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FREEHOLD FREIGHT. 



obtained by serving an apprenticeship ; but it is also 

 purchased with money, and sometimes conferred by 

 way of compliment. 



FREEHOLD, in law; that land or tenement 

 which a man holds in fee-simple, fee-tail, or for term 

 of life. Freehold indeed is the real possession of 

 lands, &c., in fee or for life. Freehold in law is the 

 right a person hath to such lands or tenements before 

 his entry. Freehold also includes offices held in fee 

 or for life. See Fee. 



FREEMASONRY. See Masonry. 



FREESTONE. See Sandstone. 



FREE-THINKER ; a person who rejects revela- 

 tion ; a deist. The term originated in the eighteenth 

 century, and, like the French esprit fort, contains a 

 sneer at believers. Free-thinking, in England, first 

 appeared in the form of opposition to abuses in the 

 church, which were attacked in the reigns of James 

 II. and William III. Dodwell, Steele, Anth. Collins 

 (who first made it a name of a party, by his Discourse 

 of Free-thinking, London, 1713), and his friend, 

 John Toland, are among the number. In 1718, a 

 weekly paper was published, entitled the Free- 

 Thinker, or Essays of Wit and Humour, &c. Math. 

 Tindal (who died 1733), Morgan, and Bernard Man- 

 deville extended free-thinking to morals. Lord 

 Holingbroke and Hume are the most distinguished 

 free-thinkers. Free-thinking also originated in 

 France, from the abuses of the church, but assailed 

 all revealed religion. Voltaire and the encyclopae- 

 dists D'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius (the author 

 of the Systeme de la Nature) led the opposition 

 against revealed religion. The same spirit became 

 fashionable in Germany in the reign of Frederic the 

 Great. 



FREEZE, or FRIEZE, in commerce; a coarse 

 kind of woollen stuff or cloth ; so called as being 

 freezed or napped on one side. 



FREEZING, CONGELATION, in philosophy; 

 the transformation of a fluid body, into a firm or 

 solid mass, by the action of cold. The process of 

 congelation is always attended with the emission of 

 heat, as is found by experiments on the freezing of 

 water, wax, spermaceti, &c. ; for in such cases it is 

 always found, that a thermometer dipped into the fluid 

 keeps continually descending as this cools, till it 

 arrives at a certain point, being the point of freezing, 

 which is peculiar to each fluid, where it is awhile 

 stationary, and then rises a little, while the congela- 

 tion goes on ; at the same time, the bulk of the body 

 is expanded. The prodigious power of expansion 

 evinced by water in the act of freezing, exerted in so 

 small a mass, seemingly by the force of cold, was 

 thought a very material argument in favour of those 

 who supposed that cold, like heat, is a positive sub- 

 stance. Doctor Black's discovery of latent heat, 

 however, has afforded an easy and natural explana- 

 tion of this phenomenon. He has shown that, in 

 the act of congelation, water is not cooled more than 

 it was before, but rather grows warmer; that as 

 much heat is discharged, and passes from a latent to 

 a sensible state, as, had it been applied to water in a 

 fluid state, would have heated it to 135. In this 

 process, the expansion is occasioned by a great 

 number of minute bubUes suddenly produced. For- 

 merly these were supposed to be cold in the abstract, 

 and to be so subtile, that, insinuating themselves 

 into the substance of the fluid, they augmented its 

 bulk, at the same time that, by impeding the motion 

 of its particles upon each other, they changed it 

 from a fluid to a solid. But these are only air 

 extricated during the congelation ; and to the extri- 

 cation of this air we ascribe the prodigious expansive 

 force exerted by freezing water. By what means 

 does this air come to be extricated, and to take up 



more room than it naturally does in the fluid ? 

 Perhaps part of the heat, which is discharged from 

 the freezing water, combines with the air in its 

 elastic state, and, by restoring its elasticity, gives it 

 that extraordinary force, as is seen also in the case 

 of air suddenly extricated in the explosion of gun- 

 powder. A very great degree of cold is produced by 

 mixing snow with certain salts. The best salt for this 

 purpose is muriate of lime. If this be mixed with 

 dry, light snow, and the two bodies be stirred well 

 together, the cold produced will be so intense as to 

 freeze mercury in a few minutes. Common salt with 

 snow produces a great degree of cold. Evaporation 

 likewise produces cold. The method of making ice 

 artificially in the East Indies, depends upon this prin- 

 ciple. The manufacturers at Benares dig pits in large 

 open plains, the bottom of which they strew with 

 sugar-canes, or dried stems of maize, or Indian corn. 

 Upon this bed they place a number of unglazed pans, 

 made of so porous an earth, that the water oozes 

 through their substance. These pans are filled, 

 towards evening, in the winter season, with water 

 which lias been boiled, and are left in that situation 

 till morning, when more or less ice is found in them, 

 according to the temperature of the air ; there being 

 more formed in dry and warm weather than in 

 cloudy weather, though it may be colder to the 

 human body. Every thing hi this operation is cal- 

 culated to produce cold by evaporation ; the beds 

 on which the pans are placed, suffer the air to have 

 a free passage to their bottoms, and the pans, con- 

 stantly oozing out the water to their external surface, 

 are cooled by the evaporation of it. In Spain, a 

 kind of earthen jars, called buxaros, is used, the 

 earth of which is so porous, being only half-baked, 

 that the outside is kept moist by the water which 

 filters through it; and, though placed in the sun, 

 the water in the jar becomes as cold as ice. It is a 

 common practice in China, to cool wine or other 

 liquors by wrapping a wet cloth round the bottle, 

 and hanging it up in the sun. The water in the 

 cloth evaporates, and thus cold is produced. Ice 

 may be produced at any time by the evaporation of 

 ether. 



Professor Leslie discovered that porphyritic trap, 

 pounded and dried, will absorb one-tenth part of its 

 weight of moisture, and can hence be easily made to 

 freeze the eighth part of its weight of water. In hot 

 countries, the powder will, after each process, 

 recover its power by drying in the sun. This 

 curious and beautiful discovery of artificial congela- 

 tion, will, therefore, produce ice in the tropical 

 climes, or even at sea, with very little trouble, and 

 no sort of risk or inconvenience. Leslie has lately 

 discovered that parched oatmeal is even a more 

 powerful absorbent than the whinstone ; and with a 

 stratum of oatmeal, about a foot in diameter, ami 

 one inch deep, he froze a pound and a quarter of 

 water, contained in a hemispherical porous cup. 

 The meal is easily dried, and restored to its former 

 use 



FREEZING POINT denotes the point or degree 

 of cold, shown by a mercurial thermometer, at which 

 certain fluids begin to freeze, or, when frozen, at 

 which they begin to thaw again. On Fahrenheit's 

 thermometer this point is at -f 32 for water, and 

 at 40 for quicksilver, these fluids freezing at these 

 two points respectively. See Thermometer. 



FREIGHT is the consideration money agreed to 

 be paid for the use or hire of a ship ; or in a larger 

 sense, it is the burden of such ship. The freight ia 

 most frequently determined for the whole voyage, 

 without respect to time ; sometimes it depends on 

 time. In the former case, it is either fixed at a 

 certain sum for the whole cargo, at so much per ton, 



