BLANCO BLASPHEMY. 



561 



cording to others, by Etlenne Montgolfier. Afte 

 having performed many aerostatic voyages in foreign 

 countries also, he was accused of propagating revo 

 lutionary principles, and imprisoned, 1793, in th 

 fortress of Kufstein, in the Tyrol. Having obtainec 

 his liberty, he made his forty-sixth ascent in the cit 

 of New York, 1796. In 1798, he ascended, witi 

 sixteen persons, in a large balloon, at Rouen, anc 

 descended at a place fifteen miles distant. In 1807 

 his aerostatic voyages amounted to more than sixty 

 six. He died in 1809. Madame Blanchard con 

 tinued to make aerial voyages. In 1811, she as 

 cended in Rome, and, after going a distance of sixty 

 miles, she rose again to proceed to Naples. In June 

 1819, having ascended from Tivoli, in Paris, he: 

 balloon took fire, at a considerable height, owing t< 

 some fire-works which she carried with her. ~ Tin 

 gondola fell down in the rue de Provence, and the 

 napless aeronaut was dashed to pieces. 



BLANCO, Cape (literally, White cape) ; a name given 

 to a great number of capes by the Spaniards, Portu- 

 guese, and Italians. It corresponds to the French 

 cap Blanc. The name is as common and as unphi- 

 losophical as that of White hill, Black river, &c. 



BLANK VERSE, in modern poetry ; verses withoul 

 rhyme ; e. g., Milton's Paradise Lost. Only those 

 languages which distinguish long and short syllables 

 can employ it. See Verse. 



BLANTYRE; a parish and village in the Middle 

 Ward of Lanarkshire. The parish, which is about 

 six miles in length, and one in breadth, is fertile, ex- 

 cept towards the south, where it becomes. a deep peat 

 inoss. Iron-stone of an excellent quality is produced 

 here, and wrought to great advantage. Here is a 

 mineral spring, which is deemed very salutary in 

 scorbutic cases. On the top of a rock, which rises 

 perpendicularly from the Clyde, are the ruins of the 

 priory of Blantyre, founded before 1 296. Urns have 

 been dug up at different times, in various parts of this 

 parish. The village of Blantyre stands on the road 

 between Hamilton and Kilbride, seven miles from 

 Glasgow, and its inhabitants are chiefly employed in 

 cotton factories. Population of the parish in 1831. 

 3,000. 



BLASPHEMY is somewhat variously defined. Ac- 

 cording to the more general definition, it means the 

 denying the existence of God; assigning to him false 

 attributes, or denying his true attributes ; speaking 

 irreverently of the mysteries of religion ; and, for- 

 merly, in Catholic countries, it also included the 

 speaking contemptuously or disrespectfully of the 

 Holy Virgin or the saints. Public blasphemy has 

 been considered, by the church of Rome, as an un- 

 pardonable sin ; and it was, formerly, punished with 

 death by the municipal laws. The 77th novel of 

 Justinian assigned this punishment to it; and the 

 capitularies inflicted the same punishment upon such 

 as, knowing of an act of blasphemy, did not denounce 

 the offender. The former laws of France punished 

 this crime with fine, corporeal punishment, the gal- 

 lows, and death, according to the degree and aggra- 

 vation of the offence. The records of the parliaments 

 supply numerous instances of condemnation for this 

 crime, and many of punishment by death ; others of 

 branding and mutilation. A man was, for this of- 

 fence, condemned to be hanged, and to have his 

 tongue afterwards cut out, and the sentence was exe- 

 cuted at Orleans, as late as 1748. But it is remarked 

 by a writer in the French Encyclopedic Moderne,tliat 

 we should form an erroneous opinion, from the pre- 

 sent state of society, of the effect of this offence, and 

 the disorders it might introduce in former times ; for 

 religion was once so intimately blended with the 

 government and laws, that to treat the receiv- 

 ed articles of faith or religious ceremonies with 



disrespect, was, in effect, to attack civil institu- 

 tions. 



By the law of Scotland, as it originally stood, the 

 punishment of blasphemy was death. Blasphemy con- 

 sisted of railing at or cursing God, or of obstinately 

 persisting in denying the existence of the Supreme 

 Being, or any of the persons of the Trinity. The last 

 individual who suffered the extreme penalty of this 

 law in Scotland, was a young man, aged twenty, the 

 son of a surgeon in Edinburgh. His name was Tho- 

 mas Aikenhead, and his trial and execution took 

 place so late as the end of the seventeenth century. 

 Among other accusations, the indictment stated, that 

 he ridiculed the holy scriptures ; that he rejected the 

 mystery of the Trinity ; that he maintained that God, 

 the world, and nature, were all one thing, and that 

 the world existed from all eternity ; that he said the 

 inventors of the scriptural doctrines would be damned, 

 if there was such a thing as rewards or punishments 

 after this life; and that, in particular, his impiety 

 was so audacious, that, as he passed by the Tron 

 church on a cold night, he said to a companion, he 

 could wish to warm himself in the place Ezra called 

 hell. No defence appears to have been made for 

 the prisoner, nor were the major counts in the in 

 dictment which, according to the statute, forfeited 

 life, properly proved ; yet the unhappy young man 

 was found guilty; and on the 8th of Jan., 1697, he 

 was executed, his body buried under the gallows, 

 and his movable estates forfeited. See Hugo Arnofs 

 Collection t>f Criminal Trials. 



By the common law of England, blasphemies of 

 God, as denying his being and providence, all contu- 

 melious reproaches of Jesus Christ, &c., are punish- 

 able by fine, imprisonment, pillory, c. ; and, by the 

 statute of 9 and 10 William III., ch. 32, if any one 

 ihall deny either of the Persons of the Trinity to be 

 God, or assert that there are more gods than one, he 

 shall be incapable of holding any office ; and, for a 

 second offence, be disabled from suing any action, or 

 aeing an executor, and suffer three years' imprison- 

 ment. By the statute of 53 Geo. III., ch. 160, the 

 words in Italics were omitted. This law was an in- 

 ringement of the liberty of conscience, and certainly 

 could not now be practically enforced in England, 

 since some of the doctrines of some sects of Chris- 

 ians, openly and habitually inculcated in their public 

 assemblies, would be violations of it. This was, no 

 doubt, the reason of omitting the part of the statute 

 above referred to. The early legislation of the Ame- 

 rican colonies followed that of the mother country, 

 and, in some of them, the crime of blasphemy was 

 )unished with death ; but the penalty was mitigated 

 >efore the establishment of the independence of the 

 tates, and imprisonment, whipping, setting on the 

 jallows, or in the pillory, having the tongue bored 

 vith a red-hot iron, &c. were substituted. The sta- 

 utory provisions of th,e different states on this subject 

 re very various. In some of them, the offence or 

 ilasphemy is distinguished from that of profane 

 wearing ; in others, Blasphemy is not mentioned as 



distinct offence. Several penalties against blas- 

 ihemy are to be found in the laws of some of the 

 w England States ; according to which it is pro- 

 ided that, if any persons shall blaspheme, by deny- 

 ng, cursing, or contumeliously reproaching God, his 

 reation, government, or final judging of the world, 

 r by cursing or reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy 

 Jhost, or contumeliously reproaching the word of 

 Jod, consisting of the commonly received books of 



Old and New Testament, he is liable to imprison- 

 ment for a term not exceeding five years. But the 

 nost direct and public violations of these laws are 

 assed over without punishment or prosecution. In 

 aany, and, we believe, the greater number of the 



