ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME XIX
MUN, ADRIEN ALBERT MARIE DE, Count (1841–), French politician, was born at Lumigny, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, on the 28th of February 1841. He entered the army, saw much service in Algeria (1862), and took part in the fighting around Metz in 1870. On the surrender of Metz, he was sent as a prisoner of war to Aix-la-Chapelle, whence he returned in time to assist at the capture of Paris from the Commune. A fervent Roman Catholic, he devoted himself to advocating a patriarch type of Christian Socialism. His eloquence made him the most prominent member of the Cercles Catholiques d’Ouvriers, and his attacks on Republican social policy at last evoked a prohibition from the minister of war. He thereupon resigned his commission (Nov. 1875), and in the following February stood as Royalist and Catholic candidate for Pontivy. The influence of the Church was exerted to secure his election, and the pope during its progress sent him the order of St Gregory. He was returned, but the election was declared invalid. He was re-elected, however, in the following August, and for many years was the most conspicuous leader of the anti-Republican party. “We form,” he said on one occasion, “the irreconcilable Counter-Revolution.” As far back as 1878 he had declared himself opposed to universal suffrage, a declaration that lost him his seat from 1879 to 1881. He spoke strongly against the expulsion of the French princes, and it was chiefly through his influence that the support of the Royalist party was given to General Boulanger. But as a faithful Catholic he obeyed the encyclical of 1892, and declared his readiness to rally to a Republican government, provided that it respected religion. In the following January he received from the pope a letter commending his action, and encouraging him in his social reforms. He was defeated at the general election of that year, but in 1894 was returned for Finistère (Morlaix). In 1897 he succeeded Jules Simon as a member of the French Academy. This honour he owed to the purity of style and remarkable eloquence of his speeches, which, with a few pamphlets, form the bulk of his published work. In Ma vocation sociale (1908) he wrote an explanation and justification of his career.
MUN, THOMAS (1571–1641), English writer on economics, was the third son of John Mun, mercer, of London. He began by engaging in Mediterranean trade, and afterwards settled down in London, amassing a large fortune. He was a member of the committee of the East India Company and of the standing commission on trade appointed in 1622. In 1621 Mun published A Discourse of Trade from England unto the East Indies. But it is by his England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade that he is remembered in his history of economics. Although written possibly about 1630, it was not given to the public until 1664, when it was “published for the Common good by his son John,” and dedicated to Thomas, earl of Southampton, lord high treasurer. In it we find for the first time a clear statement of the theory of the balance of trade.
MUNCHAUSEN, Baron. This name is famous in literary history on account of the amusingly mendacious stories known as the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. In 1785 a little shilling book of 49 pages was published in London (as we know from the Critical Review for December 1785), called Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. No copy is known to exist, but a second edition (apparently identical) was printed at Oxford early in 1786. The publisher of both these editions was a certain Smith, and he then sold it to another bookseller named Kearsley, who brought out in 1786 an enlarged edition (the additions to which were stated in the 7th edition not to be by the original author), with illustrations under the title of Gulliver Reviv’d: the Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages, and Sporting Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson, commonly pronounced Munchausen; as he relates them over a bottle when surrounded by his friends. Four editions rapidly succeeded, and a free German translation by the poet Gottfried August Bürger, from the fifth edition, was printed at Göttingen in 1786. The seventh English edition (1793), which is the usual text, has the moral sub-title, Or the Vice of Lying properly exposed, and had further new additions. In 1792 a Sequel appeared, dedicated to James Bruce, the African traveller, whose Travels to Discover the Nile (1790) had led to incredulity and ridicule. As time went on Munchausen increased in popularity and was translated into many languages. Continuations were published, and new illustrations provided (e.g. by T. Rowlandson, 1809; A. Crowquill, 1859; A. Cruikshank, 1869; the French artist Richard, 1878; Gustave Doré, 1862; W. Strang and J. B. Clark, 1895). The theme of Baron Munchausen, the “drawer of the long-bow” par excellence, has become part of the common stock of the world’s story-telling.
The original author was at first unknown, and until 1824 he was generally identified with Bürger, who made the German translation of 1786. But Bürger’s biographer, Karl von Reinhard, in the Berlin Gesellschafter of November 1824, set the matter at rest by stating that the real author was Rudolf Erich Raspe (q.v.). Raspe had apparently become acquainted at Göttingen with Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen, of Bodenwerder in Hanover. This Freiherr von Münchhausen (1720–1797) had been in the Russian service and
