162 



GEORGE V. 



GEORGETOWN 



Copyright 1890, 1897, and 

 1900 in the U.S. by J. B. 

 Lippincott Company. 



as premiers while he was regent and king. The 

 movement for reform which began in the reign of 

 George III. was opposed, with the king's concur- 

 rence, by the advisers of George IV., the massacre 

 at Peterloo, where the inhabitants of Manchester 

 held a reform meeting on 20th August 1820, 

 being the most regrettable of many sad inci- 

 dents. On this occasion the open-air meeting 

 was charged by cavalry and yeomanry, with the 

 result that eleven persons were killed and about 

 six hundred wounded. On the ground of his reli- 

 gious convictions, George IV. followed his father 

 in opposing the emancipation of the Roman Catho- 

 lics ; but in 1829, when the Duke of Wellington 

 declared that the measure was imperative, the king 

 withdrew his opposition and the measure became 

 law. His failings and vices were conspicuous; it 

 cannot be said that they were wholly redeemed by 

 his taste for music, by having a good voice for sing- 

 ing, and by playing fairly on the flute. It was 

 creditable to him that he read and admired the 

 inimitable romances of Jane Austen and Sir Walter 

 Scott. Yet he did not adorn the throne, and 

 when he died on 26th January 1830, he was least 

 regretted by those who knew him best. 



George V., of Hanover. See HANOVER. 



George ('the Bearded'), Duke of Saxony from 

 1500 to 1539, was known as a zealous anti-Pro- 

 testant. See SAXONY. 



George, HENRY, political economist, was born in 

 Philadelphia, Sept. 2, 1839, went to sea at an early 

 age, and migrated to California 

 in 1858, where he became a jour- 

 neyman printer. After a num- 

 ber of years spent at the case, he rose to the edi- 

 torial desk, conducted several papers, and took an 

 active part in the discussion of public questions. In 

 1870 he published Our Land and Land Policy, a 



Eamphlet outlining the views which have since made 

 im widely known, but which had only a local cir- 

 culation. In October 1879 appeared Progress and 

 Poverty in California. In January 1880 it was 

 published in New York, and in 1881 in London 

 and Berlin. It has since gone through many 

 editions, been translated into the principal lan- 

 guages, and had a circulation without precedent 

 in economic literature. Progress and Poverty is 

 an inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions, 

 and of the increase of want with increase of wealth, 

 in the course of which some of the most important 

 of the hitherto accepted doctrines of political 

 economy are recast. Denying the dictum that 

 wages are limited by capital, he argues that 

 wages are produced by the labour for which they 

 are paid ; and, denying the Maltlmsian theory, he 

 contends that increase of population instead of caus- 

 ing want should tend to greater plenty. Then, by 

 an examination of the laws of distribution, in which 

 the laws of wages and interest are shown to cor- 

 relate with the hitherto accepted law of rent, he 

 comes tc the conclusion that, as produce equals rent 

 plus wages plus interest, therefore produce, minus 

 rent, equals wages plus interest. The increase 

 of economic rent or land values explains why the 

 increase of productive power so marked in modern 

 civilisation does not commensurately increase wages 

 and interest. To the tendency of the steady increase 

 in land values to beget speculation in land, which 

 prevents the application of labour and capital, he 

 traces tlie recurring seasons of industrial depres- 

 sion. The remedy he proposes is the appropriation 

 of economic rent to public uses by a tax levied on 

 the value of land exclusive of improvements, and 

 the abolition of all taxes which fall upon industry 

 and thrift. Meeting objections which may be 

 urged against this proposition on the ground of 

 justice and public policy, he finally brings it to a 



larger test in an examination of the law of human 

 progress, which he defines to be that of association 

 in equality. Other works are The Irish Land 

 Question (1881), Social Problems (1882), Protection 

 and Free Trade (1886), A Perplexed Philosopher 

 (against Herbert Spencer's views on land, 1893). 

 He visited Great Britain and Ireland in 1881, 1883, 

 1884, 1888, and 1889, and Australia in 1890. In 

 1886 he-was the United Labor candidate for the may- 

 oralty of New York. The now defunct Standard, a 

 weekly paper, was established in 1887. He died sud- 

 denly of apoplexy in the middle of a second candi- 

 dature for the mayoralty of New York, October 2. 

 1897. His book The Science of Political Economy, 

 nearly finished at his death, was published posthu- 

 mously in 1898. Though sometimes styled socialistic, 

 George's views were for the most part diametrically 

 opposed to state socialism. His aim was to sweep 

 away all interferences with the production and 

 distribution of wealth, and only to resort to 

 state control where competition is impossible to 

 leave to individuals all that individual energy or 

 thrift accumulates, and to take for the use of the 

 community all that is due to the general growth 

 and improvement. 



George, LAKE, called also Horicon, a beautiful 

 lake, 32 miles long, near the eastern border of New 

 York state. It forms the head -waters of Lake 

 Champlain, is studded with hundreds of pictur- 

 esque islands, and its shores contain several favour- 

 ite summer-resorts, especially the village of Cald- 

 well or Lake George. Here was fought the battle 

 of Lake George, in which the French and Algon- 

 quins under Baron Dieskau were utterly defeated 

 by the English and Iroquois under Sir William 

 Johnson, on 8th September 1755. 



George, THE, the badge of the Order of the 

 Garter (q.v. ). 



Georgetown, a port of entry in the District of 

 Columbia, formerly a separate city, and now the 

 usual designation of that part of the city of Wash- 

 ington lying west of Rock Creek. It is on the 

 Potomac River, at the head of navigation, and con- 

 sists in part of beautiful heights occupied by elegant 

 villas. Here the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal is 

 carried across the Potomac by means of a great 

 viaduct 1446 feet long ; and here are a number of 

 educational institutions, including a Roman Cath- 

 olic college (1789). For its administration, see 

 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. Pop. (1880) 12,578; (1900) 

 14,549. 



Georgetown (formerly the Dutch Stabroek), 

 capital of British Guiana, is situated on the right 

 bank of the Demerara River, not far from its 

 mouth. It is handsomely built, and consists of 

 wide, clean streets, intersecting at right angles ; the 

 brightly painted wooden houses, with their Swiss 

 eaves developed into handsome verandahs, are 

 generally raised on piles a few feet above the un- 

 healthy soil, and embosomed in trees, of which the 

 cabbage-palm and cocoa-nut are the chief. Some 

 of the streets, with their long colonnades of palms, 

 are traversed by wide trenches or canals, with 

 bridges at the cross streets. The principal public 

 edifices are the government building, the cathedral, 

 the Queen's College, and a museum and library. 

 There are botanical gardens, several hospitals, an 

 icehouse, and two markets. Water for ordinary 

 purposes is supplied from a canal, the mains being 

 laid through most of the principal streets ; and 

 artesian wells, besides tanks for the storage of 

 rain, have to some extent supplied the lack of 

 drinking-water. There is a short railway to 

 Mahaica, and a telephone exchange has been 

 established in connection with the government 

 telegraph system. There is a good harbour, with 

 a lighthouse, and defences erected within recent 



