MANDAMUS MANDINGOE6. 



659 



unknown deity, Pachakamak, i. e. the soul or sup- 

 port of the world ; externally, however, and as an 

 inferior and visible deity, the sun, his parent; and 

 he ordered sacrifices to be offered to the latter, as 

 the benefactor of men. Perhaps some stranger from 

 a civilized land, appeared in Peru, and employed 

 religion, to procure an ascendency which enabled 

 him to form a regular government. Manco Capac 

 died after a long and prosperous reign, and as far as 

 tradition may be relied upon, seems justly to have 

 been entitled to rank among the benefactors of man- 

 kind by the benevolence of his institutions. See Ro- 

 bertson's History of America. 



MANDAMUS. A writ of mandamus (we com- 

 mand) is, in general, a command issuing from some 

 superior court, directed to some inferior court, or 

 to some person or corporation, requiring them to do 

 some particular thing, which such superior court has 

 previously determined it to be their duty to do, or, at . 

 least, supposes to be consonant to right and justice. 

 It issues where a party lias a right to have a thing 

 clone, and has no other remedy and in some cases 

 where he has another, but a tedious and inadequate 

 one. It is either in the alternative, ordering the 

 court, corporation, or party, to which or whom it is 

 directed, to do the thing specified, or to appear and 

 show cause why it should not be done ; or absolute, 

 commanding the thing specified to be done without 

 any condition or alternative. The writ is usually first 

 issued in the alternative, directing the party com- 

 plained of to appear, and show cause against its 

 being issued absolutely, and in case of there being no 

 appearance, or no sufficient cause to the contrary 

 being shown, an absolute mandamus is issued. The 

 cases enumerated for the issuing of this writ, by Sir 

 William Blackstone, are to compel the party 

 applying to be restored to some office or franchise of 

 a public nature, whether temporal or spiritual ; to 

 an academical degree ; to the use of a meeting- 

 house, &c. : it lies for the production, inspection or 

 delivery of public books and papers ; for the sur- 

 render of the regalia "of a corporation ; to oblige 

 bodies corporate to affix their common seal ; or to 

 compel the holding of a court. It may be directed 

 to an inferior court, ordering it to proceed in the 

 hearing of a cause, or to enter up a judgment. It is 

 sometimes directed to a corporation, directing them 

 to choose officers. The statute of 2 Geo. II. c. 4, 

 provides for its being issued to command an election 

 of a mayor or other chief magistrate of a city, town, or 

 borough ; acd so, where one is elected to any office, 

 BS town-clerk, or is legally elected member of any 

 public body, as one of the aldermen of a city, and is 

 refused admission or recognition as such, this writ 

 may be issued in his behalf. 



MANDAN ; a fort and Indian village on the Mis- 

 souri, 1600 miles from the Mississippi, by the course 

 of the river ; Ion. 100 50' W. ; lat. 47 20' N. 

 This place is remarkable for the encampment of 

 Lewis and Clarke, during the winter of 1804, 5, 

 when on their expedition up the Missouri. They 

 state that on the 17th December, the thermometer 

 fell here to 45 below 0. The Mandan Indians are in 

 this vicinity. 



MANDANE; the mother of Cyrus. See Cyrus, 

 and Cambyses. 



MANDARINS; the official nobility in China. See 

 China. 



MANDATE ; an order in Germany, used for a de- 

 cree of a court of justice, by which, on the application 

 of a plaintiff, something is ordered or prohibited to the 

 opposite party. The process is unconditional (sine 

 clausula) if no legal opposition can be anticipated, 

 conditional (cum cfansula) if the other party is at 

 liberty to make remonstrances. 



Mandate was also the name given to a certain 

 kind of paper-money in the French revolution. After 

 the assignats, which had been kept in circulation by 

 the violence of Robespierre, had lost all credit, a 

 new money was created the mandates, founded, 

 like the assignats, on the credit derived from the 

 confiscated property, but with the essential difference, 

 that specific pieces of property, enumerated in a 

 table, were pledged for the redemption of the bills, 

 whilst the assignats furnished only a general claim. 

 The mandates could be realized at any moment, as 

 the owner was authorized to take any portion of the 

 property enumerated on the table, as soon as he 

 made his intention known, and paid the quarter part 

 of its assigned value without any further formality. 

 First 600,000,000 of mandates were created, but 

 soon after (March 18, 1796), 2,400,000,000. A 

 forced circulation was given to them, by which the 

 government was enabled to defray the expenses of 

 the approaching campaign. This was hardly done, 

 when they also sank to nothing ; they were, there- 

 fore, in part redeemed, while the rest disappeared of 

 themselves. Instead of sinking under this burden, 

 France owed her deliverance to this measure. The 

 evil carried along with its excess its cure. 



MANDEV1LLE, SIR JOHN, a celebrated English 

 traveller of the fourteenth century, was born at St 

 Alban's. He was of a respectable family, and bred 

 a physician; but a desire to visit foreign countries 

 induced him, in 1332, to set out upon a course of 

 travels, in which he is said to have spent thirty-four 

 years. During this period, according to his own 

 account, he visited the greater part of Asia, Egypt, 

 and Libya, making himself acquainted with many 

 languages, and collecting a great mass of informa- 

 tion, true and false, which he committed to writing 

 in Latin, French, and English. He died at Liege, 

 in 1372, where a monument is erected to his memory, 

 the inscription on which denominates him John de 

 Mandeville, alias De Barba, Lord of Campoli. The 

 only genuine edition of his travels, entitled the f'oiage 

 and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Knight, was 

 printed from an original manuscript in the Cotton 

 library (1727, 8vo). His extreme credulity in the 

 collection of absurd and fabulous stories is only sur- 

 passed by his unblushing indulgence in the most 

 extravagant fictions. 



MANDEVILLE, BERNARD, a writer and physician 

 of considerable temporary celebrity, was born in 

 Holland about 1670. He was probably of English 

 extraction, as he fixed his residence in England, and 

 wrote his works in the English language. His most 

 celebrated production is the Fable of the Bees, or 

 Private Vices made Public Benefits, first printed in 

 1723. The reasoning in this piece is founded on the 

 sophism, that the luxury and superfluity which mark 

 the advanced stages of society, and the vices which 

 they engender, are often the causes of national pros- 

 perity, and hence the necessary prevalence of vicious 

 principles in human nature. Consistently with this 

 doctrine, his general views of mankind are of the 

 most disparaging tendency; and he declares against 

 all attempts to exalt the humble classes by educa- 

 tion. Many answers appeared, among which was 

 one by bishop Berkeley, to whom he replied in 1723, 

 in his Letter to Dion. His Free Thoughts on Reli- 

 gion (1720), was deemed deistical. He also wrote 

 several other works. He died in 1733. 



MANDINGOES ; a nation of negroes found in 

 different parts of Western Africa, in Senegambia 

 and Guinea. They are of the Mohammedan reli- 

 gion, and their language is, in some measure, the 

 commercial language of Western Africa. They are 

 superior to most of the African tribes in civiliza- 

 tion. The following cut represents their costume : 

 2x2 



