Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/683

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SAXONY SAY 659 named the Just. He declined the crown df Po- land and refused to join the coalition against the French revolution, but after the declara- tion of war against France he furnished his contingent as a member of the German em- pire. In 1805 he remained neutral, but in 1806 joined Prussia against France, which resulted in Saxony being conquered by Napoleon, who transformed the country into a kingdom, to which he added in 1807 the duchy of Warsaw. He was a loyal vassal of Napoleon in the wars of 1809-'13. After the battle of Leipsic he was detained by the emperor Alexander as a prisoner of war, but allowed to reside at Pres- burg during the debates of the congress of Vienna, which restored to him half of his Ger- man possessions, the other half being given to Prussia and the duchy of Warsaw to Russia. Anthony (1827-'36), a brother of Frederick Augustus, in 1831 adopted a constitutional form of government, and shortly after joined the Zollverein. The reign of King Frederick Augustus II., a nephew of Anthony (1836- '54), was disturbed by religious animosities, which in 1845 culminated in a bloody riot at Leipsic, by the revolution of 1848, and by a sanguinary struggle of the democratic party for the recognition of the national constitu- tion of Germany (May, 1849). He died with- out issue, Aug. 9, 1854, and was succeeded by his brother John, the translator of Dante. As he sided with Austria in the war of 1866, the Prussians invaded his country on June 16, while his army withdrew to Bohemia and took part in the battle of Sadowa. Prussia made peace with Saxony, Oct. 21, on receiv- ing a large indemnity and the right of gar- risoning the fortress of Konigstein, and Beust, as the principal instigator of the war, was obliged to leave the Saxon for the Austrian service. In the same year Saxony joined the North German confederation ; and in 1871 it was incorporated in the German empire, after taking a distinguished part in the Fran- co-German war under the crown prince Al- bert, who succeeded to the throne on the death of King John, Oct. 29, 1873. (See ALBERT, FEIEDRICH AUGUST.) SAXONY, a central province of Prussia, bor- dering on the provinces of Brandenburg, Hesse- Nassau, and Hanover, Anhalt, the kingdom of Saxony, the Thuringian states, and Brunswick ; area, 9,746 sq. m. ; pop. in 1871, 2,103,174. It is generally flat, but it has the Hartz moun- tains in the west (with their highest peak, the Brocken), and the Thuringian Forest in the south. The principal rivers are the Elbe, in the east, and its tributaries the Saale, Mulde, Unstrut, Bode, and Havel. The soil is fertile and the best cultivated in Prussia. Cotton and woollen cloth, leather, linen, sugar, tobacco, and beer are manufactured. The congress of Vienna in 1815 transferred most of this prov- ince from the kingdom of Saxony to Prussia. It is divided into the districts of Magdeburg, Merseburg, and Erfurt. Capital, Magdeburg. SAXTON, Joseph, an American inventor, born at Huntingdon, Pa., March 22, 1799, died in Washington, D. C., Oct. 26, 1873. In his youth he constructed a printing press and issued a small newspaper. At the age of 18 he went to Philadelphia, where he found employment with a watchmaker and afterward with an engraver. His first invention was a machine for cutting the teeth of chronometer wheels. Afterward he constructed the astronomical clock with compensating pendulum, now in the state house. In 1831-'7 he was in England, where he constructed a compound magnet which sustained a weight of 525 Ibs. ; a mag- netic needle several feet in length with a mir- ror on its end, which exhibited for the first time by the movement of a reflected beam of light the daily and hourly variations of the magnetic force of the earth ; the magneto- electric machine; the locomotive differential pulley ; an apparatus for measuring the velo- city of vessels ; and a metal-ruling machine. On his return to Philadelphia he became con- nected with the mint, and constructed the large standard balances in use in all the United States mints and assay offices. In 1843 he re- moved to Washington, where he superintended the construction of standard balances, weights, and measures, and of different portions of the apparatus used in the operations of the coast survey, and invented an automatic instrument for recording the height of the tides. SAT, Jean Baptiste, a French political ecqno- mist, born in Lyons, Jan. 5, 1767, died in Paris, Nov. 16, 1832. After being engaged in com- mercial pursuits, he became connected with the Courrier de Provence, a newspaper edited by Mirabeau in Paris, and afterward was the sec- retary of Claviere, the Girondist minister of finance. In 1794, in conjunction with Cham- fort, Andrieux, and Ginguene, he founded La decade philosophique, litteraire et politique ; and after the 18th Brumaire he was appointed a member of the tribunate. Forced by Bona- parte to withdraw from political life, he estab- lished a cotton-spinning mill, but was obliged to abandon it in 1812. After the fall of Na- poleon he published an improved edition of his Traite de Veconomie politique (1st ed., 2 vols. 8vo, 1803), to which he added an Epi- tome des principes fondamentaux de Teconomie politique. In 1815 he prepared a Catechisme d'economie politique. In 1821 he was ap- pointed professor of industrial economy in the conservatoire des arts et metiers, and in 1830 of political economy in the college de France. His lectures were published under the title of Cours complet d'economie politique et pra- tique (6 vols. 8vo, 1828-'30; new ed., with notes by his son, 2 vols. 8vo, 1852). He also wrote Lettres a M. Malthus sur differents sujets d'economie politique (1820), reprinted under the title of Melanges et correspondences d'economie politique (1833), and various es- says which have been collected in his (Euvres diverses. His Traite and Catechisme have each