See A. Kippis, Biographia Britannica (1780), vol. ii. For an account of Blount’s family see Robert Clutterbuck. History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford (1815), vol. i. pp. 207-212.
BLOUNT, WILLIAM (1749–1800), American politician, was
born in Bertie county, North Carolina, on the 26th of March 1749.
He was a member of the Continental Congress in 1783–1784 and
again in 1786–1787, of the constitutional convention at Philadelphia
in 1787, and of the state convention which ratified the
Federal constitution for North Carolina in 1789. From 1790
until 1796 he was, by President Washington’s appointment,
governor of the “Territory South of the Ohio River,” created
out of land ceded to the national government by North Carolina
in 1789. He was also during this period the superintendent of
Indian affairs for this part of the country. In 1791 he laid out
Knoxville (Tennessee) as the seat of government. He presided
over the constitutional convention of Tennessee in 1796, and, on
the state being admitted to the Union, became one of its first
representatives in the United States Senate. In 1797 his
connexion became known with a scheme, since called “Blount’s
Conspiracy,” which provided for the co-operation of the American
frontiersmen, assisted by Indians, and an English force, in the
seizure on behalf of Great Britain of the Floridas and Louisiana,
then owned by Spain, with which power England was then at
war. As this scheme, if carried out, involved the corrupting of
two officials of the United States, an Indian agent and an
interpreter, a breach of the neutrality of the United States, and
the breach of Article V. of the treaty of San Lorenzo el Real
(signed on the 27th of October 1795) between the United States
and Spain, by which each power agreed not to incite the Indians
to attack the other, Blount was impeached by the House of
Representatives on the 7th of July 1797, and on the following
day was formally expelled from the Senate for “having been
guilty of high misdemeanor, entirely inconsistent with his public
trust and duty as a senator.” On the 29th of January 1798
articles of impeachment were adopted by the House of Representatives.
On the 14th of January 1799, however, the Senate,
sitting as a court of impeachment, decided that it had no jurisdiction,
Blount not then being a member of the Senate, and, in the
Senate’s opinion, not having been, even as a member, a civil
officer of the United States, within the meaning of the constitution.
The case is significant as being the first case of
impeachment brought before the United States Senate. “In a
legal point of view, all that the case decides is that a senator of
the United States who has been expelled from his seat is not after
such expulsion subject to impeachment” (Francis Wharton, State
Trials). In effect, however, it also decided that a member of
Congress was not in the meaning of the constitution a civil officer
of the United States and therefore could not be impeached.
The “conspiracy” was disavowed by the British government,
which, however, seems to have secretly favoured it. Blount
was enthusiastically supported by his constituents, and upon his
return to Tennessee was made a member and the presiding officer
of the state senate. He died at Knoxville on the 21st of March
1800.
For a defence of Blount, see General Marcus J. Wright’s Account of the Life and Services of William Blount (Washington, D.C., 1884).
BLOUSE, a word (taken from the French) used for any loosely
fitting bodice belted at the waist. In France it meant originally
the loose upper garment of linen or cotton, generally blue, worn
by French workmen to preserve their clothing, and, by transference,
the workman himself.
BLOW, JOHN (1648–1708), English musical composer, was
born in 1648, probably at North Collingham in Nottinghamshire.
He became a chorister of the chapel royal, and distinguished
himself by his proficiency in music; he composed several
anthems at an unusually early age, including Lord, Thou hast
been our refuge; Lord, rebuke me not; and the so-called “club
anthem,” I will always give thanks, the last in collaboration with
Pelham Humphrey and William Turner, either in honour of a
victory over the Dutch in 1665, or—more probably—simply to
commemorate the friendly intercourse of the three choristers.
To this time also belongs the composition of a two-part setting
of Herrick’s Goe, perjur’d man, written at the request of Charles
II. to imitate Carissimi’s Dite, o cieli. In 1669 Blow became
organist of Westminster Abbey. In 1673 he was made a gentleman
of the chapel royal, and in the September of this year he
was married to Elizabeth Braddock, who died in childbirth ten
years later. Blow, who by the year 1678 was a doctor of music,
was named in 1685 one of the private musicians of James II.
Between 1680 and 1687 he wrote the only stage composition by
him of which any record survives, the Masque for the Entertainment of the King: Venus and Adonis. In this Mary Davies
played the part of Venus, and her daughter by Charles II., Lady
Mary Tudor, appeared as Cupid. In 1687 he became master of
the choir of St Paul’s church; in 1695 he was elected organist of
St Margaret’s, Westminster, and is said to have resumed his post
as organist of Westminster Abbey, from which in 1680 he had
retired or been dismissed to make way for Purcell. In 1699 he
was appointed to the newly created post of composer to the
chapel royal. Fourteen services and more than a hundred
anthems by Blow are extant. In addition to his purely ecclesiastical
music Blow wrote Great sir, the joy of all our hearts, an ode
for New Year’s day 1681–1682; similar compositions for 1683,
1686, 1687, 1688, 1689, 1693 (?), 1694 and 1700; odes, &c., for
the celebration of St Cecilia’s day for 1684, 1691, 1695 and 1700;
for the coronation of James II. two anthems, Behold, O God, our
Defender, and God spake sometimes in visions; some harpsichord
pieces for the second part of Playford’s Musick’s Handmaid
(1689); Epicedium for Queen Mary (1695); Ode on the Death of Purcell (1696). In 1700 he published his Amphion Anglicus, a
collection of pieces of music for one, two, three and four voices,
with a figured-bass accompaniment. A famous page in Burney’s
History of Music is devoted to illustrations of “Dr Blow’s
Crudities,” most of which only show the meritorious if immature
efforts in expression characteristic of English music at the time,
while some of them (where Burney says “Here we are lost”)
are really excellent. Blow died on the 1st of October 1708 at his
house in Broad Sanctuary, and was buried in the north aisle of
Westminster Abbey.
BLOW-GUN, a weapon consisting of a long tube, through which, by blowing with the mouth, arrows or other missiles can be shot accurately to a considerable distance. Blow-guns are
used both in warefare and the chase by the South American
Indian tribes inhabiting the region between the Amazon and
Orinoco rivers, and by the Dyaks of Borneo. In the 18th century
they were also known to certain North American Indians,
especially the Choctaws and Cherokees of the lower Mississippi.
Captain Bossu, in his Travels through Louisiana (1756), says of
the Choctaws: “They are very expert in shooting with an instrument
made of reeds about 7 ft. long, into which they put a little
arrow feathered with the wool of the thistle (wild cotton?).”
The blow-guns of the South American Indians differ in style and
workmanship. That of the Macusis of Guiana, called pucuna, is
the most perfect. It is made of two tubes, the inner of which,
called oorah, is a light reed 12 in. in diameter which often grows
to a length of 15 ft. without a joint. This is enclosed, for protection
and solidity, in an outer tube of a variety of palm (Iriartella setigera). The mouth-piece is made of a circlet of silk-grass, and
the farther end is feruled with a kind of nut, forming a sight. A
rear open sight is formed of two teeth of a small rodent. The
length of the pucuna is about 11 ft. and its weight 112 ℔ The
arrows, which are from 12 to 18 in. long and very slender, are
made of ribs of the cocorite palm-leaf. They are usually feathered
with a tuft of wild cotton, but some have in place of the cotton a
thin strip of bark curled into a cone, which, when the shooter
blows into the pucuna, expands and completely fills the tube,
thus avoiding windage. Another kind of arrow is furnished
with fibres of bark fixed along the shaft, imparting a rotary
motion to the missile, a primitive example of the theory of the
rifle. The arrows used in Peru are only a few inches long and as
thin as fine knitting-needles. All South American blow-gun
arrows are steeped in poison. The natives shoot very accurately
with the pucuna at distances up to 50 or 60 yds.
The blow-gun of the Borneo Dyaks, called sumpitan, is from
