by long omission: but the negative precepts of God never can cease, but when they are expressly abrogated by the same authority. Taylor's Rule of Living Holy. The commissioners from the confederate Roman catholics demanded the abrogation and repeal of all those laws, which were in force against the exercise of the Roman religion. Clarend. b. viii. ABROHANNI, ABROANI, or MALLEMOLLI, a kind of muslin, or clear, white, fine cotton cloth, brought from the East Indies, particularly from Bengal. ABROLHOS, or ABROLKOS, dangerous shoals about fifty miles from the coast of Brazil, and near the Island of St. Barbe. Their centre is in lat. 17°, 51'. S. Long. 39°, 18'. W. ABROMA, in botany, a genus of the class polyadelphia, and order dodecandria. It has been denominated Indian flax, as being excellent for making cordage. The fibres are interwoven with the bark, and are remarkably beautiful, fine, and strong. To procure their separation from the parenchymatous substance, they are macerated in water from four to eight days. The world owes to Dr. Roxburgh this important discovery. See his paper on the subject in Memoirs of the Society of Arts for 1804. ABRON, a river of France, entering the Loire, between Avril and Lamotte. ABRONO, or ABRUGI, in botany, a name given by Serapion and others to the heart pease. ABROTANUM, in botany. See ARTEMISIA and SANTOLINA. ABROTANOIDES, in natural history, a coral in the form of the abrotanum. ABROTONUM, in ancient geography, a town on the Mediterranean, in the district of Syrtis Parva, in Africa. Pliny, v. 4. ABRUG-BANYA, a populous town in Transylvania, on the river Ompay, 21 miles above Alba Julia. There are mines of gold and silver near it, and the mine court was formerly held in it. It is the chief of what are called the Metal Pardon, if my abruptnesse breed disease; "He merits not t' offend that hastes to please." Jonson. The devel he is a spirit, and hath means and opportunitie to mingle himselfe with our spirits, and sometimes more slily, sometimes more abruptly and openly, to suggest devellish thoughts into our hearts. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Abrupt, with eagle-speed, she cut the sky; Instant invisible to mortal eye. Pope's Homer's Odyssey, b. i. Abrupt and horrid as the tempest roars, Thunder and flash upon the steadfast shores, Till he, that rides the whirlwind, checks the rein, Then all the world of waters sleeps again. Couper's Retirement. ABRUS, in botany, the trivial name of the GLYCINE. See GLYCINE. ABRUZZO, a mountainous province of Naples, bounded on the E. by the gulph of Venice; on the N. and W. by Ancona, Umbria and the Campagna of Rome; and on the S. by the Terra di Lavora and Molise. It is divided into two parts by the river Pescara, called Ulteriore and Citeriore. The former has Aquila, and the latter Sulmona, for its capital. The country, though cold, is fertile in corn, rice, fruits, saffron, vines and olives. The rice of Teramo is little. inferior to that of Lombardy. A great deal of it is exported, as well as of oil, wines, and Turkey wheat; but the staple commodity is wool, the greatest part of which is sent off unwrought, there being no woollen manufactures in the province, except two small ones of coarse cloth. The sheep, after spending the summer on the mountains, are brought down to pass the winter in the warm plains of Puglia, and some other places on the coast, where the snow does not lie. This whole coast, one hundred miles in length, is utterly destitute of sea-ports; and the only spots where the produce can be embarked are dangerous inconvenient roads, at the mouths of rivers and along a lee shore. Villages, castles, and feudatory estates, are to be met with in abundance; but the numbers of their inhabitants are to be reckoned by hundreds, not thousands: the political and social system being here wholly in decay. Monte-corno and Mayallo are among the most interesting natural features of the province; the first evidently contains many valuable veins of metallic ore; but the great difficulty of access renders the search of them almost impracticable. Mayallo has other merits, and of a gayer kind.-Nature has clothed its declivities and elevated fields with an infinite variety of her most precious plants; vulnerary herbs grow there in as great perfection as on the Alps of Swisserland, and are applied by the natives to wounds with equal success. The warlike nations, who descended hither from the north, have left many traces of their customs and languages, as well as numerous monumental inscriptions; and the inhabitants are said to differ remarkably from the more southern Neapolitans. ABSCESS, in surgery, from abscedo, to depart: a cavity containing pus, or, a gathering of matter; so called, because the parts which were joined are now separated; one part receding from another, to make way for the collected matter. See SURGERY. ABSCIND', v. Ab: scindo, to cut off or ABSCIS'SION. S away from. Applied na turally, and to operations in surgery, &c. figuratively in medicine, astrology, rhetoric, and divinity. Fabricius ab Aquapendente renders the abscission of them difficult enough, and not without danger. Wiseman's Surgery. By cessation of oracles, with Montacutius, we may understand this intercision, not abscission or consummate desolation. Brown's Vulgar Errours, b. vi. c. 12. When two syllables likewise are abscinded from the rest, they evidently want some associate sounds to Rambler. make them harmonious ABSCISSE, or ABSCISSA, in mathematics, part of the diameter or transverse axis of a conic section, intercepted between the vertex, or some other fixed point and a semiordinate. In a more general sense, it is the segment of a line terminated at some certain point, cut off by an ordi nate to a curve. ABSCISSION in astrology, is when one planet outstrips another, and joins a third before it, and so cuts off the light of the first. ABSCISSION, in rhetoric, a figure of speech whereby the orator stopping short in the middle of his discourse leaves the audience to draw the inference: e.g. He started from me, toward the edge of the precipice, and my attention being caught for the moment by another voice In the next, I heard a plunge in the I need add no more. ABSCISSION, in surgery, the act of taking away something morbid or unsound in the fleshy or membraneous parts of the body. Sometimes also applied to sudden death. water ABSCOND', v. Abs: condo, to hide from, to remove to a place of secrecy. The marmotte, or mus alpinus, which absconds all winter, lives on its own fat : for in autumn, when it shuts itself up in its hole, it is very fat : but in the spring-time, when it comes forth again, very lean. Ray on the Creation. Outlawry always supposes a precedent right of arresting, which has been defeated by the parties absconding. Blackstone's Commentaries. ABSCONSIO, in anatomy, a hiding or concealing of the head of one bone in the cavity of another. Silence, and sleep; listening to thee will watch, Or we can bid his absence till thy song End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine. Milton's Paradise Lost, b. vii. Our Lord being absent in body from us (sitting in Heaven at God's right hand), to supply that absence that we should not be apt to forget him, and thereby become wholly estranged from him, is pleased to order this occasion of being present, and conversing with us in such a manner as may retain in our memories his gracious performances for us; may impress in our hearts a kindly sense of them; may raise us up in mind and affections. Barrow. A great part of estates in Ireland are owned by absentees; and such, as draw over the profits raised out of Ireland, refunding nothing. Child's Discourse on Trade. ABSENTEE, in political economy, may describe those who are systematically absent from any country, or, indeed, any particular station; but has been in modern times more particularly applied to those land-owners and churchmen of Ireland who reside in England or on the continent. This The political demerits of this class of landholders have been, on some occasions, exaggerated; they have been said to contribute nothing to the good government or prosperity, and to constitute altogether an unnatural and oppressive burden on the resources of a country. Taxes on absenteeship from Ireland were, for a length of time, therefore, popular in that country. In 1715, a tax of four shillings in the pound was levied on all profits, employments, fees, and pensions, derived from Ireland, in all cases where the persons receiving them should not reside in that country for six months of the year; power to grant leave of absence being reserved to the crown. dispensing power, however, was brought so much into exercise, as to render the act of little practical operation, and in 1753 it ceased to be renewed. Mr. Flood, the great Irish orator, proposed in 1773, a more general measure, i. e. a tax of two shillings in the pound on the emoluments of absentees, without exception; and the bill was at first supported by the Irish government; but some communications from England inducing the lord lieutenant to withdraw his support, the measure was lost in a division of 122 to 102. In 1783 the question was renewed in the Irish House of Commons, by Mr. Molineux, but again lost by a division of 184 to 122. Such is the history of a direct tax upon absentees, and the different attempts at taxing them in Ireland; which, as proceeding upon the theory of their being wholly a burden to the country, must be unjust: they can enjoy but the surplus profit of that capital and labour which employ humbler, and, it may be granted, more useful classes of the community. Still their capital so in operation must be a benefit as far as it goes, to the country in which it is working, and not an injury. As a punishment, such a tax is manifestly impolitic, and calculated only to inflame animosity, and inspire contempt of the legislature imposing it. Persons who can afford to live entirely out of the country, are generally those of superior rank and influence: they would wholly withdraw their capital from it, in many instances, and will despise that attempt to control their movements which they have unusual power of resenting. The justice of this reasoning, according to Mr. Hardy, the biographer of Lord Charlemont, led to the rejection of the absentee tax in 1773. It was felt that a general land tax was likely to result from this partial one proposed upon the absentees. "If the powerful interest of that body," argued the great commoner, hitherto been able to secure interest against such a tax, the same interest would be sufficient, and would be exerted to introduce it, in order that the other inheritors of landed property should. as such, be made to pay a tax as well as themselves." In opposition to this, Dr. Smith argues, "had Those who live in another country contribute nothing by their consumption, towards the support of the government of that country in which is situate the source of their revenue. If,in this latter country, there should be no land tax nor any considerable duty on the transference either of moveable or immovable property, as is the case in Ireland, such absentees may derive a great revenue from the protection of a government, to the support of which they do not contribute a shilling. This inequality is likely to be greatest in a country of which the government is, in some respects, subordinate or dependent on that of some other. The people who possess the most extensive property in the dependent, will in this case generally choose to live in the governing country. Ireland is precisely in this situation, and we cannot therefore wonder that the proposal of a tax upon absentees, should be so very popular in that country. It might, however, be a little difficult to ascertain, either what sort, or what degree of absence might subject a man to be taxed as an absentee; or at what precise time the tax should either begin or end." But while we hold legislation, or at least compulsory laws on such a subject impolitic, and even unjust; freedom of intercourse throughout all the parts of an extended, civilized empire, being one of the best portions of our birthrights in it; and while the evils of absenteeship may have been exaggerated, we also regard them as real and great; and that they suggest many important moral and political considerations, to men of property connected with Ireland. That unhappy country suffers from such a withdrawment of her proper supporters and governors, in the curse of middle men; in the notorious want of influence and example to stimulate improvement; and in the practical discouragement of all attempts to form a respectable yeomanry, which follow in its train. It is not merely the money spent in the neighbourhood of a gentleman's seat in England, any more than it is his ill-painted coat of arms, or effigy, as the sign of the neighbouring village ale-house, that constitutes the most beneficial tie between the resident proprietor and the neighbouring country; it is his presence, as the chief of a system, at the head of authority, of property, of all improvements, public spectacles, and even of all the public amusements, that diffuses order, prosperity, and happiness. As to churchmen, we understand that the gross evil of their late notorious absenteeships has engaged the attention of the government, both in its civil and ecclesiastical administration. For who can be surprised at the increase of the Catholics in numbers, property, and every kind of local influence when the appointed lights of the land are withdrawn? Or when they are exhibited to an impoverished peasantry only in the character of voracious consumers of tythe? Writers of all parties agree in the difficulty of estimating the mischiefs that arise from the great prevalence of middle men in Ireland, and that necessarily attend the existence of absenteeship in every country. Letting and sub-letting, thus, has multiplied without end. Now, that the rent of land, as well as that of other real property, should be fairly secured by any produce that may be derived from it, seems on the face of things to be as reasonable in Ireland as in England or elsewhere. But the almost incredible number of persons that are interposed between the absentee proprietor and the cultivator of the soil in that country, grinds the actual farmer to the earth; involves the whole business of agricultural property in legal subtleties; and makes the taking of land by a plain and sober small capitalist the height of presumption and folly. He is, in fact, never secure; he may repay his rent again and again to half a dozen claimants. This has banished practical men of this class, and produced an endless subdivision of excellent farms among desperate adventurers that have nothing to lose. ABSINTHITES, ABSINTHIAS, or ABSINTHIATED, tinged or impregnated with the virtues of absinthium, or wormwood. In Bartholin's Act. Med. (tom. ii.) we read of a woman whose milk was become absinthiated, and rendered as bitter as gall, by the too liberal use of wormwood. Vinum absinthites, or poculum absinthiatum, wormwood wine, is much spoken of among the ancients, as a wholesome drink, and even an antidote against drunkenness. Fehr. shews that it should be prepared by fermentation, in order to correct crudities, and call forth a volatile salt. ABSINTHIUM, in botany, from a. priv. and veos, pleasure, wormwood. See ARTEMISIA. ABSIS, ABSES, or APSIDES. See APSIS. ABSOLVE', v. ] Ab: solvo, to loose, to ABSOLV'ER, untie, to set free. FiguraAB'SOLUTE, tively to release from the AB'SOLUTELY, penal consequences of crime, AB'SOLUTENESS, to pardon, acquit, or deABSOLUTION, clare innocent. The adABSOLU'TORY. Jjective and words immediately derived from it express freedom, independence, perfection of state, or existence. But let the sonne of perdicion perishe, and absolue we the chapter, the angel yet speking with Daniel. The Exposicion of Daniel, by George Joye, p. 146. We must know what is to be meant by absolute, or absolutenes; whereof I find two main significations. First, absolute signifieth perfect, and absolutenesse perfection; hence we have in Latin this expression, Perfectum est omnibus, numeris absolutum. And in our vulgar language we say, a thing is absolutely good, when it is perfectly good. Next, absolute signiñeth free from tye or bond. Knor's History of the Reformation. Preface. DUKE. So then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo ? CLAUD. The miserable have no other medicine But only hope I've hope to live, and am prepared to die. DUKE. Be absolute for death: or death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Shakspeare's Measure for Measure. And of that nature (for the most part) are things, absolutely unto all men's salvation necessary, either to be held or denied, either to be done or avoided. Hooker's Preface. My crown is absolute, and holds of none : I cannot in a base subjection live; Nor suffer you to take, though I would give. Dryd. Ind. Emp. The absolution pronounced by a priest, whether papist or protestant, is not a certain infallible ground to give the person, so absolved, confidence towards God. South's Sermons. Although it runs in form absolute, yet it is indeed conditional; as depending upon the qualification of the person, to whom it is pronounced. Idem. The prince long time had courted fortune's love; I see still the distinctions of sovereign and inferior, ABSOLUTE EQUATION, in astronomy, is the aggregate of the optic and eccentric equations. See EQUATION. ABSOLUTE ESTATE, in law, one free of all conditions and incumbrances. ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENT, that wherein the government is above the law, and not, as in this country, a creature of the law. ABSOLUTE GRAVITY, among philosophers, that property in bodies, by which they are said to weigh so much, with regard to circumstances of modification, and which is, in that respect, distinct from specific gravity. ABSOLUTE NUMBER, in Algebra. See ALGE BRA. See Absolute SpacE, PLACE, MOTION, &c. the Substantives. ABSOLUTION, in civil law, is a sentence whereby the party accused is declared innocent of the crime laid to his charge. Among the RoAmong the Romans, the ordinary method of pronouncing judgment was this: after the cause had been pleaded on both sides, the prætor used the word dixerunt, q. d. they have said what they had to say; then three ballots were distributed to each judge, marked as mentioned under the article A; and as the majority appeared of either mark, the accused was absolved or condemned, &c. If he were absolved, the prætor dismissed him with videtur non fecisse, or jure videtur fecisse. ABSOLUTION, in the canon law, is a juridical act, whereby the priest declares the sins of penitents remitted. The Romanists hold absolution a part of the sacrament of penance, and the council of Trent, sess. xiv. cap. 3. declares the essence of the sacrament to lie in the words of absolution. The formula of absolution, in the Romish church, has been said to be absolute; in the Greek church deprecatory; and in the churches of the reformed, declarative. But this is a matter strongly contested between protestants at large and the Romanists; as well as between the dissenters of England and the Anglican church. Dissenters object, generally, to all forms of absolution which suppose a power residing in mortals to appease the conscience, or purify the character of a sinner. The church of England, and all protestants, oppose the absolute claims of the Romish hierarchy (as they at least understand Tetzel used in vending the indulgences which them,) to forgive sins on earth. The form that first awoke the indignation and resistance of LUTHER, has been often quoted, but is said by Catholics to be unauthentic. They have thus stated their opinions upon this subject:—“Catholics believe, that when a sinner repents of his sins from his heart, and acknowledges his transgressions to God and his ministers, the dispensers of the mysteries of Christ, resolving to turn from his evil ways and to bring forth fruits worthy of penance; there is then (and not otherwise) an authority left by Christ to absolve such a penitential sinner from his sins which authority we believe Christ gave to his apostles and their successors, the bishops and priests of his church, in these words, when he said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," &c. The foregoing is an extract from an authentic catholic work, entitled, "The Faith of Catholics confirmed by Scripture, and attested by the Fathers of the first five centuries of the Church," by the Rev. Messrs. Berrington and Kirk, Lond. 1813. The same work confirms the proposition stated by these assertions of St. Ephrem of Edessa:"The exalted dignity of the priesthood is far above our understanding and the power of speech! The remission of sins is not granted to mortals, but through the ministry of the priest." De Sacerdatio, i. p. 1: and these observationsof De Sacerdatio, i. p. Chrysostom;-"Temporal princes have a power to bind but the body only; whereas the power of the priesthood binds the soul, and reaches to heaven. In this sense, that God ratifies above what the priests do here below, and the master confirms the sentence of his servants. And what is this but that all power, even the concerns of heaven, has been entrusted to them." De Sacerd. iii. c. 5. ABSONIARE, in old records, to shun, avoid or detest; a term introduced in the Anglo-Saxon oaths of allegiance. ABSORB', v. ABSORBING, ABSORPTION. Ab: sorbeo, to drink up; to swallow; to imbibe; to devote one's whole time and attention to a pursuit, so as to be insensible to others; to contemplate intensely. The rays of the sun are reflected from a white body, but absorbed by a black one. Bacon's Distribution of Knowledge An earthquake recl'd unheededly away! Lord Byron's Childe Harold. ABSORBENT VESSELS, a name given promiscuously to the lacteal vessels, lymphatics, and inhalent arteries. See ANATOMY. Plants are also said to possess absorbent vessels in their fibrous and hairy roots. ABSORBENTS, in medicine. The term absorbent was introduced into chemistry by physicians, on the erroneous supposition that the faculty of withdrawing moisture from the air was confined to substances which freely unite with water; and hence applied to such as seemed to check diarrhoea, by the absorption of the redundant liquids. The substance, says Dr. Ure, whose absorbent power is to be chemically examined, after thorough desiccation before a fire, is immediately transferred into a phial, furnished with a well ground stopper. When it is cooled, a portion of it is put into a large wide-mouthed bottle, where it is closely confined for some time. A delicate hygrometer being then introduced, indicates on its scale the dryness produced in the enclosed air, which should have been previously brought to the point of extreme humidity, by suspending a moistened rag within the bottle." The following are the results of experiments made by Professor Leslie : Alumina causes a dryness of cate fibres of plants, derive its superior power of acting on atmospherical vapour from the augmentation of its surface, or the multiplication of the points of contact? In similar circumstances, 100 gr. of the following organic substances absorb the following quandown 16, wool 18, beech 28. Charcoal, and tities of moisture: ivory 7 gr. boxwood 14, other porous solids of a fibrous texture, have the faculty of absorbing gases in a remarkable degree. See Leslie on Heat and Moisture; and Ure's Dictionary of Chemistry. ABSORPTION. By this term modern chemists. understand the conversion of a gaseous fluid into a liquid or solid, on being united with some other substance. It differs from condensation in being the effect of mechanical pressure, or the abstraction of caloric. Thus, if muriatic acid gas be introduced into water, it is absorbed, and muriatic acid is formed; if carbonic acid gas and ammoniacal gas be brought into contact, absorption takes place, and some carbonate of ammonia is produced by the union of their ponderable bases. Ure's Dictionary. Kircher and other geologists, for the sinking in ABSORPTIONS OF THE EARTH, a phrase used by of large tracts of land, by subterranean commotions or other accidents. Pliny tells us of the which stood on its side, being thus wholly abmountain Cymbotus, with the town of Curites, sorbed into the earth. He records the like fate of the city of Tantalis in Magnesia, and after it of the mountain Sypelus. Galanis and Garnatus, met the same fate. But the fact is, no fair distowns once famous in Phoenicia, are said to have tinction can be drawn between these remarkable incidents, and what have been more generally called earthquakes and their consequences, which see. phy. See ABSYRTIDES. ABSORUS, or APSORUS, in ancient geogra ABSTAIN', v. ABSTEN ́TION, AB'STINENCE, ABSTINENT, : Ab or Abs teneo, to hold or keep from; to forbear, to refrain from. In this verb a middle or reflected action is distinguishable, and a resemblance between the Latin and English de84 degrees. rivatives preserved. 75 70 Among some religious persons, abstinence is forbearance from certain kinds of prohibited food, as well as the almost total absence of nourishment experienced for an extraordinary period by individuals, many of whose cases are authentically recorded. Moost dere, I biseche you as comelingis and pilgryms to absteine you fro fleischli desires thot figten agens the soule. Wiclif. Peter i, chap. 2. Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young, And abstinence engenders maladies. Shaksp. Love's Labour Lost. To ask: nor let thine own inventions hope Milton. A little wisdom, and an easie observation were enough to make all men that love themselves, wisely to abstain from such diet which does not nourish. Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery. |