BLANQUI, AUGUSTE. 



BRAHMO SOMAJ. 



65 



its part toward retaining silver as a monetary agent 

 for measuring and exchanging values. For three 

 years it has appropriated to coinage purposes one 

 third of the world's production of silver, and main- 

 tained its average bullion price nearly to the average 

 of 1878. As was said in my first report, " should the 

 $650,000.000 of silver coin, now full legal tender in 

 Europe, be demonetized, the United States could not, 

 single-handed among commercial nations, with no 

 European co-operation or allies, sustain the value of 

 silver from the inevitable fall. With that danger 

 menacing us, we can not, without serious embarrass- 

 ment, continue such coinage unless other commercial 

 nations will agree upon the general use of silver as 

 well as gold. But should such international agree- 

 ment be secured, neither our ratio of comparative 

 valuation nor even one based upon the present ex- 

 changeable value of gold and silver will jprobably be 

 adopted. The ratio of 15i to 1, already approved 

 and in use among the nations composing the Latin 

 Union, would doubtless be chosen. This would, if 

 the coinage of silver as well as gold at all the mints 

 of the world were made free, as bi-metallism implies, 

 cause the voluntary withdrawal from circulation of 

 the standard dollars, and their recoinage. In such 

 case the further coinage of silver dollars of the present 

 weight, unless needed for circulation, is a useless ex- 

 penditure." 



The Secretary of the Treasury, in his an- 

 nual report, and the President in his message, 

 also recommended a suspension of the coinage 

 of silver dollars, and a future restriction, not to 

 an arbitrary limit, but to a limit determined 

 by the actual demand for circulation. They 

 also recommended a cessation of the issue of 

 silver certificates, and advocated a policy in 

 future in regard to bi-metallism dependent on 

 a substantial concert of commercial nations. 



BLANQUI, AUGUSTE, a French Democrat 

 and Socialist, died January 2d, at the age of 

 seventy-six. Without ever having formulated 

 any definite objects to which his extraor- 

 dinary political activity was directed, he has 

 appeared in the character of a leader in every 

 revolutionary movement of the century. When 

 a student in Paris, his intellectual gifts were 

 widely remarked. He commenced life as a 

 private tutor. A mutual attachment sprang 

 up between him and his second pupil, the 

 daughter of a Paris banker, which was con- 

 cealed for years, and then resulted in their 

 marriage. After seven years of happy wedded 

 life, Blanqui embarked in his career of a po- 

 litical conspirator. His condemnation to life- 

 long imprisonment so wrought upon his wife's 

 mind that she died within a year. Since then 

 Blanqui has passed thirty-seven years of his 

 life in prison. He founded numerous secret 

 societies, and was the chief organizer of nearly 

 every democratic outbreak. Lamartine says 

 that after the Revolution of 1848 he invited 

 Blanqui to forsake destructive criticism, and 

 devote hi.s talents to the diplomatic service of 

 his country, offering him a foreign mission. 

 Blanqui was small and insignificant in appear- 

 ance. He lived like an ascetic, using no wine 

 or coffee, eating vegetable food only, dispens- 

 ing with fire in all weathers, and leaving his 

 chamber-windows always open. Though the 

 most active instigator of violent uprisings in 

 VOL. xxi. 5 A 



France, he had a sentimental horror of blood- 

 shed; and though always foremost in revolu- 

 tionary and socialistic disturbances, he fre- 

 quently expressed the conviction that strong 

 government was necessary to prevent anarchy, 

 and that the economic problem could not be 

 solved perhaps in centuries. The Commu- 

 nards of Paris converted the funeral of Blanqui 

 into a celebration of the amnesty. 



BLUNTSCHLI, Professor JEAN GASPARD, 

 jurist and writer on international law, born at 

 Zurich in March, 1808, died October 21st. He 

 was educated for the law in his own country, 

 and afterward went to Germany, where he 

 was a pupil of Savigny and Niebuhr. His 

 work on u Succession according to the Roman 

 Law " gained him the doctor's degree at Berlin. 

 Upon his return to Switzerland, he engaged 

 actively in the political conflicts of the time, and 

 contributed frequently to the Liberal press. 

 He became a member of the State Council, and 

 was a member of the Ministry before the re- 

 turn of the Conservatives to power. In 1838 

 he published tlie " Political and Juridical His- 

 tory of Zurich." He assisted the brothers 

 Grimm in their researches into German an- 

 tiquities, and wrote several works on na- 

 tional history. His work on " General Polit- 

 ical Law " (Munich, 1850) established his repu- 

 tation as an historian and jurist. When the 

 University of Zurich was founded, in 1833, 

 Bluntschli was appointed a titular professor. 

 In 1861 he went to Heidelberg as Professor of 

 Public Law. In recent years he has published 

 several works on the history and theory of law, 

 which are studied with great attention in Eu- 

 rope. In the early part of 1881 he was pro- 

 voked into an amicable controversy with Gen- 

 eral von Moltke by the latter's strictures on 

 the reform in the laws of war proposed by the 

 Institut de Droit International, and his defense 

 of war as an agency in higher civilization. 



BRAHMO SOMAJ, THE. The division in 

 the Brahmo Somaj of India, which took place 

 in 1878 (an account of which is given in 

 the " Annual Cyclopaedia " for 1879, article 

 BRAHMO SOMAJ), has been made wider in con- 

 sequence of a new departure that the wing of 

 the church of which Keshub Chunder Sen is 

 regarded as the leader has taken. The new 

 movement assumed a definite form at the close 

 of the celebration of the fifty-first anniversary 

 of the Brahmo Somaj, when Mr. Sen's party 

 assumed the name of the " Church of the New 

 Dispensation," and the " Flag of the New 

 Dispensation," intended to denote the church 

 militant developing into the church triumphant, 

 was formally inaugurated, with the Arati cere- 

 mony, or the waving of lights and the chant- 

 ing of hymns. The " New Dispensation " is 

 believed by Mr. Sen to afford a scheme for 

 effecting the unity and harmony of all other 

 dispensations, all of which Hindooism, Bud- 

 dhism, Islamism, and Christianity are con- 

 nected as parts of the divine scheme, and really 

 exhibit order and continuity where confusion 



