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imprisonment for two years ; is also inflicted 
on persons seducing artificers to go abroad. 
A stranger-artificer in London shall not 
keep more than two stranger servants. 2 
Hen. VIII. c. 16. Persons contracting with 
artificers in' wool, iron, steel, brass, or other 
metal, Sec. to go to any foreign country, shall 
be imprisoned three months. 5 Geo. I. c. 27; 
and if any person shall contract with, or en- 
courage any artificers employed in printing 
callicoes, cottons, muslins, or linens of any 
sort, or in making any tools or utensils for 
such manufactory, to go out of Great Britain 
to any port beyond the seas, he shall forfeit 
500k and be committed to the common gaol 
ofthe county for 12 months, and until such 
forfeiture shall be paid. 22 Geo. III. c. 60 . 
sect. 12. 
ARTILLERY, in the most appropriate 
application of the word, means the cannon, 
mortars, howitzers, and other large pieces, 
for discharging shot and shells by the ex- 
pansive force of inflamed gunpowder, as 
used in the land service. In a more enlarg- 
ed sense the word denotes engines of war of 
all sorts, ancient and modern, by which 
darts, stones, bullets, &c. were shot forth 
in battle. See Ballista, Catapulta, 
&c. 
Artillery, or cannon and mortars, is gene- 
rally supposed to have been first used in Eu- 
rope by the Venetians, in the siege of Claudia 
Jesse, now called Chioggia, in 1366 ; and in 
their wars with the Genoese, 1379. But 
Edward the Third is known to have used 
cannon at the battle ofCressy, in 1346, and 
at the siege of Calais, in 1347. And facts 
that will be mentioned give reason to sup- 
pose that it was partially used in this quar- 
ter of the world before that period. A 
treatise of the famous Roger Bacon, written 
in 1280, is the first European publication 
which mentions the composition of gun- 
powder, and proposes its use in war; the in- 
vention is, however, most commonly though 
unjustly attributed to Bartholdus Schwartz, 
a German, in 1320. Bacon only pro- 
posed the use of the unconfined flame of 
gunpowder as a mode of annoying an 
enemy ; but Schwartz is supposed to have 
discovered its application in projecting 
heavy bodies, from an accidental explosion 
of some in a common mortar, in which he 
had mixed its ingredients together, having 
blown of! an heavy stone cover to a con- 
siderable distance ; and it is imagined that 
the mortars now used for throwing shells 
derived their name from their resemblance 
to those used by chemists, in one of which 
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the above accident occurring had first sug- 
gested the use that might be made in war 
of metallic vessels of a somewhat similar 
form. 
The little which was formerly known of 
Asiatic history, and the undeserved neglect, 
with which it is still treated, made the above 
account of the origin of cannon satisfactory 
hitherto. But to consider the invention of 
cannon as an European invention, at the 
present period when we have such authentic 
documents of their use in China many 
centuries before they were thought of in 
this part of the world, would be willfully to 
sacrifice truth to the childish vanity that 
leads Europeans too often to arrogate an 
imaginary superiority in every thing over 
the inhabitants of the more early civilized 
states of the eastern hemisphere. 
If the testimony of the Chinese them- 
selves is not sufficient on this point, the fact 
of their famed great wall being furnished 
with embrasures, fitted in such a manner for 
cannon as to leave no doubt of their having 
been in use at the time of its erection, suf- 
ficiently proves it. To which an additional 
argument may be added from their very 
ancient game of chess, in which pieces have 
been used from remote antiquity, designat- 
ing engines of war whose power was de- 
rived from gunpowder. Mr. Irwin, in his 
paper on the Chinese Game of Chess, in the 
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 
proves that gunpowder was in common use 
in China 371 years after Confucius, or 161 
years before Christ; and Du Halde has 
long since given documents to shew that the 
Chinese wall was in existence 200 years be- 
fore the commencement of the Christian 
sera; and consequently for the reason before 
stated, the use of cannon must have been of 
at least equal antiquity. And there is a 
strong probability that the invention was of 
a much more remote date ; as it is not likely 
that cannon, immediately after the disco- 
very of gunpowder, would have been 
brought to sufficient perfection for wall 
service; or that a very new invention would 
have been alluded to in the nomination of 
the pieces used in the game of chess, pecu- 
liar to China. 
It is so far from an impossibility that the 
same thing may have been invented by 
different persons in various parts of the 
world, that no feet is better proved to have 
frequently occurred ; but to invent an im- 
portant matter, and to bring it into gene- 
ral use, are distinct affairs, and seldom fall 
to the lot of the same person* 
