ACCEPTANCE. 



ACCLIMATION. 



13 



The symbols employed to denote accents are three, the acute ( ' ), 

 the grave ( ' ), and the circumflex ( " ). We have hitherto spoken only 

 of the first. The second in the ancient languages is said to denote the 

 opposite to the acute, or, perhaps, the absence of it ; while the circum- 

 flex . we are told, marks a compound of the two, first a rising and then 

 a falling of the voice in the articulation of the same syllable. 



These three little marks, as employed the orthography of the French 

 language, have a signification altogether different. As the French, like 

 all other languages, is deficient ill the number of characters used to 

 mark the vowel sounds, it has been found convenient to employ the 

 three symbols given above. Thus, the sounds of c, (, i, i, in the mouth 

 i if a Frenchman, differ not a much in point of accent as in the real 

 articulation. 



EM [than f differs from accent, and ia properly used with reference to 

 some one word, or part of a sentence, to which a speaker wishes to 

 draw attention by giving it a more marked pronunciation. [EMPHASIS.] 

 ACCEPTANCE. [BILL OF EXCHANGE.] 



ACCESSARY (from the low Latin accessarlus or accesiorium), is, in 

 law, one who is guilty of an offence which is a felony, not as chief 

 actor, but as a participator without being present at the time of the 

 actual committing of the offence, as by command, advice, instigation, 

 procurement, or concealment, &c. 



A man may be accessary either before the fact, or after it. 

 An Accessary before the Fact is denned by Lord Hale to be one who, 

 " being absent at the time of the crime committed, doth yet procure, 

 counsel, or command another to commit a crime." The oifender's 

 absence is necessary to constitute him an accessary, as otherwise he 

 would be a principal ; and he must have procured the commission of 

 the crime, either by direct communication with the actual perpetrator, 

 or by conveying his advice or command through some indirect channel. 

 But the mere concealment of a felony intended to be committed, 

 without actual instigation, will not make a man an accessary ; as that 

 is only a misprision of felony. It is an established rule, that where a 

 man commands another to commit an unlawful act, he is accessary not 

 merely to the act commanded, but to all the consequences that may 

 ensue upon it, except such as could not in any reasonable probability 

 lie anticipated or feared : as, for instance, if he commands another 

 violently to beat a third person and he beat* him so that he dies, the 

 person giving the command is guilty as accessary to the murder 

 consequent upon the act, notwithstanding that it may never have been 

 his intention that a crime of so deep a dye should be committed. But 

 a man will not be guilty as accessary before the fact if he command 

 another to kill A, and he kills B, because the particular crime he 

 iiplated has never been completed. It is otherwise where the 

 directions have been substantially pursued, although the crime may 

 not have been committed precisely in the manner in which it was com- 

 manded to be done, as where a murder is effected by means of stabbing 

 instead of poisoning. 



An Acceaanj after the Fact is one who, knowing a man to have 

 committed a felony, receives, harbours, or assists him. In general, any 

 assixtaiiuu given to a felon to hinder his being apprehended, tried, or 

 -uHriing punishment, as by affording him the means to escape the 

 imiHuit of justice, will constitute the assister an accessary after the 

 fact ; but it is not so if the assistance given have no such tendency, as 

 when clothes or necessaries are supplied to a felon in gaol. Although 

 any act done to enable the criminal to escape the vengeance of the law 

 will make a man guilty as accessary after the fact, a mere omission to 

 l>l - heml him, without giving positive assistance, will not have that 

 effect. Also, if the crime be not completed, at the tune of the relief or 

 assistance afforded, the reliever or assister is not judged an accessary to 

 it ; as where a mortal wound has been given, but the murder is not 

 tin n consummated by the death of the party : yet, th crime once 

 I'oinplete, not even the nearest ties of blood can be pleaded in justifi- 

 cation of concealment or relief, except alone in the case of a wife, whom 

 the law supposes to be go much under the coercion of her husband, 

 that she ought not to be considered as accessary to his crime by 

 receiving him after it lias been committed. 



I'.y 7 Geo. IV. c. 64, and 11 4 12 Viet. c. 46, the trial and punish- 

 ment of accessaries before the fact in assimilated to that of the priuci|>al 

 f> l"ii. Accessaries after the fact are, by the latter statute, made punish- 

 able as for a substantive felony, with imprisonment proportioned to the 

 lifinousness of the original crime, but the imprisonment is not to exceed 

 two years. The receiver of stolen goods, whose offence is of the nature 

 i that committed by an accessary after the fact, is, by 7 & 8 Geo. IV. 

 c. 2p, made liable to fourteen years' transportation : or now to a similar 

 lTiofl of penal servitude; 16 t 17 Viet. c. 99 ; 20 & 21 Viet. c. 3. 



Formerly no accessary could be tried until after the conviction of the 

 principal, the crime of the former being regarded a, in a manner, 

 dependant on that of the latter ; but the law is now altered in this 

 t, by 11 ft 12 Viet. c. 46; and 14 & 15 Viet. c. 100. It is now 

 ' "inpetent to try and convict him without waiting for the conviction 

 f the principal. 



The distinction Iwtwcen principal* and accessaries holds only in 

 case* of felony. 



ACCIDENT. [PBEDICABLEU.] 



ACCIDENTAL COLOURS. A term applied to the ocular spectrum 

 which in usually seen when the eye lias been steadily fixed for some 

 time upon a coloured object. Thus, if we look at a red wafer upon a 



sheet of white paper for about half a minute, and then turn the eye 

 from the wafer to the white paper, we see an image, or spectrum, of the 

 wafer of a bluish green colour ; this is the accidental colour of the red, 

 and if we repeat the experiment with other colours, they will in like 

 manner furnish ocular spectra : thus an orange coloiir will furnish a 

 blue spectrum, yellow will give indigo, and so on, and it will be found 

 in each case, that the colour of the object, added to that of the 

 spectrum, will make up all the colours of white light ; hence accidental 

 colours are also called complementary colours. [LIGHT.] 



ACCLIMATION is a term applied to that change in the human system 

 produced by residence in a place whose climate is different from that 

 to which it has been accustomed, and which enables it to resist those 

 causes of disease which readilj' act upon it before such change has 

 taken place. A person is thus rendered similar in constitution to the 

 natives of the countiy which he has adopted. This subject is one of 

 great importance, and has not yet received the attention it demands. 

 As far as present evidence goes, it appears that the white races attain 

 their highest physical and intellectual development, the greatest 

 amount of health, and reach the greatest age, above 40 in the western 

 and 45 in the eastern hemispheres. Whenever they pass below these 

 latitudes they begin to deteriorate and exhibit unmistakeable symptoms 

 of decadence in both health and strength. The same law holds good 

 with the dark races of the tropical parts of the earth. The negro who 

 lives in the interior of Africa is killed by cold. The limits of his 

 health and strength are found at 40 north or south. If he proceeds 

 to higher latitudes, he deteriorates and becomes exterminated. In the 

 northern states of America the mortality of the black population is 

 double that of the white. 



" The laws of climate show that each race of mankind has its 

 prescribed salubrious limits. All of them seem to possess a certain 

 degree of constitutional pliability by which they are able to bear, to a 

 certain extent, great changes of temperature and latitude ; and those 

 races that are indigenous to temperate climates support best the 

 extremes of other latitudes. The inhabitants of the arctic regions, as 

 also of the tropics, have a certain pliancy of constitution ; and while 

 the inhabitants of the middle latitudes may emigrate 30" south or 30 

 north with comparative impunity, the Esquimaux in the one extreme, 

 or the Negro, Hindoo, or Malay, in the other, have no power to with- 

 stand the vicissitudes of climate encountered in traversing the 70 of 

 latitude between Greenland and the equator. The fair races of 

 northern Europe below the arctic zone .find Jamaica, Louisiana, and 

 India, to be extreme climates ; and they and their descendants are no 

 longer to be recognised after a prolonged residence there. When an 

 Englishman is placed in the most beautiful part of Bengal or Jamaica, 

 where malaria does not exist, and although he may be subjected to no 

 attack of acute diseases, but may live with a tolerable degree of health 

 his threescore years and ten, he nevertheless ceases to be the same 

 healthy individual he once was ; and, moreover, his descendants 

 degenerate. He complains bitterly of the heat, and becomes tanned ; 

 his plump plethoric frame becomes attenuated ; his blood loses fibrine 

 and red globules ; both mind and body become sluggish ; gray hairs 

 and other marks show that age has come on prematurely the man 

 of forty looks fifty years old ; the average duration of life is shortened 

 (as shown in life insurance tables) ; and the race in time would be 

 exterminated if cut off from fresh supplies of emigrants from the honn: 

 country. Our army medical historians tell us that our troops do not 

 become acclimatised in India. Length of residence in a distant land 

 affords no immunity from the diseases of its climate, which act with 

 redoubled energy on the stranger from the temperate zones. On the 

 contrary, the mortality among officers and troops is greatest among 

 those who remain longest in those climates." (Johnson, Martin, 

 Tulloch, Macpherson, Boudin.) Dr. Macpherson also makes the sig- 

 nificant remark, that the small mortality among officers compared with 

 soldiers, in India, is due to the greater facilities they enjoy of obtaining 

 change of climate when they fall sick. Although the constitution of 

 the man may be so modified that comparative health may be retained, 

 yet there is a morbid degradation of the physical and intellectual constitu- 

 tion. If, however, he or his descendants are taken back to their native 

 climate, they may yet revert to the healthful standard of their original 

 types. The good effects of limiting the period of service of our troops 

 abroad to three years, has shown this in sustaining for a greater period 

 the strength of the regiments ; a protracted residence of the European 

 regiments in India having been followed by the most disastrous results. 

 " European regiments in India have melted away like the spectres of a 

 dream. A thousand strong men form this year a regiment : a year 

 passes, and one hundred and twenty-five new recruits are required to 

 till up the broken column ; and eight years having come and gone, not 

 a man of the original thousand remains in the dissolving corps." 



" With regard to the Bombay Fusilier European regiment, for 

 instance, Dr. Arnot has shown that its losses average 104 per 1000 per 

 annum ; a loss equivalent to the entire absorption of the regiment in 

 nine years and seven months. In Bengal also it is an ascertained fact, 

 that a British regiment of 1000 men dissolves entirely away in 11 

 years, even in favourable tunes, and with all the improved conditions 

 of the service. Dr. Arnot's statistics show that the Bengal army loses 

 annually 9 per cent, of its numbers, giving a total loss in eight years of 

 upwards of 14,005 men out of an army of 156,130 men." (Aitken's 

 ' Handbook of Medicine.') 



