81S 



ELDORADO ELECTOR. 



kirk-sessions, with authority to inspect ami regulate 

 matters of religion and discipline. In the first 

 churches of New England, the pastors or ministers 

 were called elders, or teaching elder*. 



ELDORADO ; a fabulous country, in which gold 

 anil precious stones are as common as rocks or sand 

 in other countries. Francis Orellana, a companion 

 of Pizarro, first spread the account of this fabulous 

 region in Europe ; and an Englishman even pub- 

 lished, at the end of the sixteenth century, a de- 

 scription of this favoured country, with a map. The 

 German Schlaraffenland, where roasted pigeons fly 

 into one's mouth, or where, as Goethe has it, the 

 vines are tied by sausages to the slocks, is some- 

 thing similar, as is likewise Uie French pays de co- 

 cagne. See Cocagna. 



ELEATIC. A Grecian philosophical sect, so 

 called because three of its most celebrated teachers, 

 Parmenides, Zeno, and Leucippus, were natives of 

 Exi (in Latin Velia) a town in Magna Graecia, 

 built by a colony of Phocaeans, in the time of Cyrus. 

 The founder was Xenophanes. The sect included 

 two parties, one approving the other rejecting ap- 

 peals to observation and experiment. The Tatter 

 class maintained the eternity and immutability of the 

 world, that all which existed was only one being, 

 without generation or corruption, and this was God. 

 The apparent changes in the universe they consi- 

 dered as mere illusions of sense. Some learned men 

 have supposed that they understood, by the one being, 

 not the material world, but the originating principle 

 of all tilings, or the true God, whom they expressly 

 affirm to be incorporeal. The other branch of the 

 Eleatic sect were the Atomic philosophers, who 

 formed their system from attention to the phenomena 

 of nature. Accordingly, Xenophanes maintained 

 that the earth consisted of air and fire ; that all 

 things were produced out of the earth, and the sun 

 and stars out of the clouds ; and that there were four 

 elements. For further information, see Cudworth's 

 Intellectual System, and Brucker's History of Philoso- 

 phy, translated by Enfield. 



ELECAMPANE (inula helenium) ; a plant which 

 belongs to the natural order compusita. The stem 

 is three or four feet high, thick, pubescent, and 

 branching above ; the radical leaves are often two 

 feet and more in length ; the flowers are large and 

 yellow ; the root is perennial, possesses a bitter aro- 

 matic and somewhat acrimonious taste, and has been 

 celebrated in disorders of the breast and lungs ; it is 

 useful to promote expectoration, and is also sudorific. 



ELECTION, in politics. To give an accurate 

 description of the elections of public officers, as they 

 have existed in the various periods of history, would 

 almost be to give the history of politics, for which 

 many valuable materials exist, but which it is much 

 to be regretted, has never yet been fully treated. 

 The subject is worthy of the study of a philosophical 

 mind. 



Elections are one of the vital elements of all free 

 nations ; they have, therefore, always occupied much 

 of the attention of lawgivers, and may, to a certain 

 degree, be considered as a standard to measure the 

 degree of national liberty. The forms of election 

 may be divided into two kinds : 1. those which have 

 grown up, in the course of time, under the various 

 influences which have contributed to modify the po- 

 litical constitution of the country, such as civil war, 

 or internal troubles, conquest, particular laws, &c. ; 

 and, 2. those established by a written constitution, 

 of a certain date. Elections, also, may be divided, 

 like constitutions, into aristocratic, and democratic ; 

 in the former, the person elected representing a 

 much lacger number and more classes of citizens 

 than are comprised in the body of his immediate 



electors ; the latter representing his constituents 

 only. Elections, also, may be direct or indirect ; in 

 the latter case, the people at large choose electors, 

 who elect the representative or magistrate, as is the 

 form of elections in Bavaria. See the articles Bri- 

 tain, France, &c., for an account of the forms of 

 elections in the respective countries. See also the 

 article Consul, (for an account of the manner of 

 election of tliat magistrate at Rome,) and the fol- 

 lowing article regarding the electorates of Germany. 



ELECTOR (Latin) ; lie who chooses, or has the 

 right to choose ; a title given to certain members of 

 the German empire, called, in German, Kurfursten, 

 from Furst, prince, and Kur, an old word for elec- 

 tion. When we hear the ancient German empire 

 called an elective government, we must not connect 

 with this phrase the idea of election, such as it exists 

 in modem governments. The election to the sove- 

 reignty of the German empire was, as indeed might 

 easily be supposed, ill defined, during the middle 

 ages, until the right of election was arrogated by a 

 few members of the empire. This elective constitu- 

 tion was a thousand times more injurious to the empire 

 than a hereditary succession would have been, be- 

 cause the main object of the electors seemed to be, 

 to extort concessions from the emperor, and diminish 

 his authority as much as possible, by the unfortunate, 

 to use the mildest term, elective capitulation. 

 (fVahlcapitulation ; see Capitulation). In fact, it is 

 chiefly owing to the defective constitution of the 

 empire, that, whilst France and Britain rose in 

 power by the union of their several parts under one 

 government, the German empire sunk in authority, 

 being split into a host of sovereignties of every de- 

 gree of consequence, some very important, others 

 very insignificant. 



In the early period of the German empire, under 

 the Carlovingian race, the empire was hereditary ; 

 but with Conrad I. (chosen in 911) it became elec- 

 tive. The elections, however, became almost con- 

 fined to one powerful family ; and the glory which 

 the German empire acquired was owing, in no small 

 measure, to this circumstance, that' the imperial 

 authority remained for generations within the same 

 family. Unity, strength, and internal peace, are 

 essential to the beneficial operation of any political 

 constitution ; and if they cannot be attained by good 

 laws, and the spirit of the nation, it is much better 

 that they should be secured by a hereditary monarchy, 

 than that the main objects of a political organization 

 should be lost in the confusion of anarchy, and the 

 struggles of petty ambition. With the fall of the 

 Hohenstaufen family, the ancient great duchies of 

 Bavaria, Saxony, Suabia, Franconia, and Lorraine 

 were divided into parts, yet their claims were not 

 extinguished. Thus originated, from 1245 to 1256, 

 the seven electors, who are found taking part in the 

 election of the emperor Richard of Cornwall, in 

 1258. The seven electors were those of, 1. Mentz ; 

 2. Treves ; 3. Cologne (who were archbishops, and 

 chancellors of the empire, and therefore called 

 spiritual electors) ; 4. the Palatinate ; 5. Branden- 

 burg ; 6. Saxony ; and 7. Bohemia, which received 

 its electoral authority, in 1290, from Bavaria, which 

 had not appeared in the diet for several elections, 

 having been represented by Bohemia. The other 

 members of the empire, indeed, protested against 

 this authority arrogated by the electors, which was, 

 however, at last acknowledged, in 1338, by the em- 

 peror Louis the Bavarian, and confirmed by Charles 

 IV. (who died in 1378), by the law called the 

 golden bull. Frederic V., elector of the Palatinate 

 (who died in 1632), was declared an outlaw by the 

 empire, and his electoral privilege conferred on 

 Bavaria ; and when it was attempted, in the peace 





