancient barony of Berkeley created by the writ of 1421; and she was succeeded by her daughter.

Many branches have been thrown out by this family during its many centuries of existence. Of these the most important descended from Maurice of Berkeley, the baron who died in Wallingford hold in 1326. His second son Maurice was ancestor of the Berkeleys of Stoke Giffard, whose descendant, Norborne Berkeley, claimed the barony of Botetourt and had a summons in 1764, dying without issue in 1770. Sir Maurice Berkeley of Bruton, a cadet of Stoke Giffard, was forefather of the Viscounts Fitzhardinge, the Lords Berkeley of Stratton (1658-1773) and the earls of Falmouth, all extinct, the Berkeleys of Stratton bequeathing their great London estate, including Berkeley Square and Stratton Street, to the main line. Edward Berkeley of Pylle in Somerset, head of a cadet line of the Bruton family, married Philippa Speke, whose mother was Joan, daughter of Sir John Portman of Orchard Portman, baronet. His grandson William, on succeeding to the Orchard Portman and Bryanston estates, took the additional name of Portman, and from him come the Viscounts Portman of Bryanston (1873). From James, Lord Berkeley, who died in 1463, descended Rowland Berkeley, a clothier of Worcester, who bought the estates of Spetchley. Rowland's second son, Sir Robert Berkeley, the king's bench justice who supported the imposition of ship-money, was ancestor of the Berkeleys of Spetchley, now the only branch of the house among untitled squires.

See John Smyth's _Lives of the Berkeleys_, compiled c. 1618, edited by
Sir John Maclean (1883-1885); J.H. Round's introduction to the
Somerset Domesday, V.C.H. series; G.E. C(okayne)'s _Complete Peerage_;
Jeayes's _Descriptive Catalogue of the Charters and Muniments at
Berkeley Castle_ (1892); _Dictionary of National Biography_;
_Transactions of Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society_,
3 vols., viii., xlv., _et passim_; _The Red Book of the Exchequer_,
Chronicles of Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, Adam of Murimuth,
Robert of Gloucester, Henry of Huntingdon, &c. (Rolls Series); British
Museum Charters, &c. (O. Ba.)

BERKELEY, GEORGE (1685-1753), Irish bishop and philosopher, the eldest son of William Berkeley (an officer of customs who had, it seems, come to Ireland in the suite of Lord Berkeley of Stratton, lord lieutenant, 1670-1672, to whom he was related), was born on the 12th of March 1685, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, Thomastown, Ireland. He passed from the school at Kilkenny to Trinity College, Dublin (1700), where, owing to the peculiar subtlety of his mind and his determination to accept no doctrine on the evidence of authority or convention, he left the beaten track of study and was regarded by some as a dunce, by others as a genius. During his career at Dublin the works of Descartes and Newton were superseding the older text-books, and the doctrines of Locke's _Essay_ were eagerly discussed. Thus he "entered on an atmosphere which was beginning to be charged with the elements of reaction against traditional scholasticism in physics and in metaphysics" (A.C. Fraser). He became a fellow in 1707. His interest in philosophy led him to take a prominent share in the foundation of a society for discussing the new doctrines, and is further shown by his _Common Place Book_, one of the most valuable autobiographical records in existence, which throws much light on the growth of his ideas, and enables us to understand the significance of his early writings. We find here the consciousness of creative thought focused in a new principle which is to revolutionize speculative science. There is no sign of any intimate knowledge of ancient or scholastic thought; to the doctrines of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Norris, the attitude is one of indifference or lack of appreciation, but the influence of Descartes and specially of Locke is evident throughout. The new principle (nowhere in the _Common Place Book_ explicitly stated) may be expressed in the proposition that no existence is conceivable--and therefore possible--which is not either conscious spirit or the ideas (i.e. objects) of which such spirit is conscious. In the language of a later period this principle may be expressed as the absolute synthesis of subject and object; no object exists apart from Mind. Mind is, therefore, prior both in thought and in existence, if for the moment we assume the popular distinction. Berkeley thus diverted philosophy from its beaten track of discussion as to the meaning of matter, substance, cause, and preferred to ask first whether these have any significance apart from the conscious spirit. In the pursuit of this inquiry he rashly invaded other departments of science, and much of the _Common Place Book_ is occupied with a polemic, as vigorous as it is ignorant, against the fundamental conceptions of the infinitesimal calculus.

In 1707 Berkeley published two short mathematical tracts; in 1709, in his _New Theory of Vision_, he applied his new principle for the first time, and in the following year stated it fully in the _Principles of Human Knowledge_. In these works he attacked the existing theories of externality which to the unphilosophical mind is proved by visual evidence. He maintained that visual consciousness is merely a system of arbitrary signs which symbolize for us certain actual or possible tactual experience--in other words a purely conventional language.

The contents of the visual and the tactual consciousness have no element in common. The visible and visual signs are definitely connected with tactual experiences, and the association between them, which has grown up in our minds through custom or habit, rests upon, or is guaranteed by, the constant conjunction of the two by the will of the Universal Mind. But this synthesis is not brought forward prominently by Berkeley. It was evident that a similar analysis might have been applied to tactual consciousness which does not give externality in its deepest significance any more than the visual; but with deliberate purpose Berkeley at first drew out only one side of his argument. In the _Principles of Human Knowledge_, externality in its ultimate sense as independence of all mind is considered. Matter, as an abstract, unperceived substance or cause, is shown to be impossible, an unreal conception; true substance is affirmed to be conscious spirit, true causality the free activity of such a spirit, while physical substantiality and causality are held to be merely arbitrary, though constant, relations among phenomena connected subjectively by suggestion or association, objectively in the Universal Mind. In ultimate analysis, then, nature is conscious experience, and forms the sign or symbol of a divine, universal intelligence and will.

In 1711 Berkeley delivered his _Discourse on Passive Obedience_, in which he deduces moral rules from the intention of God to promote the general happiness, thus working out a theological utilitarianism, which may be compared with the later expositions of Austin and J.S. Mill. From 1707 he had been engaged as college tutor; in 1712 he paid a short visit to England, and in April 1713 he was presented by Swift at court. His abilities, his courtesy and his upright character made him a universal favourite. While in London he published his _Dialogues_ (1713), a more popular exposition of his new theory; for exquisite facility of style these are among the finest philosophical writings in the English language. In November he became chaplain to Lord Peterborough, whom he accompanied on the continent, returning in August 1714. He travelled again in 1715-1720 as tutor to the only son of Dr St George Ashe (?1658-1718, bishop successively of Cloyne, Clogher and Derry). In 1721, during the disturbed state of social relations consequent on the bursting of the South Sea bubble he published an _Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_, which shows the intense interest he took in practical affairs. In the same year he returned to Ireland as chaplain to the duke of Grafton, and was made divinity lecturer and university preacher. In 1722 he was appointed to the deanery of Dromore, a post which seems to have entailed no duties, as we find him holding the offices of Hebrew lecturer and senior proctor at the university. The following year Miss Vanhomrigh, Swift's Vanessa, left him half her property. It would appear that he had only met her once at dinner. In 1724 he was nominated to the rich deanery of Derry, but had hardly been appointed before he was using every effort to resign it in order to devote himself to his scheme of founding a college in the Bermudas, and extending its benefits to the Americans. With infinite exertion he succeeded in obtaining from government a promise of L20,000, and after four years spent in preparation, sailed in September 1728, accompanied by some friends and by his wife, daughter of Judge Forster, whom he had married in the preceding month. Three years of quiet retirement and study were spent in Rhode Island, but it gradually became apparent that government would never hand over the promised grant, and Berkeley was compelled to give up his cherished plan. Soon after his return he published the fruits of his studies in _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_ (1733), a finely written work in the form of dialogue, critically examining the various forms of free-thinking in the age, and bringing forward in antithesis to them his own theory, which shows all nature to be the language of God. In 1734 he was raised to the bishopric of Cloyne. The same year, in his _Analyst_, he attacked the higher mathematics as leading to freethinking; this involved him in a hot controversy. The _Querist_, a practical work in the form of questions on what would now be called social or economical philosophy, appeared in three parts, 1735, 1736, 1737. In 1744 was published the _Siris_, partly occasioned by the controversy as to the efficacy of tar-water in cases of small-pox, but rising far above the circumstance from which it took its rise, and revealing hidden depths in the Berkeleian metaphysics. In 1751 his eldest son died, and in 1752 he removed with his family to Oxford for the sake of his son George, who was studying there. He died suddenly in the midst of his family on the 14th of January 1753, and was buried in Christ Church, Oxford.

In the philosophies of Descartes and Locke a large share of attention
had been directed to the idea of matter, which was held to be the
abstract, unperceived background of real experience, and was supposed
to give rise to our ideas of external things through its action on the
sentient mind. Knowledge being limited to the ideas produced could
never extend to the unperceived matter, or substance, or cause which
produced them, and it became a problem for speculative science to
determine the grounds for the very belief in its existence. Philosophy
seemed about to end in scepticism or in materialism. Now Berkeley put
this whole problem in a new light by pointing out a preliminary
question. Before we deduce results from such abstract ideas as cause,
substance, matter, we must ask what in reality do these mean--what is
the actual content of consciousness which corresponds to these words?
Do not all these ideas, when held to represent something which exists
absolutely apart from all knowledge of it, involve a contradiction? In
putting this question, not less than in answering it, consists
Berkeley's originality as a philosopher. The essence of the answer is
that the universe is inconceivable apart from mind--that existence, as
such, denotes conscious spirits and the objects of consciousness.
Matter and external things, in so far as they are thought to have an
existence beyond the circle of consciousness, are impossible,
inconceivable. External things are things known to us in immediate
perception. To this conclusion Berkeley seems, in the first place, to
have been led by the train of reflection that naturally conducts to
subjective or egoistic idealism. It is impossible to overstep the
limits of self-consciousness; whatever words I use, whatever notions I
have, must refer to and find their meaning in facts of consciousness.
But this is by no means the whole or even the principal part of
Berkeley's philosophy; it is essentially a theory of causality, and
this is brought out gradually under the pressure of difficulties in
the first solution of the early problem. To merely subjective
idealism, sense percepts differ from ideas of imagination in degree,
not in kind; both belong to the individual mind. To Berkeley, however,
the difference is fundamental; sense ideas are not due to our own
activity; they must therefore be produced by some other will-by the
divine intelligence. Sense experience is thus the constant action upon
our minds of supreme active intellect, and is not the consequence of
dead inert matter. It might appear, therefore, that sensible things
had an objective existence in the mind of God; that an idea so soon as
it passes out of our consciousness passes into that of God. This is an
interpretation, frequently and not without some justice, put upon
Berkeley's own expression. But it is not a satisfactory account of his
theory. Berkeley is compelled to see that an immediate perception is
not a _thing_, and that what we consider permanent or substantial is
not a sensation but a group of qualities, which in ultimate analysis
means sensations either immediately felt or such as our experience has
taught us would be felt in conjunction with these. Our belief in the
reality of a thing may therefore be said to mean assurance that this
association in our minds between actual and possible sensations is
somehow guaranteed. Further, Berkeley's own theory would never permit
him to speak of possible sensations, meaning by that the ideas of
sensations called up to our minds by present experience. He could
never have held that these afforded any explanation of the permanent
existence of real objects. His theory is quite distinct from this,
which really amounts to nothing more than subjective idealism.
External things are produced by the will of the divine intelligence;
they are caused, and caused in a regular order; there exists in the
divine mind archetypes, of which sense experience may be said to be
the realization in our finite minds. Our belief in the permanence of
something which corresponds to the association in our minds of actual
and possible sensations means belief in the orderliness of nature; and
_that_ is merely assurance that the universe is pervaded and regulated
by mind. Physical science is occupied in endeavouring to decipher the
divine ideas which find realization in our limited experience, in
trying to interpret the divine language of which natural things are
the words and letters, and in striving to bring human conceptions into
harmony with the divine thoughts. Instead, therefore, of fate or
necessity, or matter, or the unknown, a living, active mind is looked
upon as the centre and spring of the universe, and this is the essence
of the Berkeleian metaphysics.

The deeper aspects of Berkeley's new thought have been almost
universally neglected or misunderstood. Of his spiritual empiricism
one side only has been accepted by later thinkers, and looked upon as
the whole. The subjective mechanism of association which with Berkeley
is but part of the true explanation, and is dependent on the objective
realization in the divine mind, has been received as in itself a
satisfactory theory. _Suni Cogitationes_ has been regarded by thinkers
who profess themselves Berkeleians as the one proposition warranted by
consciousness; the empiricism of his philosophy has been eagerly
welcomed, while the spiritual intuition, without which the whole is to
Berkeley meaningless, has been cast aside. For this he is himself in
no small measure to blame. The deeper spiritual intuition, present
from the first, was only brought into clear relief in order to meet
difficulties in the earlier statements, and the extension of the
intuition itself beyond the limits of our own consciousness, which
completely removes his position from mere subjectivism, rests on
foundations uncritically assumed, and at first sight irreconcilable
with certain positions of his system. The necessity and universality
of the judgments of causality and substantiality are taken for
granted; and there is no investigation of the place held by these
notions in the mental constitution. The relation between the divine
mind and finite intelligence, at first thought as that of agent and
recipient, is complicated and obscure when the necessity for
explaining the permanence of real things comes forward. The divine
archetypes, according to which sensible experience is regulated and in
which it finds its real objectivity, are different in kind from mere
sense ideas, and the question then arises whether in these we have not
again the "things as they are," which Berkeley at first so
contemptuously dismissed. He leaves it undetermined whether or not our
knowledge of sense things, which is never entirely presentative,
involves some reference to this objective course of nature or thought
of the divine mind. And if so, what is the nature of the notions
necessarily implied in the simplest knowledge of a _thing_, as
distinct from mere sense feeling? That in knowing objects certain
thoughts are implied which are not presentations or their copies is at
times dimly seen by Berkeley himself; but he was content to propound a
question with regard to those notions, and to look upon them as merely
Locke's ideas of relation. Such ideas of relation are in truth the
stumbling-block in Locke's philosophy, and Berkeley's empiricism is
equally far from accounting for them.

With all these defects, however, Berkeley's new conception marks a
distinct stage of progress in human thought. His true place in the
history of speculation may be seen from the simple observation that
the difficulties or obscurities in his scheme are really the points on
which later philosophy has turned. He once for all lifted the problem
of metaphysics to a higher level, and, in conjunction with his
successor, Hume, determined the form into which later metaphysical
questions have been thrown.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The standard edition of Berkeley's works is that of A.
Campbell Eraser in 4 vols. (i.-iii. _Works_; iv. _Life_, _Letters and
Dissertation_) published by the Clarendon Press (1871); this edition,
revised throughout and largely re-written, was re-published by the
same author (1901). Another complete edition edited by G. Sampson,
with a biographical sketch by A.J. Balfour, and a useful
bibliographical summary, appeared in 1897-1898. Prof. Fraser also
published an excellent volume of selections (5th ed., 1899), and a
short general account in a volume on Berkeley in the _Blackwood
Philos. Class._ For Berkeley's theory of vision see manuals of
psychology (e.g. G.F. Stout, Wm. James); for his ethical views H.
Sidgwick, _Hist, of Ethics_ (5th ed., 1902); A. Bain, _Mental and
Moral Science_ (1872). See also Sir L. Stephen, _English Thought in
the 18th Century_ (3rd ed., 1902); J.S. Mill's _Dissertations_, vols.
ii. and iv.; T. Huxley, _Critiques and Addresses_, pp. 320 seq.; G.S.
Fullerton, _System of Metaphysics_ (New York, 1904); John Watson,
_Outline of Philos._ (New York, 1898); J. McCosh, _Locke's Theory of
Knowledge_ (1884); T. Lorenz, _Ein Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte G.
Berkeleys_ (1900) and _Weitere Beitrage z. Leb. G.B.'s_ (1901);
histories of modern philosophy generally. (R. Ad.; J. M. M.)

BERKELEY, MILES JOSEPH (1803-1889), English botanist, was born on the 1st of April 1803, at Biggin Hall, Northamptonshire, and educated at Rugby and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became an honorary fellow. Taking holy orders, he became incumbent of Apethorpe in 1837, and vicar of Sibbertoft, near Market Harborough, in 1868. He acquired an enthusiastic love of cryptogamic botany in his early years, and soon was recognized as the leading British authority on fungi and plant pathology. He was especially famous as a systematist in mycology, some 6000 species of fungi being credited to him, but his _Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany_, published in 1857, and his papers on "Vegetable Pathology" in the _Gardener's Chronicle_ in 1854 and onwards, show that he had a very broad grasp of the whole domain of physiology and morphology as understood in those days. Moreover, it should be pointed out that Berkeley began his work as a field naturalist and collector, his earliest objects of study having been the mollusca and other branches of zoology, as testified by his papers in the _Zoological Journal_ and the _Magazine of Natural History_, between 1828 and 1836. As a microscopist he was an assiduous and accurate worker, as is shown by his numerous drawings of the smaller algae and fungi, and his admirable dissections of mosses and hepaticae. His investigations on the potato murrain, caused by _Phytophthora infestans_, on the grape mildew, to which he gave the name _Oidium Tuckeri_, and on the pathogenic fungi of wheat rust, hop mildew, and various diseases of cabbage, pears, coffee, onions, tomatoes, &c., were important in results bearing on the life-history of these pests, at a time when very little was known of such matters, and must always be considered in any historical account of the remarkable advances in the biology of these organisms which were made between 1850 and 1880; and when it is remembered that this work was done without any of the modern appliances or training of a properly equipped laboratory, the real significance of Berkeley's pioneer work becomes apparent. It is as the founder of British mycology, however, that his name will live in the history of botany, and his most important work is contained in the account of native British fungi in Sir W. Hooker's _British Flora_ (1836), in his _Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany_ (1857), and in his _Outlines of British Fungology_ (1860). His magnificent herbarium at Kew, which contains over 9000 specimens, and is enriched by numerous notes and sketches, forms one of the most important type series in the world. Berkeley died at Sibbertoft on the 30th of July 1889. He was a man of refined and courteous bearing, an accomplished classical student, with the simple and modest habits that befit a man of true learning.

A list of his publications will be found in the _Catalogue of
Scientific Papers_ of the Royal Society, and sketches of his life in
_Proc. Roy. Soc._, 1890, 47, 9, by Sir Joseph Hooker, and _Annals of
Botany_, 1897, 11, by Sir W.T. Thiselton-Dyer. (H. M. W.)

BERKELEY, SIR WILLIAM (c. 1608-1677), British colonial governor in America, was born in or near London, England, about 1608, the youngest son of Sir Maurice Berkeley, an original member of the London Company of 1606, and brother of John, first Lord Berkeley of Stratton, one of the proprietors of the Carolinas. He graduated at Oxford in 1629, and in 1632 was appointed one of the royal commissioners for Canada, in which office he won the personal favour of Charles I., who appointed him a gentleman of the privy chamber. During this period he tried his hand at literary work, producing among other things a tragi-comedy entitled _The Lost Lady_ (1638). In August 1641 he was appointed governor of Virginia, but did not take up his duties until the following year. His first term as governor, during which he seems to have been extremely popular with the majority of the colonists, was notable principally for his religious intolerance and his expulsion of the Puritans, who were in a great minority. During the Civil War in England he remained loyal to the king, and offered an asylum in Virginia to Charles II. and the loyalists. On the arrival of a parliamentary fleet in 1652, however, he retired from office and spent the following years quietly on his plantation. On the death, in 1660, of Samuel Matthews, the last parliamentary governor, he was chosen governor by the Virginia assembly, and was soon recommissioned by Charles II. His natural arrogance and tyranny seems to have increased with years, and the second period of his governorship was a stormy one. Serious frontier warfare with the Indians was followed (1676) by Bacon's Rebellion (see VIRGINIA), brought on by Berkeley's misrule, and during its course all his worst traits became evident. His cruelty and barbarity in punishing the rebels did not meet with the approval of Charles II., who is said to have remarked that "the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father." Berkeley was called to England in 1677 ostensibly to report on the condition of affairs in the colony, and a lieutenant-governor (Herbert Jeffreys) was put in his place. Berkeley sailed in May, but died soon after his arrival, at Twickenham, and was buried there on the 13th of July 1677. In addition to the play mentioned he wrote _A Discourse and View of Virginia_ (London, 1663).

BERKELEY, a city of Alameda county, California, U.S.A., on the E. shore of San Francisco Bay, named after Bishop Berkeley on account of his line "Westward the course of empire takes its way." Pop. (1890) 5101; (1900) 13,214, of whom 3216 were foreign-born; (1910) 40,434. It is served by the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railway systems, both transcontinental; and is connected by electric lines (and ferry) with San Francisco, and by five electric lines with Oakland. Its attractive situation and pleasant outlooks have made it a favourite residential suburb of San Francisco, which lies at a distance of 7 m. across the bay. Berkeley is the seat of the California state university (see CALIFORNIA, UNIVERSITY OF), opened in 1873; the inter-related Berkeley Bible Seminary (1896, Disciples of Christ); Pacific Theological Seminary (established in 1866 at Oakland, in 1901 at Berkeley, Congregational); Seminary of the Pacific Coast Baptist Theological Union, and Unitarian Theological School--all associated with the University of California; and the state institution for the deaf, dumb and blind. The site of Berkeley was a farming region until its selection for the home of the university. Berkeley was incorporated as a town in 1878.

BERKELEY, a market town of Gloucestershire, England, near the river Severn, in that portion of its valley known as the Vale of Berkeley, on a branch from the Midland railway. Pop. (1901) 774. It is pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, in a rich pastoral vale to which it gives name, celebrated for its dairies, producing the famous cheese known as "double Gloucester." The town has a handsome church (Early English and Decorated), a grammar school, and some trade in coal, timber, malt and cheese. Berkeley was the birthplace of Dr Edward Jenner (1749), who is buried in the church. Berkeley Castle, on an eminence south-east of the town, is one of the noblest baronial castles existing in England, and one of the few inhabited. The Berkeley Ship Canal connects Gloucester with docks at Sharpness, avoiding the difficult navigation of the upper part of the Severn estuary.