Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/424

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CARRICKMACROSS—CARRIER
407

to avoid the persecution directed against them. In the civil wars, from 1641, Carrickfergus was one of the chief places of refuge for the Protestants of the county of Antrim; and on the 10th of June 1642, the first Presbytery held in Ireland met here. In that year the garrison was commanded by General Robert Munro, who, having afterwards relinquished the cause of the English parliament, was surprised and taken prisoner by Sir Robert Adair in 1648. At a later period Carrickfergus was held by the partisans of James II., but surrendered in 1689 to the forces under King William’s general Schomberg; and in 1690 it was visited by King William, who landed here on his expedition to Ireland. In 1760 it was surprised by a French squadron under Commodore Thurot, who landed with about 1000 men, and, after holding the place for a few days, evacuated it on the approach of the English troops. Eighteen years later Paul Jones, in his ship the “Ranger,” succeeded in capturing the “Drake,” a British sloop-of war, in the neighbouring bay; but he left without molesting the town. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the town obtained a charter, and this was confirmed by James I., who added the privilege of sending two burgesses to the Irish parliament. The corporation, however, was superseded, under the provisions of the Municipal Reform Act of 1840, by a board of municipal commissioners. Carrickfergus was a parliamentary borough until 1885; and a county of a town till 1898, having previously (till 1850) been the county town of county Antrim. But its importance was sapped by the vicinity of Belfast, and its historical associations are now its chief interest.


CARRICKMACROSS, a market town of Co. Monaghan, Ireland, in the south parliamentary division, 68 m. N.W. of Dublin on a branch of the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 1874. It has a pleasant, elevated site, a considerable agricultural trade, and a famous manufacture of lace, which is carried on in various conventual establishments. There are some remains of an Elizabethan castle, a seat of the earls of Essex, which was destroyed during the wars of 1641; the ruins of the old church of St Finbar commemorate the same disastrous period.


CARRICK-ON-SHANNON, a market town and the county town of Co. Leitrim, Ireland, in the south parliamentary division, beautifully situated on the left bank of the upper Shannon, between Loughs Allen and Boderg, close to the confluence of the Boyle. Pop. (1901) 1118. It is on the Sligo branch of the Midland Great Western railway, 90 m. W.N.W. of Dublin, the station being across the river in county Roscommon. Though having so small a population it is the largest town in the county, is the seat of the assizes, and has quays and some river trade. The surrounding country, with its waterways, loughs and woods, is of considerable beauty.


CARRICK-ON-SUIR, a market town of Co. Tipperary, Ireland, in the east parliamentary division, on the north (left) bank of the Suir, 141/4 m. W.N.W. from Waterford by the Waterford & Limerick line of the Great Southern & Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5406. It was formerly a walled town, and contains some ancient buildings, such as the castle, erected in 1309, formerly a seat of the dukes of Ormonde, now belonging to the Butler family, a branch of which takes the title of earl from the town. On the other side of the river, connected by a bridge of the 14th century, and another of modern erection, stands the suburb of Carrickbeg, in county Waterford, where an abbey was founded in 1336. The woollen manufactures for which the town was formerly famous are extinct. A thriving export trade is carried on in agricultural produce, condensed milk is manufactured, and slate is extensively quarried in the neighbourhood, while some coal is exported from the neighbouring fields. Dredging has improved the navigable channel of the river, which is tidal to this point and is lined with quays.


CARRIER, JEAN BAPTISTE (1756–1794), French Revolutionist and Terrorist, was born at Yolet, a village near Aurillac in Upper Auvergne. In 1790 he was a country attorney (counsellor for the bailliage of Aurillac) and in 1792 he was chosen deputy to the National Convention. He was already known as one of the influential members of the Cordeliers club and of that of the Jacobins. After the subjugation of Flanders he was one of the commissioners nominated in the close of 1792 by the Convention, and sent into that country. In the following year he took part in establishing the Revolutionary Tribunal. He voted for the death of Louis XVI., was one of the first to call for the arrest of the duke of Orleans, and took a prominent part in the overthrow of the Girondists (on the 31st of May). After a mission into Normandy, Carrier was sent, early in October 1793, to Nantes, under orders from the Convention to suppress the revolt which was raging there, by the most severe measures. Nothing loth, he established a revolutionary tribunal, and formed a body of desperate men, called the Legion of Marat, for the purpose of destroying in the swiftest way the masses of prisoners heaped in the jails. The form of trial was soon discontinued, and the victims were sent to the guillotine or shot or cut down in the prisons en masse. He also had large numbers of prisoners put on board vessels with trap doors for bottoms, and sunk in the Loire. This atrocious process, known as the Noyades of Nantes, gained for Carrier a reputation for wanton cruelty. Since in his mission to Normandy he had been very moderate, it is possible that, as he was nervous and ill when sent to Nantes, his mind had become unbalanced by the atrocities committed by the Vendean and royalist armies. Naturally, the stories told of him are not all true. He was recalled by the Committee of Public Safety on the 8th of February 1794, took part in the attack on Robespierre on the 9th Thermidor, but was himself brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 11th and guillotined on the 16th of November 1794.

See Comte Fleury, Carrier à Nantes, 1793–1794 (Paris, 1897); Alfred Lallié, J. B. Carrier, représentant du Cantal à la Convention 1756–1794 d’après de nouveaux documents (Paris, 1901). These works, and the others of Lallié, are inspired by strong royalist sympathies and are not altogether to be accepted.


CARRIER, a general term for any person who conveys the goods of another for hire, more specifically applied to the tradesmen, now largely superseded by the railway system, who convey goods in carts or wagons on the public roads. In jurisprudence, however, the term is collectively applied to all conveyers of property, whether by land or water; and in this sense the changes and enlargements of the system of transit throughout the world have given additional importance to the subject. The law by which carriers, both by land and sea, are made responsible for the goods entrusted to them, is founded on the praetorian edict of the civil law, to which the ninth title of the fourth book of the Pandect is devoted. The edict itself is contained in these few words, “nautae, caupones, stabularii, quod cujusque salvum fore receperint, nisi restituent, in eos judicium dabo.” The simplicity of the rule so announced has had a most beneficial influence on the commerce of the world. Throughout the great civilized region which took its law directly from Rome, and through the other less civilized countries which followed the same commercial code, it laid a foundation for the principle that the carrier’s engagement to the public is a contract of indemnity. It bound him in the general case, to deliver what he had been entrusted with, or its value,—thus sweeping away all secondary questions or discussions as to the conditions of mere or less culpability on his part under which loss or damage may have occurred; and it left any limitations of this general responsibility to be separately adjusted by special contract.

The law of England recognizes a distinction between a common and a private carrier. The former is one who holds himself out to the public as ready to carry for hire from place to place the goods of such persons as choose to employ him. The owner of a stagecoach, a railway company, the master of a general ship, a wharfinger carrying goods on his own lighters are common carriers; and it makes no difference that one of the termini of the journey is out of England. It has been held, however, that a person who carries only passengers is not a common carrier; nor of course is a person who merely engages to carry the goods of particular individuals or to carry goods upon any particular occasion. A common carrier is subject at law to peculiar liabilities. He is bound to carry the goods of any person who offers to pay his