Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/909

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HUME, J.—HUMITE
  


Principles of Political Economy (J. Lalor’s trans. of 13th ed., New York, 1878); F. A. Walker’s Money (New York, 1877) gives an account of Hume’s views on interest and money; H. H. Gibbs (Lord Aldenham), Colloquy on the Currency; for Hume’s relation to Adam Smith, John Rae’s Life of Adam Smith (London, 1895). See also M. Teisseire, Les Essais économiques de David Hume (1902; a critical study); A. Schatz, L’Œuvre économique de David Hume (1902).  (R. Ad.; J. M. M.) 


HUME, JOSEPH (1777–1855), British politician, was born on the 22nd of January 1777, of humble parents, at Montrose, Scotland. After completing his course of medical study at the university of Edinburgh he sailed in 1797 for India, where he was attached as surgeon to a regiment; and his knowledge of the native tongues and his capacity for business threw open to him the lucrative offices of interpreter and commissary-general. In 1802, on the eve of Lord Lake’s Mahratta war, his chemical knowledge enabled him to render a signal service to the administration by making available a large quantity of gunpowder which damp had spoiled. In 1808, on the restoration of peace, he resigned all his civil appointments, and returned home in the possession of a fortune of £40,000. Between 1808 and 1811 he travelled much both in England and the south of Europe, and in 1812 published a blank verse translation of the Inferno. In 1812 he purchased a seat in parliament for Weymouth and voted as a Tory. When upon the dissolution of parliament the patron refused to return him he brought an action and recovered part of his money. Six years elapsed before he again entered the House, and during that interval he had made the acquaintance and imbibed the doctrines of James Mill and the philosophical reformers of the school of Bentham. He had joined his efforts to those of Francis Place, of Westminster, and other philanthropists, to relieve and improve the condition of the working classes, labouring especially to establish schools for them on the Lancasterian system, and promoting the formation of savings banks. In 1818, soon after his marriage with Miss Burnley, the daughter of an East India director, he was returned to parliament as member for the Border burghs. He was afterwards successively elected for Middlesex (1830), Kilkenny (1837) and for the Montrose burghs (1842), in the service of which constituency he died. From the date of his re-entering the House Hume became the self-elected guardian of the public purse, by challenging and bringing to a direct vote every single item of public expenditure. In 1820 he secured the appointment of a committee to report on the expense of collecting the revenue. He was incessantly on his legs in committee, and became a name for an opposition bandog who gave chancellors of the exchequer no peace. He undoubtedly exercised a check on extravagance, and he did real service by helping to abolish the sinking fund. It was he who caused the word “retrenchment” to be added to the Radical programme “peace and reform.” He carried on a successful warfare against the old combination laws that hampered workmen and favoured masters; he brought about the repeal of the laws prohibiting the export of machinery and of the act preventing workmen from going abroad. He constantly protested against flogging in the army, the impressment of sailors and imprisonment for debt. He took up the question of lighthouses and harbours; in the former he secured greater efficiency, in the latter he prevented useless expenditure. Apart from his pertinacious fight for economy Hume was not always fortunate in his political activity. He was conspicuous in the agitation raised by the so-called Orange plot to set aside King William IV. in favour of the duke of Cumberland (1835 and 1836). His action as trustee for the notorious Greek Loan in 1824 was at least not delicate, and was the ground of charges of downright dishonesty. He died on the 20th of February 1855.

A Memorial of Hume was published by his son Joseph Burnley Hume (London, 1855).


HUMILIATI, the name of an Italian monastic order created in the 12th century. Its origin is obscure. According to some chroniclers, certain noblemen of Lombardy, who had offended the emperor (either Conrad III. or Frederick Barbarossa), were carried captive into Germany and after suffering the miseries of exile for some time, “humiliated” themselves before the emperor. Returning to their own country, they did penance and took the name of Humiliati. They do not seem to have had any fixed rule, nor did St Bernard succeed in inducing them to submit to one. The traditions relating to a reform of this order by St John of Meda are ill authenticated, his Acta (Acta sanctorum Boll., Sept., vii. 320) being almost entirely unsupported by contemporary evidence. The “Chronicon anonymi Laudunensis canonici” (Mon. Germ. hist. Scriptores, xxvi. 449), at date 1178, states that a group of Lombards came to Rome with the intention of obtaining the pope’s approval of the rule of life which they had spontaneously chosen; while continuing to live in their houses in the midst of their families, they wished to lead a more pious existence than of old, to abandon oaths and litigation, to content themselves with a modest dress, and all in a spirit of Catholic piety. The pope approved their resolve to live in humility and purity, but forbade them to hold assemblies and to preach in public; the chronicler adding that they infringed the pope’s wish and thus drew upon themselves his excommunication. Their name, Humiliati (“Humiles” would have been more appropriate), arose from the fact that the clothes they wore were very simple and of one colour. This lay fraternity spread rapidly and soon put forth two new branches, a second order composed of women, and a third composed of priests. No sooner, however, had this order of priests been formed, than it claimed precedence of the others, and, though chronologically last, was called primus ordo by hierarchical right—propter tonsuram (see P. Sabatier, “Regula antiqua Fr. et Sor. de poenitentia” in Opuscules de critique historique, part i. p. 15). In 1201 Pope Innocent III. granted a rule to this third order. Sabatier has drawn attention to the resemblances between this rule and the Regula de poenitentia granted to Franciscanism in the course of its development; on the other hand, it is incontestable that Innocent III. wished to reconcile the order with the Waldenses, and, indeed, its rule reproduces several of the Waldensian propositions, ingeniously modified in the orthodox sense, but still very easily recognizable. It forbade useless oaths and the taking of God’s name in vain; allowed voluntary poverty and marriage; regulated pious exercises; and approved the solidarity which already existed among the members of the association. Finally, by a singular concession, it authorized them to meet on Sunday to listen to the words of a brother “of proved faith and prudent piety,” on condition that the hearers should not discuss among themselves either the articles of faith or the sacraments of the church. The bishops were forbidden to oppose any of the utterances of the Humiliati brethren, “for the spirit must not be stifled.” James of Vitry, without being unfavourable to their tendencies, represents their association as one of the peculiarities of the church of his time (Historia orientalis, Douai, 1597). So broad a discipline must of necessity have led back some waverers into the pale of the church, but the Waldenses of Lombardy, in their congregationes laborantium, preserved the tradition of the independent Humiliati. Indeed, this tradition is confounded throughout the later 12th century with the history of the Waldenses. The “Chronicon Urspergense” (Mon. Germ. hist. Scriptores, xxiii. 376-377) mentions the Humiliati as one of the two Waldensian sects. The celebrated decretal promulgated in 1184 by Pope Lucius III. at the council of Verona against all heretics condemns at the same time as the “Poor Men of Lyons” “those who attribute to themselves falsely the name of Humiliati,” at the very time when this name denoted an order recognized by the papacy. This order, though orthodox, was always held in tacit and ever-increasing suspicion, and, in consequence of grave disorders, Pius V. suppressed the entire congregation in February 1570–71.

See Tiraboschi, Vetera humiliatorum monumenta (Milan, 1766); K. Müller, Die Waldenser (Gotha, 1886); W. Preger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Waldensier (Munich, 1875).  (P. A.) 


HUMITE, a group of minerals consisting of basic magnesium fluo-silicates, with the following formulae:—Chondrodite, Mg3[Mg(F, OH)]2[SiO4]2; Humite, Mg5[Mg(F, OH)]2[SiO4]3; Clinohumite, Mg7[Mg(F, OH)]2[SiO4]4. Humite crystallizes in the orthorhombic and the two others in the monoclinic system, but between them there is a close crystallographic relation: the