town contains breweries, flour-mills and tanneries, and has a considerable export trade in grain, cattle, butter and provisions. It stands at the head of navigation for barges on the Suir. It was the centre of a system, established by Charles Bianconi (1786–1875) in 1815 and subsequently, for the conveyance of travellers on light cars, extending over a great part of Leinster, Munster and Connaught. It is governed by a mayor and corporation, which, though retained under the Local Government (Ireland) Act of 1898, has practically the status of an urban district council. By the same act a part of the town formerly situated in county Waterford was added to county Tipperary. It was a parliamentary borough, returning one member, until 1885; having returned two members to the Irish parliament until the union.
The name, Cluain mealla, signifies the Vale of Honey. In 1269 the place was chosen as the seat of a Franciscan friary by Otho de Grandison, the first English possessor of the district; and it frequently comes into notice in the following centuries. In 1641 it declared for the Roman Catholic party, and in 1650 it was gallantly defended by Hugh O’Neill against the English under Cromwell. Compelled at last to capitulate, it was completely dismantled, and was never again fortified. Remains of the wall are seen in the churchyard, and the West Gate still stands in the main street.
CLOOTS, JEAN BAPTISTE DU VAL DE GRACE, Baron von
(1755–1794), better known as Anacharsis Cloots, a noteworthy
figure in the French Revolution, was born near Cleves, at the
castle of Gnadenthal. He belonged to a noble Prussian family
of Dutch origin. The young Cloots, heir to a great fortune, was
sent at eleven years of age to Paris to complete his education.
There he imbibed the theories of his uncle the Abbé Cornelius de
Pauw (1739–1799), philosopher, geographer and diplomatist at
the court of Frederick the Great. His father placed him in the
military academy at Berlin, but he left it at the age of twenty and
traversed Europe, preaching his revolutionary philosophy as an
apostle, and spending his money as a man of pleasure. On the
breaking out of the Revolution he returned in 1789 to Paris,
thinking the opportunity favourable for establishing his dream
of a universal family of nations. On the 19th of June 1790 he
appeared at the bar of the Assembly at the head of thirty-six
foreigners; and, in the name of this “embassy of the human
race,” declared that the world adhered to the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen. After this he was known as
“the orator of the human race,” by which title he called himself,
dropping that of baron, and substituting for his baptismal names
the pseudonym of Anacharsis, from the famous philosophical
romance of the Abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy. In 1792 he
placed 12,000 livres at the disposal of the Republic—“for the
arming of forty or fifty fighters in the sacred cause of man
against tyrants.” The 10th of August impelled him to a still
higher flight; he declared himself the personal enemy of Jesus
Christ, and abjured all revealed religions. In the same month he
had the rights of citizenship conferred on him; and, having in
September been elected a member of the Convention, he voted
the king’s death in the name of the human race, and was an active
partisan of the war of propaganda. Excluded at the instance
of Robespierre from the Jacobin Club, he was soon afterwards
implicated in an accusation levelled against the Hébertists.
His innocence was manifest, but he was condemned, and
guillotined on the 24th of March 1794.
Cloots’ main works are: La Certitude des preuves du mahométisme (London, 1780), published under the pseudonym of Ali-Gur-Ber, in answer to Bergier’s Certitude des preuves du christianisme; L’Orateur du genre humain, ou Dépêches du Prussien Cloots au Prussien Herzberg (Paris, 1791), and La République universelle (1792).
The biography of Cloots by G. Avenel (2 vols., Paris, 1865) is too eulogistic. See the three articles by H. Baulig in La Révolution française, t. 41 (1901).
CLOQUET, a city of Carlton county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on
the St Louis river, 28 m. W. by S. of Duluth. Pop. (1890) 2530;
(1900) 3072; (1905, state census) 6117, of whom 2755 were
foreign-born (716 Swedes, 689 Finns, 685 Canadians, 334 Norwegians);
(1910) 7031. Cloquet is served by the Northern Pacific,
the Great Northern, the Duluth & North-Eastern, and (for
freight only) the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways. The
river furnishes good water-power, and the city has various
manufactures, including lumber, paper, wood pulp, match
blocks and boxes. The first mill was built in 1878, and the
village was named from the French word claquet (sound of the
mill). Cloquet was incorporated as a village in 1883 and was
chartered as a city in 1903.
CLOSE, MAXWELL HENRY (1822–1903), Irish geologist,
was born in Dublin in 1822. He was educated at Weymouth
and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1846; and
two years later he entered holy orders. For a year he was
curate of All Saints, Northampton; from 1849 to 1857 he was
rector of Shangton in Leicestershire; and then for four years
he was curate of Waltham-on-the-Wolds. In 1861, on the death
of his father, he returned to Dublin, and while giving his services
to various churches in the city, devoted himself almost wholly
to literary and scientific pursuits, and especially to the glacial
geology of Ireland, on which subject he became an acknowledged
authority. His paper, read before the Geological Society of
Ireland in 1866, on the “General Glaciation of Ireland” is a
masterly description of the effects of glaciation, and of the
evidence in favour of the action of land-ice. Later on he discussed
the origin of the elevated shell-bearing gravels near
Dublin, and expressed the view that they were accumulated
by floating ice when the land had undergone submergence. He
was for a time treasurer of the Royal Irish Academy, an active
member of the Royal Dublin Society, and president in 1878
of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland. Astronomy and
physics, as well as the ancient language and antiquities of
Ireland, attracted his attention. He died in Dublin on the 12th
of September 1903.
The obituary by Prof. G. A. J. Cole in Irish Naturalist, vol. xii. (1903) pp. 301-306, contains a list of publications and portrait.
CLOSE (from Lat. clausum, shut), a closed place or enclosure. In English law, the term is applied to a portion of land, enclosed or not, held as private property, and to any exclusive interest in land sufficient to maintain an action for trespass quare clausum fregit. The word is also used, particularly in Scotland, of the entry or passage, including the common staircase, of a block of tenement houses, and in architecture for the precincts of a cathedral or abbey.
The adjective “close” (i.e. closed) is found in several phrases, such as “close time” or “close season” (see Game Laws); close borough, one of which the rights and privileges were enjoyed by a limited class (see Borough); close rolls and writs, royal letters, &c., addressed to particular persons, under seal, and not open to public inspection (see Record; Chancery; Letters Patent). From the sense of “closed up,” and so “confined,” comes the common meaning of “near.”
CLOSURE (Fr. clôture), the parliamentary term for the closing of debate according to a certain rule, even when certain members are anxious to continue the debate. (See Parliament: Procedure.)
CLOT, ANTOINE BARTHELEMY (1793–1868), French physician, known as Clot Bey, was born at Grenoble on the 7th of November 1793, and graduated in medicine and surgery at Montpellier. After practising for a time at Marseilles he was made chief surgeon to Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt. At Abuzabel, near Cairo, he founded a hospital and schools for all branches of medical instruction, as well as for the study of the French language; and, notwithstanding the most serious religious difficulties, instituted the study of anatomy by means of dissection. In 1832 Mehemet Ali gave him the dignity of bey without requiring him to abjure his religion; and in 1836 he received the rank of general, and was appointed head of the medical administration of the country. In 1849 he returned to Marseilles, though he revisited Egypt in 1856. He died at Marseilles on the 28th of August 1868. His publications included: Relation des épidémies de choléra qui ont régné à l’Heggiaz,
