Chapter CCCLXIX: Section 16: ) which reserves to the Empire the regulation of the (4)

"A popular vote under the name Referendum was known in the
valleys of Graubunden and Wallis as early as the 16th century.
Here existed small federations of communities who regulated
certain matters of general concern by means of assemblies of
delegates from each village. These conventions were not
allowed to decide upon any important measure finally, but must
refer the matter to the various constituencies. If a majority
of these approved, the act might be passed at the next
assembly.
{2628}
This primitive system lasted till the French invasion of 1798,
and was again established in Graubünden in 1815. The word
Referendum was also used by the old federal diets, in which
there were likewise no comprehensive powers of legislation. If
not already instructed the delegates must vote 'ad referendum'
and carry all questions to the home government. The
institution as now known is a product of this century. It
originated in the canton of St. Gallen in 1830, where at the
time the constitution was undergoing revision. As a compromise
between the party which strove for pure democracy and that
desiring representative government, it was provided that all
laws should be submitted to popular vote if a respectable
number of voters so demanded. Known at first by the name Veto,
this system slowly found its way into several of the
German-speaking cantons, so that soon after the adoption of
the federal constitution five were employing the optional
Referendum. Other forms of popular legislation were destined
to find wider acceptance, but at present [1891] in eight
states, including three of the Romance tongue, laws must be
submitted on request. … The usual limit of time during which
the petition must be signed is 30 days. These requests are
directed to the Executive Council of the state, and that body
is obliged, within a similar period after receiving the same,
to appoint a day for the vote. The number of signers required
varies from 500 in the little canton Zug to 6,000 in St.
Gallen, or from one-tenth to one–fifth of all the voters. Some
states provide that in connection with the vote on the bill as
a whole, an expression may be taken on separate points. Custom
varies as to the number of votes required to veto a law. Some
fix the minimum at a majority of those taking part in the
election, and others at a majority of all citizens, whether
voting or not. In case the vote is against the bill, the
matter is referred by the Executive Council to the
legislature. This body, after examining into the correctness
of the returns, passes a resolution declaring its own act to
be void. By means of the Initiative or Imperative Petition,
the order of legislation just described is reversed, since the
impulse to make law is received from below instead of above.
The method of procedure is about as follows: Those who are
interested in the passage of a new law prepare either a full
draft of such a bill or a petition containing the points
desired to be covered, with the reasons for its enactment, and
then bring the matter before the public for the purpose of
obtaining signatures. Endorsement may be given either by
actually signing the petition or by verbal assent to it. The
latter form of consent is indicated either in the town
meetings of the communes or by appearing before the official
in charge of the petition and openly asking that his vote be
given for it. If, in the various town meetings of the canton
taken together, a stated number of affirmative votes are given
for the petition, the effect is the same as if the names of
voters had been signed. … The number of names required is
about the same in proportion to the whole body of voters as
for the Optional Referendum. The requisite number of
signatures having been procured, the petition is carried to
the legislature of the canton. This body must take the matter
into consideration within a specified time (Solothurn, two
months), and prepare a completed draft in accordance with the
request. It may also at the same time present an alternate
proposition which expresses its own ideas of the matter, so
that voters may take their choice. In any case the legislature
gives an opinion on the project, as to its desirability or
propriety, and the public has thus a report of its own select
committee for guidance. The bill is then submitted to the
voters, and on receiving the assent of a majority, and having
been promulgated by the executive authority, becomes a law of
the land."

_J. M. Vincent,
State and Federal Government in Switzerland,
chapter 13._

"Between 1874 and 1886, the federal legislature passed 113
laws and resolutions which were capable of being submitted to
the referendum. Of these only 19 were subjected to the popular
vote, and of these last 13 were rejected and 6 adopted. The
strong opposing views, which are held in Switzerland regarding
the expediency of the referendum, indicate that this is one of
the features of the government which is open to future
discussion."

_B. Moses,
The Federal Government of Switzerland,
page 119._

See, also, SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1848-1890.

"A plébiscite is a mass vote of the French people by which a
Revolutionary or Imperial Executive obtains for its policy, or
its crimes, the apparent sanction or condonation of France.
Frenchmen are asked at the moment, and in the form most
convenient to the statesmen or conspirators who rule in Paris,
to say 'Aye' or 'No' whether they will, or will not, accept a
given Constitution or a given policy. The crowd of voters are
expected to reply in accordance to the wishes or the orders of
the Executive, and the expectation always has met, and an
observer may confidently predict always will meet, with
fulfilment. The plébiscite is a revolutionary, or at least
abnormal, proceeding. It is not preceded by debate. The form
and nature of the question to be submitted to the nation is
chosen and settled by the men in power. Rarely, indeed, when a
plébiscite has been taken, has the voting itself been either
free or fair. Taine has a strange tale to tell of the methods
by which a Terrorist faction, when all but crushed by general
odium, extorted from the country by means of the plébiscite a
sham assent to the prolongation of revolutionary despotism.
The credulity of partisanship can nowadays hardly induce even
Imperialists to imagine that the plébiscites which sanctioned
the establishment of the Empire, which declared Louis Napoleon
President for life, which first re-established Imperialism,
and then approved more or less Liberal reforms, fatal at
bottom to the Imperial system, were the free, deliberate,
carefully considered votes of the French nation given after
the people had heard all that could be said for and against
the proposed innovation. … The essential characteristics,
however, the lack of which deprives a French plébiscite of all
moral significance, are the undoubted properties of the Swiss
Referendum. When a law revising the Constitution is placed
before the people of Switzerland, every citizen throughout the
land has enjoyed the opportunity of learning the merits and
demerits of the proposed alteration. The subject has been
'threshed out,' as the expression goes, in Parliament; the
scheme, whatever its worth, has received the deliberately
given approval of the elected Legislature; it comes before the
people with as much authority in its favour as a Bill which in
England has passed through both Houses."

_A. V. Dicey,
The Referendum,
(Contemporary Review, April, 1890)._

{2629}

"A judgment of the referendum must be based on the working of
the electoral machinery, on the interest shown by the voters,
and on the popular discrimination between good and bad
measures. The process of invoking and voting on a referendum
is simple and easily worked, if not used too often. Although
the Assembly has, in urgent cases, the constitutional right to
set a resolution in force at once, it always allows from three
to eight months' delay so as to permit the opponents of a
measure to lodge their protests against it. Voluntary
committees take charge of the movement, and, if a law is
unpopular, little difficulty is found in getting together the
necessary thirty thousand or fifty thousand signatures. Only
thrice has the effort failed when made. When, as in 1882, the
signatures run up to 180,000, the labor is severe, for every
signature is examined by the national executive to see whether
it is attested as the sign manual of a voter; sometimes, in an
interested canton, as many as 70 per cent. of the voters have
signed the demand. The system undoubtedly leads to public
discussion: newspapers criticise; addresses and counter
addresses are issued; cantonal councils publicly advise
voters; and of late the federal Assembly sends out manifestoes
against pending initiatives. The federal Executive Council
distributes to the cantons enough copies of the proposed
measure, so that one may be given to each voter. The count of
the votes is made by the Executive Council as a
returning-board. Inasmuch as the Swiss are unfamiliar with
election frauds, and there has been but one very close vote in
the national referenda, the count is not difficult, but there
are always irregularities, especially where more than one
question is presented to the voters at the same time. What is
the effect of the popular votes, thus carried out? The
following table, based on official documents, shows the
results for the twenty years, 1875-1894;

Passed Rejected Total

(a.) Constitutional amendments
proposed by the Assembly
(referendum obligatory) 1 6 7

(b.) Constitutional amendments
proposed by popular initiative 2 1 *4
(50,000 signatures)

(c.) Laws passed by the Assembly 14 6 20
(referendum demanded by 30,000).

Total 17 13 31

* One measure still pending.

Making allowances for cases where more than one question has
been submitted at the same time, there have been twenty-four
popular votes in twenty years. In addition, most of the
cantons have their own local referenda; in Zurich, for
example, in these twenty years, more than one hundred other
questions have been placed before the sovereign people. These
numbers are large in themselves, but surprising in proportion
to the total legislation. Out of 158 general acts passed by
the federal Assembly from 1874 to 1892, 27 were subjected to
the referendum; that is, about one-sixth are reviewed and
about one-tenth are reversed. Constitutional amendments
usually get through sooner or Inter, but more than two-thirds
of the statutes attacked are annulled. To apply the system on
such a scale in any State of our Union is plainly impossible;
thirty-nine–fortieths of the statute-book must still rest, as
now, on the character of the legislators. Nevertheless it may
be worth while to excise the other fortieth, if experience
shows that the people are more interested and wiser than their
representatives, when a question is put plainly and simply
before them. I must own to disappointment over the use made by
the Swiss of their envied opportunity. On the twenty referenda
between 1879 and 1891 the average vote in proportion to the
voters was but 58.5 per cent.; in only one case did it reach
67 per cent.; and in one case—the patent law of 1887—it fell
to about 40 per cent. in the Confederation, and to 9 per cent.
in Canton Schwyz. On the serious and dangerous question of
recognizing the right to employment, this present year, only
about 56 per cent. participated. In Zurich there is a
compulsory voting law, of which the curious result is that on
both national and cantonal referenda many thousands of blank
ballots are cast. The result of the small vote is that laws,
duly considered by the national legislature and passed by
considerable majorities, are often reversed by a minority of
the voters. The most probable reason for this apathy is that
there are too many elections—in some cantons as many as
fifteen a year. Whatever the cause, Swiss voters are less
interested in referenda than Swiss legislators in framing
bills. … 'I am a friend of the referendum,' says an eminent
member of the Executive Council, 'but I do not like the
initiative.' The experience of Switzerland seems to show four
things: that the Swiss voters are not deeply interested in the
referendum; that the referendum is as likely to kill good as
bad measures; that the initiative is more likely to suggest
bad measures than good; that the referendum leads straight to
the initiative. The referendum in the United States would
therefore probably be an attempt to govern great communities
by permanent town meeting."

_Prof. A. B. Hart,
Vox Populi in Switzerland
(Nation, September 13, 1894)._

ALSO IN:
_A. L. Lowell,
The Referendum in Switzerland and America
(Atlantic Monthly, April, 1894)._

_E. P. Oberholtzer,
The Referendum in America._

REFORM, Parliamentary.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1830; 1830-1832; 1865-1868,
and 1884-1885.

----------REFORMATION: Start--------

REFORMATION:
Bohemia.

See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1405-1415; and 1419-1434, and after.

REFORMATION:
England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1527-1534, to 1558-1588.

REFORMATION:
France.

See PAPACY; A. D. 1521-1535;
and FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547, and after.

REFORMATION:
Germany.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517, 1517, 1517-1521, 1521-1522,
1522-1525, 1525-1529, 1530-1531, 1537-1563;
also GERMANY: A. D. 1517-1523, 1530-1532, 1533-1546,
1546-1552, 1552-1561;
also PALATINATE OF THE RHINE; A. D. 1518-1572.

REFORMATION:
Hungary.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1526-1567

REFORMATION:
Ireland; its failure.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.

REFORMATION:
Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1521-1555, and after.

REFORMATION:
Piedmont.

See SAVOY AND PIEDMONT: A. D. 1559-1580.

{2630}

REFORMATION:
Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1547-1557; 1557; 1558-1560;
and 1561-1568.

REFORMATION:
Sweden and Denmark.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1397-1527.

REFORMATION:
Switzerland.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1519-1524;
SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1528-1531;
and GENEVA: A. D. 1504-1535; and 1536-1564.

----------REFORMATION: End--------

REFORMATION, The Counter.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1534-1540; 1537-1563; 1555-1603.

REGED.

See CUMBRIA.

REGENSBURG.

See RATISBON-under which name the town is more commonly
known to English readers.

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY, New York.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: AMERICA: A. D. 1746-1787.

REGICIDES AT NEW HAVEN, The.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1660-1664.

REGILLUS, Lake, Battle at.

In the legendary history of the Roman kings it is told that
the last of the Tarquins strove long to regain his throne,
with the help of the Etruscans first, afterwards of the
Latins, and that the question was finally settled in a great
battle fought with the latter, near the Lake Regillus, in
which the Romans were helped by Castor and Pollux, in person.

_Livy,
History,
II. 19._

REGNI, The.

See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

REGULATORS OF NORTH CAROLINA.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1766-1771.

REGULBIUM.

One of the fortified Roman towns in Britain on the Kentish
coast,—modern Reculver.

_T. Wright,
Celt, Roman and Saxon,
chapter 5._

See ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.

REGULUS, and the Carthaginians.

See PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST.

REICHSTAG.

See DIET, THE GERMANIC.

REIGN OF TERROR, The.

See TERROR.

REIS EFFENDI.

See SUBLIME PORTE.

REMI, The.

See BELGÆ.

REMO, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ANDESIANS.

REMONSTRANTS AND COUNTER-REMONSTRANTS.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1603-1619.

REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1833-1836.

RENAISSANCE, The.

"The word Renaissance has of late years received a more
extended significance than that which is implied in our
English equivalent—the Revival of Learning. We use it to
denote the whole transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern
World; and though it is possible to assign certain limits to
the period during which this transition took place, we cannot
fix on any dates so positively as to say—between this year and
that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like
trying to name the days on which spring in any particular
season began and ended. Yet we speak of spring as different
from winter and from summer. … By the term Renaissance, or new
birth, is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by
this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort
of humanity for which at length the time had come, and in the
onward progress of which we still participate. The history of
the Renaissance is not the history of arts, or of sciences, or
of literature, or even of nations. It is the history of the
attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit
manifested in the European races. It is no mere political
mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical
standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge
and the books which suddenly became vital at the time of the
Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the Dead
Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery
which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual
energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which
enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force
then generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the
spirit of the modern world. … The reason why Italy took the
lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy possessed a language,
a favourable climate, political freedom, and commercial
prosperity, at a time when other nations were still
semi-barbarous. … It was … at the beginning of the 14th
century, when Italy had lost indeed the heroic spirit which we
admire in her Communes of the 13th, but had gained instead
ease, wealth, magnificence, and that repose which springs from
long prosperity, that the new age at last began. … The great
achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the
world and the discovery of man. Under these two formulæ may be
classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this
period. The discovery of the world divides itself into two
branches—the exploration of the globe, and the systematic
exploration of the universe which is in fact what we call
Science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the Portuguese
rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar
system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this
plain statement. … In the discovery of man … it is possible to
trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations,
illustrated by Pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual
relations, illustrated by Biblical antiquity: these are the
two regions, at first apparently distinct, afterwards found to
be interpenetrative, which the critical and inquisitive genius
of the Renaissance opened for investigation. In the former of
these regions we find two agencies at work, art and
scholarship. … Through the instrumentality of art, and of all
the ideas which art introduced into daily life, the
Renaissance wrought for the modern world a real resurrection
of the body. … It was scholarship which revealed to men the
wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human thought, the
value of human speculation, the importance of human life
regarded as a thing apart from religious rules and dogmas. …
The Renaissance opened to the whole reading public the
treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. At the same
time the Bible in its original tongues was rediscovered. Mines
of Oriental learning were laid bare for the students of the
Jewish and Arabic traditions. What we may call the Aryan and
the Semitic revelations were for the first time subjected to
something like a critical comparison. With unerring instinct
the men of the Renaissance named the voluminous subject-matter
of scholarship 'Litteræ Humaniores,' the more human
literature, the literature that humanises [hence the term
Humanism]. … Not only did scholarship restore the classics and
encourage literary criticism; it also restored the text of the
Bible, and encouraged theological criticism. In the wake of
theological freedom followed a free philosophy, no longer
subject to the dogmas of the Church. … On the one side
Descartes, and Bacon, and Spinoza, and Locke are sons of the
Renaissance, champions of new-found philosophical freedom; on
the other side, Luther is a son of the Renaissance, the herald
of new-found religious freedom."

_J. A. Symonds,
Renaissance in Italy: Age of the Despots,
chapter 1._

{2631}

"The Renaissance, so far as painting is concerned, may be said
to have culminated between the years 1470 and 1550. These
dates, it must be frankly admitted, are arbitrary; nor is
there anything more unprofitable than the attempt to define by
strict chronology the moments of an intellectual growth so
complex, so unequally progressive, and so varied as that of
Italian art. All that the historian can hope to do, is to
strike a mean between his reckoning of years and his more
subtle calculations based on the emergence of decisive genius
in special men. An instance of such compromise is afforded by
Lionardo da Vinci, who belongs, as far as dates go, to the
last half of the fifteenth century, but who must on any
estimate of his achievement, be classed with Michael Angelo
among the final and supreme masters of the full Renaissance.
To violate the order of time, with a view to what may here be
called the morphology of Italian art, is, in his case, a plain
duty. Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to regard the
eighty years above mentioned as a period no longer of promise
and preparation but of fulfilment and accomplishment.
Furthermore, the thirty years at the close of the fifteenth
century may be taken as one epoch in this climax of the art,
while the first half of the sixteenth forms a second. Within
the former falls the best work of Mantegna, Perugino, Francia,
the Bellini, Signorelli, Fra Bartolommeo. To the latter we may
reckon Michael Angelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian,
and Andrea del Sarto. Lionardo da Vinci, though belonging
chronologically to the former epoch, ranks first among the
masters of the latter; and to this also may be given
Tintoretto, though his life extended far beyond it to the last
years of the century."

_J. A. Symonds,
Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts,
chapters 4-6._

"It would be difficult to find any period in the history of
modern Europe equal in importance with that distinguished in
history under the name of the Renaissance. Standing midway
between the decay of the Middle Ages and the growth of modern
institutions, we may say that it was already dawning in the
days of Dante Alighieri, in whose immortal works we find the
synthesis of a dying age and the announcement of the birth of
a new era. This new era—the Renaissance—began with Petrarch
and his learned contemporaries, and ended with Martin Luther
and the Reformation, which event not only produced signal
changes in the history of those nations which remained
Catholic, but transported beyond the Alps the centre of
gravity of European culture."

_P. Villari,
Niccolo Machiavelli and his Times,
volume 1, chapter 1._

_J. Burckhardt,
The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy._

On the communication of the movement of the Renaissance to
France and Europe in general, as a notable consequence of the
invasion of Italy by Charles VIII.

See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.
See, also,
ITALY: 14TH CENTURY, and 15-16TH CENTURIES;
FLORENCE: A. D. 1469-1492;
VENICE: 16TH CENTURY;
FRANCE: A. D. 1492-1515, and 16TH CENTURY;
EDUCATION: RENAISSANCE;
ENGLAND: 10-16TH CENTURIES.

[Transcriber's note: For additional commentary on the
Renaissance by James J. Walsh, see:

_The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries,_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38680

_Medieval Medicine_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43300

_The Century of Columbus_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35095

_The Popes and Science_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34019

_Catholic Churchmen in Science_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34067

_Education: How Old The New_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34938
]

RÉNE
(called The Good), Duke of Anjou and Lorraine and
Count of Provence, A. D. 1434-1480.

King of Naples, A. D. 1435-1442.

See ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.

RENSSELAER, Van.

See VAN RENSSELAER.

RENSSELAERWICK, The Patroon colony and manor of.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1621-1646;
also, LIVINGSTON MANOR.

REPARTIMIENTOS. ENCOMIENDAS.

Columbus, as governor of Hispaniola (Hayti), made an
arrangement "by which the caciques in their vicinity, instead
of paying tribute, should furnish parties of their subjects,
free Indians, to assist the colonists in the cultivation of
their lands: a kind of feudal service, which was the origin of
the repartimientos, or distributions of free Indians among the
colonists, afterwards generally adopted, and shamefully
abused, throughout the Spanish colonies; a source of
intolerable hardships and oppressions to the unhappy natives,
and which greatly contributed to exterminate them from the
island of Hispaniola. Columbus considered the island in the
light of a conquered country, and arrogated to himself all the
rights of a conqueror, in the name of the sovereigns for whom
he fought."

_W. Irving,
Life and Voyages of Columbus,
book 12, chapter 4 (volume 2)._

"The words 'repartimiento' and 'encomienda' are often used
indiscriminately by Spanish authors; but, speaking accurately,
'repartimiento' means the first apportionment of
Indians,—'encomienda' the apportionment of any Spaniard's
share which might become 'vacant' by his death or banishment."

_Sir A. Helps,
Spanish Conquest in America,
book 6, chapter 2, foot-note, (volume 1)._

"'Repartimiento,' a distribution; 'repartir,' to divide;
'encomienda,' a charge, a commandery; 'encomendar,' to give in
charge; 'encomendero,' he who holds an encomienda. In Spain an
encomienda, as here understood, was a dignity in the four
military orders, endowed with a rental, and held by certain
members of the order. It was acquired through the liberality
of the crown as a reward for services in the wars against the
Moors. The lands taken from the Infidels were divided among
Christian commanders; the inhabitants of those lands were
crown tenants, and life-rights to their services were given
these commanders. In the legislation of the Indies, encomienda
was the patronage conferred by royal favor over a portion of
the natives, coupled with the obligation to teach them the
doctrines of the Church, and to defend their persons and
property. … The system begun in the New World by Columbus,
Bobadilla, and Ovando was continued by Vasco Nuñez, Pedrarias,
Cortés, and Pizarro, and finally became general."

_H. H. Bancroft,
History of the Pacific States,
volume 1, page 262, foot-note._

See, also, SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS.

REPEAL OF THE UNION OF IRELAND WITH GREAT BRITAIN,
The Agitation for.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829, 1840-1841; and 1841-1848.

REPETUNDÆ.

See CALPURNIAN LAW.

REPHAIM, The.

See HORITES, THE.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE ACT, 1884.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

{2632}

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.

"This [representative government] is the great distinction
between free states of the modern type, whether kingly or
republican, and the city-commonwealths of old Greece. It is
the great political invention of Teutonic Europe, the one form
of political life to which neither Thucydides, Aristotle, nor
Polybios ever saw more than the faintest approach. In Greece
it was hardly needed, but in Italy a representative system
would have delivered Rome from the fearful choice which she
had to make between anarchy and despotism."

_E. A. Freeman,
History of Federal Government,
chapter 2._

"Examples of nearly every form of government are to be found
in the varied history of Greece: but nowhere do we find a
distinct system of political representation. There is, indeed,
a passage in Aristotle which implies a knowledge of the
principles of representation. He speaks of 'a moderate
oligarchy, in which men of a certain census elect a council
entrusted with the deliberative power, but bound to exercise
this power agreeably to established laws.' There can be no
better definition of representation than this: but it appears
to express his theoretical conception of a government, rather
than to describe any example within his own experience. Such a
system was incompatible with the democratic constitutions of
the city republics: but in their international councils and
leagues, we may perceive a certain resemblance to it. There
was an approach to representation in the Amphictyonic Council,
and in the Achaian League; and the several cities of the
Lycian League had a number of votes in the assembly,
proportioned to their size—the first example of the kind—being
a still nearer approximation to the principles of
representation. But it was reserved for later ages to devise
the great scheme of representative government, under which
large States may enjoy as much liberty as the walled cities of
Greece, and individual citizens may exercise their political
rights as fully as the Athenians, without the disorders and
perils of pure democracy."

_Sir T. E. May,
Democracy in Europe,
volume 1, chapter 3._

"The most interesting, and on the whole the most successful,
experiments in popular government, are those which have
frankly recognised the difficulty under which it labours. At
the head of these we must place the virtually English
discovery of government by Representation, which caused
Parliamentary institutions to be preserved in these islands
from the destruction which overtook them everywhere else, and
to devolve as an inheritance upon the United States."

_Sir H. S. Maine,
Popular Government,
page 92._

"To find the real origin of the modern representative system
we must turn to the assemblies of the second grade in the
early German states. In these the freemen of the smaller
locality—the Hundred or Canton—came together in a public
meeting which possessed no doubt legislative power over
matters purely local, but whose most important function seems
to have been judicial—a local court, presided over by a chief
who suggested and announced the verdict, which, however,
derived its validity from the decision of the assembly, or, in
later times, of a number of their body appointed to act for
the whole. Those local courts, probably, as has been
suggested, because of the comparatively restricted character
of the powers which they possessed, were destined to a long
life. On the continent they lasted until the very end of the
middle ages, when they were generally overthrown by the
introduction of the Roman law, too highly scientific for their
simple methods. In England they lasted until they furnished
the model, and probably the suggestion, for a far more
important institution—the House of Commons. How many grades of
these local courts there were on the continent below the
national assembly is a matter of dispute. In England there was
clearly a series of three. The lowest was the township
assembly, concerned only with matters of very slight
importance and surviving still in the English vestry meeting
and the New England town-meeting. Above this was the hundred's
court formed upon a distinctly representative principle, the
assembly being composed, together with certain other men, of
four representatives sent from each township. Then, third, the
tribal assembly of the original little settlement, or, the
small kingdom of the early conquest, seems to have survived
when this kingdom was swallowed up in a larger one, and to
have originated a new grade in the hierarchy of assemblies,
the county assembly or shire court. At any rate, whatever may
have been its origin, and whatever may be the final decision
of the vigorously disputed question, whether in the Frankish
state there were any assemblies or courts for the counties
distinct from the courts of the hundreds, it is certain that
courts of this grade came into existence in England and were
of the utmost importance there. In them, too, the
representative principle was distinctly expressed, each
township of the shire being represented, as in the hundred's
court, by four chosen representatives. These courts, also,
pass essentially unchanged through the English feudal and
absolutist period, maintaining local self-government and
preserving more of the primitive freedom than survived
elsewhere. We shall see more in detail, at a later point, how
the representative principle originating in them is
transferred to the national legislature, creating our modern
national representative system—the most important single
contribution to the machinery of government made in historic
times, with the possible exception of federal government."

_G. B. Adams,
Civilization during the Middle Ages,
chapter 5._

For an account of the rise and development of the
representative system in the English Parliament.

See PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH.

REPRESENTATIVES, House of.

See CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

REPUBLICAN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES,
The earlier.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1789-1792; 1798; and 1825-1828.

The later.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1854-1855.

Liberal and Radical wings.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1872.

REPUBLICANS, Independent.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1884.

RESACA,
Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA).

Hood's attack on.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

RESACA DE LA PALMA, Battle of.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1846-1847.

{2633}

RESAINA, Battle of.

A battle, fought A. D. 241, in which Sapor I. the Persian
king, was defeated by the Roman emperor Gordian, in
Mesopotamia.

_G. Rawlinson,
Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy,
chapter 4._

RESCH-GLUTHA, The.
The "Prince of the Captivity."

See JEWS: A. D. 200-400.

RESCISSORY, Act.

See SCOTLAND: A.D. 1660-1666.

RESCRIPTS, Roman Imperial.

See CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS.

RESEN.

See ROTENNU, THE.

RESIDENCIA.

"Residencia was the examination or account taken of the
official acts of an executive or judicial officer [Spanish]
during the term of his residence within the province of his
jurisdiction, and while in the exercise of the functions of
his office. … While an official was undergoing his residencia
it was equivalent to his being under arrest, as he could
neither exercise office nor, except in certain cases
specified, leave the place."

_H. H. Bancroft,
History of the Pacific States,
volume 1, page 250, foot-note._

ALSO IN:
_F. W. Blackmar,
Spanish Institutions of the Southwest,
page 69._

RESIDENT AT EASTERN COURTS, The English.

See INDIA. A. D. 1877.

RESTITUTION, The Edict of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1627-1629.

RETENNU, The.

See ROTENNU, THE.

RETHEL, Battle of (1650).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1650-1651.

RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND, The.

See PERSIA: B. C. 401-400.

RETZ, Cardinal De, and the Fronde.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1649, to 1051-1653.

REUDIGNI, The.

See AVIONES.

REUIL, Peace of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1649.

REVERE, Paul, The ride of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (APRIL).

REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

See RENAISSANCE.

REVOLUTION, The American.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765, and after.

REVOLUTION, The English, of 1688.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1688.

REVOLUTION, The French, of 1789.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1787-1789, and after.

REVOLUTION, The French, of 1830.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1815-1830.

REVOLUTION, The French, of 1848.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848, and 1848.

REVOLUTION, The Year of.

See
EUROPE (volume 2, pages 1098-1099):
ITALY: A. D. 1848-1849:
GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (MARCH), to 1848-1850;
AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848, to 1848-1850;
HUNGARY: A. D. 1847-1849;
FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848, and 1848.

REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (FEBRUARY-APRIL).

REYDANIYA, Battle of (1517).

See TURKS: A. D. 1481-1520.

REYNOSA, Battle of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).

----------RHÆTIA: Start--------

RHÆTIA.
Rhætians, Vindelicians, etc.

"The Alps from the Simplon pass to the sources of the Drave
were occupied by the Rhætians. Beyond the Inn and the Lake of
Constance, the plain which slopes gently towards the Danube
was known by the name of Vindelicia. Styria, the Kammergut of
Salzburg, and the southern half of the Austrian Archduchy,
belonged to the tribes of Noricum, while the passes between
that country and Italy were held by the Carnians." The Roman
conquest of this Alpine region was effected in the years 16
and 15 B. C. by the two stepsons of the Emperor Augustus,
Tiberius and Drusus. In addition to the people mentioned
above, the Camuni, the Vennones, the Brenni and the Genauni
were crushed. "The free tribes of the eastern Alps appear then
for the first time in history, only to disappear again for a
thousand years."

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 35._

See, also, TYROL.

RHÆTIA:
Settlement of the Alemanni in.

See ALEMANNI: A. D. 496-504.

----------RHÆTIA: End--------

RHAGES.

See RAGA.

RHEGIUM, Siege of (B. C. 387).

Rhegium, an important Greek city, in the extreme south of
Italy, on the strait which separates the peninsula from
Sicily, incurred the hostility of the tyrant of Syracuse, the
elder Dionysius, by scornfully refusing him a bride whom he
solicited. The savage-tempered despot made several attempts
without success to surprise the town, and finally laid siege
to it with a powerful army and fleet. The inhabitants resisted
desperately for eleven months, at the end of which time (B. C.
387) they were starved into surrender. "Dionysius, on entering
Rhegium, found heaps of unburied corpses, besides 6,000
citizens in the last stage of emaciation. All these captives
were sent to Syracuse, where those who could provide a mina
(about £3. 17s.) were allowed to ransom themselves, while the
rest were sold as slaves. After such a period of suffering,
the number of those who retained the means of ransom was
probably very small."

_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 83._

RHEIMS:
Origin of the name.

See BELGÆ.

RHEIMS: A. D. 1429.
The crowning of Charles VII.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1429-1431.

RHEIMS: A. D. 1814.
Capture by the Allies and recovery by Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH).

RHEINFELDEN, Siege and Battle of (1638).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1634-1639.

RHETRÆ.

See SPARTA: THE CONSTITUTION, &c.

RHINE, The Circle of the.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

RHINE, The Confederation of the.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806; 1806 (JANUARY-AUGUST);
1813 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER);
and FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH).

RHINE, Roman passage of the.

See USIPETES AND TENCTHERI.

RHINE LEAGUE, The.

The Rhine League was one of several Bunds, or confederations
formed among the German trading towns in the middle ages, for
the common protection of their commerce. It comprised the
towns of southwest Germany and the Lower Rhine provinces.
Prominent among its members were Cologne, Wessel and Munster.
Cologne, already a large and flourishing city, the chief
market of the trade of the Rhine lands, was a member,
likewise, of the Hanseatic League.

See HANSA TOWNS.

_J. Yeats,
Growth and Vicissitudes of Commerce,
page 158._

See, also, CITIES, IMPERIAL, AND FREE, OF GERMANY;
and FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

{2634}

----------RHODE ISLAND: Start--------

RHODE ISLAND:
The aboriginal inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

RHODE ISLAND: A. D. 1631-1636.
Roger Williams in Massachusetts.
His offenses against Boston Puritanism.
His banishment.

On the 5th of February, 1631, "the ship Lyon arrived at
Nantasket, with twenty passengers and a large store of
provisions. Her arrival was most timely, for the
[Massachusetts] colonists were reduced to the last exigencies
of famine. Many had already died of want, and many more were
rescued from imminent peril by this providential occurrence. A
public fast had been appointed for the day succeeding that on
which the ship reached Boston. It was changed to a general
thanksgiving. There was another incident connected with the
arrival of this ship, which made it an era, not only in the
affairs of Massachusetts, but in the history of America. She
brought to the shores of New England the founder of a new
State, the exponent of a new philosophy, the intellect that
was to harmonize religious differences, and soothe the
asperities of the New World; a man whose clearness of mind
enabled him to deduce, from the mass of crude speculations
which abounded in the 17th century, a proposition so
comprehensive, that it is difficult to say whether its
application has produced the most beneficial result upon
religion, or morals, or politics. This man was Roger Williams,
then about thirty-two years of age. He was a scholar, well
versed in the ancient and some of the modern tongues, an
earnest inquirer after truth, and an ardent friend of popular
liberty as well for the mind as for the body. As a 'godly
minister,' he was welcomed to the society of the Puritans, and
soon invited by the church in Salem to supply the place of the
lamented Higginson, as an assistant to their pastor Samuel
Skelton. The invitation was accepted, but the term of his
ministry was destined to be brief. The authorities at Boston
remonstrated with those at Salem against the reception of
Williams. The Court at its next session addressed a letter to
Mr. Endicott to this effect: 'That whereas Mr. Williams had
refused to join with the congregation at Boston, because they
would not make a public declaration of their repentance for
having communion with the churches of England, while they
lived there; and, besides, had declared his opinion that the
magistrate might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, nor any
other offence, as it was a breach of the first table;
therefore they marvelled that they would choose him without
advising with the council, and withal desiring him, that they
would forbear to proceed till they had conferred about it.'
This attempt of the magistrates of Boston to control the
election of a church officer at Salem, met with the rebuke it
so richly merited. The people were not ignorant of the
hostility their invitation had excited; yet on the very day
the remonstrance was written, they settled Williams as their
minister. The ostensible reasons for this hostility are set
forth in the letter above cited. That they were to a great
extent the real ones cannot be questioned. The ecclesiastical
polity of the Puritans sanctioned this interference. Their
church platform approved it. Positive statute would seem to
require it. Nevertheless, we cannot but think that, underlying
all this, there was a secret stimulus of ambition on the part
of the Boston Court to strengthen its authority over the
prosperous and, in some respects, rival colony of Salem. … As
a political measure this interference failed of its object.
The people resented so great a stretch of authority, and the
church disregarded the remonstrance. … What could not as yet
be accomplished by direct intervention of the Court was
effected in a surer manner. The fearlessness of Williams in
denouncing the errors of the times, and especially the
doctrine of the magistrate's power in religion, gave rise to a
system of persecution which, before the close of the summer,
obliged him to seek refuge beyond the jurisdiction of
Massachusetts in the more liberal colony of the Pilgrims. At
Plymouth 'he was well accepted as an assistant in the ministry
to Mr. Ralph Smith, then pastor of the church there.' The
principal men of the colony treated him with marked attention.
… The opportunities there presented for cultivating an
intimate acquaintance with the chief Sachems of the
neighboring tribes were well improved, and exerted an
important influence, not only in creating the State of which
he was to be the founder, but also in protecting all New
England amid the horrors of savage warfare. Ousamequin, or
Massasoit, as he is usually called, was the Sachem of the
Wampanoags, called also the Pokanoket tribe, inhabiting the
Plymouth territory. His seat was at Mount Hope, in what is now
the town of Bristol, R. I. With this chief, the early and
steadfast friend of the English, Williams established a
friendship which proved of the greatest service at the time of
his exile."

_S. G. Arnold,
History of the State of Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations,
volume 1, chapter 1._

Williams "remained at Plymouth, teaching in the church, but
supporting himself by manual labor, nearly two years. His
ministry was popular in the main and his person universally
liked. Finally, however, he advanced some opinions which did
not suit the steady-going Plymouth elders, and therefore,
departing 'something abruptly,' he returned to Salem. There he
acted as assistant to Mr. Skelton, the aged pastor of the
church, and when Mr. Skelton died, less than a year later,
became his successor. At Salem he was again under the
surveillance of the rulers and elders of the Bay, and they
were swift to make him sensible of it. He had written in
Plymouth, for the Plymouth Governor and Council a treatise on
the Massachusetts Patent, in which he had maintained his
doctrine that the King could not give the settlers a right to
take away from the natives their land without paying them for
it. He was not a lawyer but an ethical teacher, and it was
doubtless as such that he maintained this opinion. In our day
its ethical correctness is not disputed. It has always been
good Rhode Island doctrine. He also criticised the patent
because in it King James claimed to be the first Christian
prince who discovered New England, and because he called
Europe Christendom or the Christian World. Williams did not
scruple to denounce these formal fictions in downright Saxon
as lies. He does not appear to have been, at any period of his
life, a paragon of conventional propriety. A rumor of the
treatise got abroad, though it remained unpublished. The
patent happened to be a sensitive point with the magistrates.
{2635}
It had been granted in England to an English trading company,
and its transfer to Massachusetts was an act of questionable
legality. Moreover it was exceedingly doubtful whether the
rulers, in exercising the extensive civil jurisdiction which
they claimed under it, did not exceed their authority. They
were apprehensive of proceedings to forfeit it, and therefore
were easily alarmed at any turning of attention to it. When
they heard of the treatise they sent for it, and, having got
it, summoned the author 'to be censured.' He appeared in an
unexpectedly placable mood, and not only satisfied their minds
in regard to some of its obscurer passages, but offered it,
since it had served its purpose, to be burnt. The magistrates,
propitiated by his complaisance, appeared to have accepted the
offer as equivalent to a promise of silence, though it is
impossible that he, the uncompromising champion of aboriginal
rights, can ever have meant to give, or even appear to give,
such a promise. Accordingly when they heard soon afterwards
that he was discussing the patent they were deeply incensed,
though it was doubtless the popular curiosity excited by their
own indiscreet action which elicited the discussion. Their
anger was aggravated by another doctrine then put forth by
him, namely, that an oath ought not to be tendered to an
unregenerate, or, as we should say, an unreligious man,
because an oath is an act of worship, and cannot be taken by
such a man without profanation. … He also taught that an oath
being an act of worship, could not properly be exacted from
anyone against his will, and that even Christians ought not to
desecrate it by taking it for trivial causes. … The
magistrates again instituted proceedings against him, at first
subjecting him to the ordeal of clerical visitation, then
formally summoning him to answer for himself before the
General Court. At the same time the Salem church was arraigned
for contempt in choosing him as pastor while he was under
question. The court, however, did not proceed to judgment, but
allowed them both further time for repentance. It so happened
that the inhabitants of Salem had a petition before the court
for 'some land at Marblehead Neck, which they did challenge as
belonging to their town.' The court, when the petition came
up, refused to grant it until the Salem church should give
satisfaction for its contempt, thus virtually affirming that
the petitioners had no claim to justice even, so long as they
adhered to their recusant pastor. Williams was naturally
indignant. He induced his church—'enchanted his church,' says
Cotton Mather—to send letters to the sister churches,
appealing to them to admonish the magistrates and deputies of
their 'heinous sin.' He wrote the letters himself. His
Massachusetts contemporaries say he was 'unlamblike.'
Undoubtedly they heard no gentle bleating in those letters,
but rather the reverberating roar of the lion chafing in his
rage. The churches repelled the appeal; and then turning to
the Salem church, besieged it only the more assiduously,
laboring with it, nine with one, to alienate it from its
pastor. What could the one church do,—with the magistracy
against it, the clergy against it, the churches and the people
against it, muttering their vague anathemas, and Salem town
suffering unjustly on its account,—what could it do but
yield? It yielded virtually if not yet in form; and Williams
stood forth alone in his opposition to the united power of
Church and State. … The fateful court day came at last. The
court assembles, magistrates and deputies, with the clergy to
advise them. Williams appears, not to be tried, but to be
sentenced unless he will retract. He reaffirms his opinions.
Mr. Hooker, a famous clerical dialectician, is chosen to
dispute with him, and the solemn mockery of confutation
begins. … Hour after hour, he argues unsubdued, till the sun
sinks low and the weary court adjourns. On the morrow [Friday,
October 9, 1635], still persisting in his glorious
'contumacy,' he is sentenced, the clergy all save one
advising, to be banished, or, to adopt the apologetic but
felicitous euphemism of his great adversary, John Cotton,
'enlarged' out of Massachusetts. He was allowed at first six
weeks, afterwards until spring, to depart. But in January the
magistrates having heard that he was drawing others to his
opinion, and that his purpose was to erect a plantation about
Narragansett Bay, 'from whence the infection would easily
spread,' concluded to send him by ship, then ready, to England
[see MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1636]. The story is familiar how
Williams, advised of their intent, baffled it by plunging into
the wilderness, where, after being 'sorely tost for one
fourteen weeks, in a bitter winter season, not knowing what
bread or bed did mean,' he settled with the opening spring, on
the east bank of the Seekonk, and there built and planted."

_T. Durfee,
Historical Discourse: Two hundred and fiftieth
Anniversary of the Settlement of Providence, 1886._

"The course pursued towards Roger Williams was not
exceptional. What was done to him had been done in repeated
instances before. Within the first year of its settlement the
colony had passed sentence of exclusion from its territory
upon no less than fourteen persons. It was the ordinary method
by which a corporate body would deal with those whose presence
no longer seemed desirable. Conceiving themselves to be by
patent the exclusive possessors of the soil,—soil which they
had purchased for the accomplishment of their personal and
private ends,—the colonists never doubted their competency to
fix the terms on which others should be allowed to share in
their undertaking. … While there is some discrepancy in the
contemporary accounts of this transaction, there is entire
agreement on one point, that the assertion by Roger Williams
of the doctrine of 'soul-liberty' was not the head and front
of his offending. Whatever was meant by the vague charge in
the final sentence that he had 'broached and divulged new and
dangerous opinions, against the authority of magistrates,' it
did not mean that he had made emphatic the broad doctrine of
the entire separation of church and state. We have his own
testimony on this point. In several allusions to the subject
in his later writings,—and it can hardly be supposed that in a
matter which he felt so sorely his memory would have betrayed
him,—he never assigns to his opinion respecting the power of
the civil magistrate more than a secondary place. He
repeatedly affirms that the chief causes of his banishment
were his extreme views regarding separation, and his
denouncing of the patent. Had he been himself conscious of
having incurred the hostility of the Massachusetts colony for
asserting the great principle with which he was afterwards
identified, he would surely have laid stress upon it. …
{2636}
It is … clear that in the long controversy it had become
covered up by other issues, and that his opponents, at least,
did not regard it as his most dangerous heresy. So far as it
was a mere speculative opinion it was not new. … To upbraid
the Puritans as unrelenting persecutors, or extol Roger
Williams as a martyr to the cause of Religious liberty, is
equally wide of the real fact. On the one hand, the
controversy had its origin in the passionate and precipitate
zeal of a young man whose relish for disputation made him
never unwilling to encounter opposition, and on the other, in
the exigencies of a unique community, where the instincts of a
private corporation had not yet expanded into the more liberal
policy of a body politic. If we cannot impute to the colony
any large statesmanship, so neither can we wholly acquit Roger
Williams of the charge of mixing great principles with some
whimsical conceits. The years which he passed in Massachusetts
were years of discipline and growth, when he doubtless already
cherished in his active brain the germs of the principles
which he afterwards developed; but the fruit was destined to
be ripened under another sky."

_J. L. Diman,
Orations and Essays,
pages 114-117._

RHODE ISLAND: A. D. 1636.
The wanderings of the exiled Roger Williams.
His followers.
The settlement at Providence.