Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/976

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ZACATECAS—ZACHARIAE
949

reduction of mineral ores, the extraction of rubber from guayule, the making of sugar, rum, mescal, pulque, woollen and cotton fabrics, and some minor industries of the capital. The capital is Zacatecas, and the other principal towns are Sombrerete (pop. 10,000), an important silver-mining town 70 m. N .W. of the capital (elevation 8430 ft.); Ciudad Garcia (about 9500); Guadalupe (9000); Pinos (8000), a mining town; San Juan de Mezquital (7000); and Fresnillo (6300), an important silver- and copper-mining centre.

ZACATECAS, a city of Mexico, capital of the state of Zacatecas, 442 m. by the Mexican Central railway N.W. of Mexico city. Pop. (1900) 30,912. It is built in a deep, narrow ravine, 8050 ft. above sea-level, with narrow, crooked streets climbing the steep hillsides, and white, flat-roofed houses of four and five storeys overtopping each other. Its streets are well paved, and are lighted with electricity. The city is well drained and has a fine aqueduct for its water supply. The cathedral is an elaborately carved red-stone structure with unfinished towers and richly decorated interior. Several domed churches occupy prominent sites. The National College and the Colegio de Nuesta Señora de Guadalupe with its fine library may be noticed. Overlooking the city from an elevation of 500 ft. is the Bufa Hill, which is crowned by a chapel and is a popular pilgrimage resort. The Guadalupe chapel near the city has elaborate decorations, including frescoes, onyx steps, silver rails and paintings, and a curious tiled dome. The industries comprise carriage building, weaving and the manufacture of coarse pottery. The town is an important commercial centre.

Zacatecas was founded in 1546 and was built over a rich vein of silver discovered by Juan de Tolosa in the same year. This and other mines in the vicinity attracted a large population, and it soon became one of the chief mining centres of Mexico. It was made a city in 1585 by Philip II.

ZACH, FRANZ XAVER, Baron von (1754-1832), German astronomer, was born at Pesth on the 4th of June 1754. He served for some time in the Austrian army, and afterwards lived in London from 1783 to 1786 as tutor in the house of the Saxon minister, Count Bruhl. In 1786 he was appointed by Ernest II. of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha director of the new observatory on the Seeberg at Gotha, which was finished in 1791. From 1806 Zach accompanied the duke's widow on her travels in the south of Europe. He died in Paris on the 2nd of September 1832.

Zach published Tables of the Sun (Gotha, 1792; new and improved edition, ibid., 1804), and numerous papers on geographical subjects, particularly on the geographical positions of many towns and places, which he determined on his travels with a sextant. His principal importance was, however, as editor of three scientific journals of great value: Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden (4 vols., Gotha, 1798-99), Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beforderung der Erd- und Himmels-Kunde (28 vols., Gotha, 1800-13, from 1807 edited by B. von Lindenau), and Correspondance astronomique, geographique, hydrographique, et statistique (Genoa, 1818-26, 14 vols., and one number of the 15th suppressed at the instigation of the Jesuits).

ZACHARIAE VON LINGENTHAL, KARL SALOMO (1769-1843), German jurist, was born on the 14th of September 1769 at Meissen in Saxony, the son of a lawyer, and received his early education at the famous public school of St Afra in that town. He afterwards studied philosophy, history, mathematics and law at the university of Leipzig. In 1792 he went to Wittenberg University as tutor to one of the counts of Lippe, and continued his legal studies. In 1794 he became privatdozent, lecturing on canon law, in 1798 extraordinary professor, and 1802 ordinary professor of feudal law. From that time to his death in 1843, with the exception of a short period in which public affairs occupied him, he poured out a succession of works covering the whole field of jurisprudence, and was a copious contributor to periodicals. In 1807 he received a call to Heidelberg, then beginning its period of splendour as a school of law. There, resisting many calls to Göttingen, Berlin and other universities, he remained until his death. In 1820 he took his seat, as representative of his university, in the upper house of the newly constituted parliament of Baden. Though he himself prepared many reforms—notably in the harsh criminal code—he was, by instinct and conviction, conservative and totally opposed to the violent democratic spirit which dominated the second chamber, and brought it into conflict with the grand-duke and the German federal government. After the remodelling of the constitution in a “reactionary” sense, he was returned, in 1825, by the district of Heidelberg to the second chamber, of which he became the first vice-president, and in which he proved himself more “loyal” than the government itself. With the growth of parliamentary Liberalism, however, he grew disgusted with politics, from which he retired altogether in 1829. He now devoted himself wholly to juridical work and to the last days of his life toiled with the ardour of a young student. His fame extended beyond Germany. The German universities then enjoyed, in regard to legal questions of international importance, a jurisdiction dating from the middle ages; and Zachariae was often consulted as to questions arising in Germany, France and England. Elaborate “opinions,” some of them forming veritable treatises—e.g. on Sir Augustus d'Este's claim to the dukedom of Sussex, Baron de Bode's claim as an English subject to a share in the French indemnity, the dispute as to the debts due to the elector of Hesse-Cassel, confiscated by Napoleon, and the constitutional position of the Mecklenburg landowners were composed by Zachariae. Large fees which he received for these opinions and the great popularity of his lectures made him rich, and he was able to buy several estates; from one of which, Lingenthal, he took his title when, in 1842, he was ennobled by the grand-duke. He died on the 27th of March 1843. He had married in 1811, but his wife died four years later, leaving him a son, Karl Eduard.

Zachariae's true history is in his writings, which are extremely numerous and multifarious. They deal with almost every branch of jurisprudence; they are philosophical, historical and practical, and relate to Roman, Canon, German, French and English law. The first book of much consequence which he published was Die Einheit des Staats and der Kirche mit Rücksicht auf die Deutsche Reichsverfassung (1797), a work on the relations of church and state, with special reference to the constitution of the empire, which displayed the writer's power of analysis and his skill in making a complicated set of facts appear to be deductions from a few principles. In 1805 appeared Versuch einer allgemeinen Hermeneutik des Rechts, and in 1806 Die Wissenschaft der Gesetzgebung, an attempt to find a new theoretical basis for society in place of the opportunist politics which had led to the cataclysm of the French Revolution. This basis he seemed to discover in something resembling Bentham's utilitarianism. Zachariae's last work of importance was Vierzig Bücher vom Staate (1839-42), to which his admirers point as his enduring monument. It has been compared to Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois, and covers no small part of the field of Buckle's first volume of the History of Civilization. But though it contains proof of vast erudition and many original ideas as to the future of the state and of law, it lacks logical sequence, and is, consequently, full of contradictions. Its fundamental theory is, that the state had its origin, not in a contract (Rousseau-Kant), but in the consciousness of a legal duty. What Machiavelli was to the Italians and Montesquieu to the French, Zachariae aspired to become to the Germans; but he lacked their patriotic inspiration, and so failed to exercise any permanent influence on the constitutional law of his country. Among other important works of Zachariae are his Staatsrecht, and his treatise on the Code Napoléon, of which several French editions were published, and which was translated into Italian. Zachariae edited with Karl Joseph Mittermaier the Kritische Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft und Gesetzgebung des Auslandes, and the introduction which he wrote illustrates his wide reading and his constant desire for new light upon old problems. Though Zachariae's works have been superseded, they were in their day epoch-making, and they have been superseded by books which, without them, could not have been written.

For an account of Zachariae and his works, see Robert von Mohl, Geschichte u. Literatur der Staatswissenschaften (1855-58), and Charles Brocher, K. S. Zachariae, sa vie et ses œuvres (1870); cf. also his biography in Allgem. Deutsche Biographie (vol. 44) by Wilhelm Fischer, and Holtzendorff, Rechts Lexicon, Zachariae von Lingenthal.

His son, Karl Eduard Zachariae (1812-1894), also an eminent jurist, was born on the 24th of December 1812, and studied philosophy, history, mathematics and languages, as well as jurisprudence, at Leipzig, Berlin and Heidelberg. Having