Item of the Day: Gordon's Geographical Grammar (1719)

Full Title:

Geography Anatomizd: or, the Geographical Grammar. Being a Short and Exact Analysis of the Whole Body of Modern Geography, After a New and Curious Method, Comprehending, I. A General View of the Terraqueous Globe. Being a Compendious System of the true Fundamentals of Geography; Digested into various Definitions, Problems, Theorems, and Paradoxes: With a Transient Survey of the Surface of the Earthly Ball, as it consists of Land and Water. II. A Particular View of the Terraqueous Globe. Being a clear and pleasant Prospect of all Remarkable Countries upon the Face of the whole Earth; shewing their Situation, Extent, Division, Subdivision, Cities, Chief Towns, Name, Air, Soil, Commodities, Rarities, Archbishopricks, Bishopricks, Universities, Manners, Languages, Government, Arms, Religion. Collected from the Best Authors , and Illustrated with Divers Maps. The Eighth Edition, Corrected and Somewhat Enlarg’d. By Pat. Gordon, M.A. F. R. S.

Written by Patrick Gordon. Contains 15 folded maps. Printed for J. and B. Sprint, and S. Burroughs, in Little Britain; R. Knaplock and D. Midwinter in St. Paul's, and R. Cruttenden in Cheapside, 1719.

From the Preface:

My principal Design in publishing the following Treatise, is, To present the younger sort of our Nobility and Gentry, with a Compendious, Pleasant and Methodical Tract of MODERN GEOGRAPHY, that most useful Science, which highly deserves their Regard in a peculiar Manner. It be alledg'd, That the World is already overstock'd with Composures of this Nature; I freely grant the Charge; but withal, Ill be bod to say, That there's none as yet publish'd, which is not palpably Faulty, in one or more of these Three Respects. Either they are too Voluminous, and thereby Fright the Young Student from so much as ever attempting that Study: Or, Secondly, too Compendious, and thereby give him only a bare Superficial Knowledge of Things: Or finally, Confus'd (being writ without any due Order or Method) and so confound him before he is aware. But all these are carefully avoided in the following Treatise; for in framing of it, I've industriously endeavour'd, to make it observe a just Mean, between the Two Extreams of a large Volume and a narrow Compend. And as to the Method in which it now appears, the same is (I presume) so Plain and Natural, that I may safely refer the Trial thereof, to the Impartial Judgment of the Severest Critick.

From the Contents:

Part I. Giving a General View.

38 Geographical Definitions.
48 Geographical Problems.
41 Geographical Theorems.
39 Geographical Paradoxes.
Concerning Land and Water

Part II. Giving a Particular View, Comprehends,

Chap. I. Of EUROPE.
Concerning:
Scandinavia, containing Sweden, Denmark, Norway
Muscovia
France
Germany, divided into Lower Holland and Flanders and Upper Germany
Poland
Spain and Portugal
Italy
Turky in Europe as Hungary, Greece, Tartary, Danubian Provinces
European Islands as Britain (Scotland, England, and Wales) and Ireland

Chap. II. Of ASIA
Concerning:
Tartary
China
India
Persia
Turky in Asia
The Asiatick Islands

Chap. III. Of AFRICA
Concerning:
Egypt
Barbary
Biledulgerid
Zaara, or the Desart
Negroeland
Guiney
Nubia
AEthiopia
African Islands

Chap. IV. Of AMERICA
Concerning:
New Spain
Nova Granada
Florida
Terra Canadensis
Terra Arctica
Terra Firma
Peru
Amazonia
Brasil
Chili
Paraguay
Terra Magallanica
Terra Antarctica
The American Islands

Appendix

Filed under:

• Gordon
• Geography
• Grammar
• London
• World
• British
• 1710's

Item of the Day: The Ballance of Power (1781)

Click to enlarge.


Title:

The Ballance of Power

London, Published as the Act directs, January 17.1781 by R. Wilkinson, at No. 58 in Cornhill.

Britannia, holding "The Sword of Justice," says "No one injures me with impunity." On the other side of the scales, the Spaniard says, "Rodney has ruined our Fleet." Frenchman: "Myneer assist or we are ruin'd." American: "My Ingratitude is Justly punished." Dutchman: "I'll do any thing for Money." The pile of coins under the Dutchman reads, "Ill Got Wealth."

Underneath the cartoon are the following lines:

America, dup'd by a treacherous train,
Now finds she's a Tool both to France and to Spain;
Yet all three united can't weigh down the Scale:
So the Dutchman jumps in with the hope to prevail.

Yet Britain will boldly their efforts withstand,
And bravely defy them by Sea and by Land:

The Frenchman She'll Drub, and the Spaniard She'll Beat
While the Dutchman She'll Ruin by Seizing his Fleet.
Th'Americans too will with Britons Unite,
And each to the other be Mutual Delight.

Filed under:

• Cartoons
• American
• British
• Revolutionary
• War
• Dutch
• Spanish
• French
• Britannia
• 1780's

Item of the Day: Almon's Prior Documents (1777)

Full Title:

A Collection of Interesting, Authentic Papers, Relative to the Dispute between Great Britain and America; Shewing the Causes and Progress of that Misunderstanding, from 1764-1775.

Assembled by John Almon (1737-1805). The so-called Prior Documents. Spine reads: Collection of papers. Other titles: Remembrancer, or impartial repository of public events. Printed for J. Almon, 1777.

The bill laying a a stamp duty in America, passed in March 1765.

The following was printed at the time as part of the Debates on the bill:

Mr. Grenville, after speaking long in favour of the bill, concluded with saying, "These children of our own planting (speaking of the Americans) nourished by our indulgence, until they are grown to a good degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy load of national expence, which we lie under?"

Colonel Barré replied, "Children planted by your care! No! your oppression planted them in America; they fled from your tyranny, into a then uncultivated land, where they were exposed to almost all the hardships to which human nature are liable, and among others, to the savage cruelty of the enemy of the country, a people the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most truly terrible, of any people that ever inhabited any part of GOD'S EARTH; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all these hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those that should have been their friends.

"They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of some deputy, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men, whose behaviour, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some to my knowledge, were glad, by going to foreign countries, to escape being brought to a bar of justice in their own.

"They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted their valour amidst their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country, whose frontiers, while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your enlargement; and believe me, remember I this day told you so, That the same spirit which actuated that people at first, will continue with them still; but prudence forbids me to explain myself any further. God knows, I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, any one here may be, yet I claim to know more of America, having seen and been more conversant in that country. The people there are as truly loyal, I believe, as any subjects the King has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if their should be violated;--but the subject is delicate. I will say no more."

Filed under:

• Almon
• French
• American
• Speeches
• Stamp
• Act
• Debates
• Barre
• 1770's

Item of the Day: History of a French Louse (1779)

Full Title:

History of a French Louse; or The Spy of a New Species, in France and England: Containing a Description of the most remarkable Personages in those Kingdoms. Giving A Key to the Chief Events of the Year 1779, and those which are to happen in 1780. Translated from the Fourth Edition of the revised and corrected Paris Copy.

Published anonymously; attributed to Delauney. Translation of: Histoire d'un pou françois./ A political satire including Benjamin Franklin's mission to France. In imitation of Richard Tickell's: The Green Box of Monsieur de Sartine. Printed in London for T. Becket, Adelphi, Strand, 1779.

Chapter I: The birth of a Louse in the head of a courtezan. The happiness of his early life. He marries and has children, from whom he is obliged to fly by a general pestilence that overspreads his country.

I WAS born in a region very fertile and prolific, of which my ancestors had been more than a year in possession, and in which they had lived with all the happiness of royalty in the head of a charming girl of about eighteen. She lived with a commodious matron at Paris, Montigny by name, whose house was filled with the most spendid young people of the capital. The honour of my young mistress requires me to say, that I have known few heads so fine, or so well covered. It was an extreme and mighty forest, abundantly sufficient for all our wants, though our colony was very populous. In my childhood I made a great figure, my size visibly increased from minute to minute: my mother, who loved and adored me, would often say, when she pressed me in her arms, that she never knew a child of so much strength, and so good a constitution, for that in eight days I should be equal to my father.

When I came to the age proper for marriage, I got me a wife, chusing a female of my own age, fat and strong, for my taste is for plumpness: in four days time I was able to count ninety children, half boys and half girls; and was so pleased with my condition, that I did not suppose the world to contain a being more happy than myself; when an unexpected accident brought the first of my calamities upon me.

This region so plentiful, and so well replenished with juicy fruits, which I considered as a place of complete felicity, we found dried up almost all at once: I saw the trees of that vast forest dropped off by the roots one after another; a mineral smell, which broke out from the pores of that once happy head, was to us a destructive pestilence. I saw my relations and friends dying every minute of strong convulsions; I soon lost my father, and that valuable mother who had folndled me so much, together with three fourths of my dear children: my poor mistress herself, who had entertains us with such generous hospitality, was now in a condition to be pitied--her breath was become intolerably fetid, her teeth were no longer fast in her head, her mouth was covered with froth, her nerves were broken, and her body trembled so as she could scarce either stand or sit.

Of this terrible disaster I was determined on finding the cause; and one morning winding my way with a great deal of trouble through that vast forest, I climbed to the tip of an ear which had been once white, but which the infected air had now blackened.

From thence I saw the proceeding of a cursed operator, who stroking the delicate limbs of my mistress with his greasy fingers, filled her whole body with his dreadful contagion.

Resolving now to go back no more to this cursed and corrupted country, I called my few children that were left together, and we hid ourselves for a while in the doubles of a curtain which hung round my mistress's bed.

Here we staid two days and a half, without provision, without relief, and without knowing what course to take, when my poor mistress, languid and sinking, was taken from her bed, and conveyed to a hackney coach, as I have heard, to the royal mansion of Bissexter.

Her bed was supplied with clean linen; and I had the horror to see the cruel matron shake out of the foul clothes an innumerable body of my country-men, whom the plague had carried off; some of them were yet living, and crying out for help; but she, in all the rage of cruelty, pushed them together, and threw them headlong into a pan of burning coals, which put at once an end to their misery and existence.

Filed under:

• Delauney
• French
• British
• Satire
• Sartine
• 1770's

Item of the Day: Gilray's American Rattlesnake (1782)

Title:

The American Rattlesnake.

Drawn and written by James Gilray (1757-1815). The large snake that has already encircled the British at Saratoga and Yorktown has a third empty circle on the left, indicating that there is still room for another captured British army. Published in London by W. Humphrey, 1782.


(Click on picture to view full size.)

Filed under:

• Cartoons
• American
• British
• Revolutionary
• War
• Rattlesnake
• Gilray
• 1780's

Item of the Day: Police of the Metropolis (1797)

Full Title Page:

A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis; Containing a Detail of the Various Crimes and Misdemeanors By Which Public and Private Property and Security Are, at Present, Injured and Endangered: And Suggesting Remedies for Their Prevention. The Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. By a Magistrate, Acting for the Counties of Middlesex, Surry, Kent, and Essex. -- For the City and Liberty of Westminster -- and for the Liberty of the Tower of London. Meminerint legum conditores, illas ad proximum hunc finem accommodare; Scelera videlicet arcenta, refraenandaque vitia ac morum pravitatem. Judices pariter leges illas cum vigore, aequitate, integritae, publicaeque utilitatis amore curent exequi; ut justitia et virtus omnes societatis ordines pervadant. Industriaque simul et Temperantia inertiae locum assumant et prodigalitatis.

Written anonymously by Patrick Colqhuoun. Containing a fold-out chart, "A Summary View of the Prisoners committed, tried, punished, disposed of, and discharged in the Metropolis, in One Year, ending in October 1795" listing statistics for Newgate, Poultry Compter, Giltspur Compter, Bridewell Hospital, New Prison at Clerkenwell, House of Correction in Cold Bath Fields, Tothil Fields Bridewell, and New Gaol, Southwark. Printed in London by H. Fry, Finsbury-Place, for C. Dilly, Poultry, 1797. From "To the Reader":

In contemplating this shocking catalogue of Human Depravity, (which however still does not include every description of Fraud or Dishonesty which is practised) before the mind shall imbibe unfavourable impressions, it may be necessary to remind the Reader, that in order justly to appreciate the moral turpitude which attaches to such a host of individuals, in many respects deluded and misled by the numerous temptations which assail them, it must be measured by a scale proportioned to the unparalleled extent and opulence of the Metropolis, and to the vast amount of moving property there. London is not only the grand Magazine of the British Empire, but also the general receptacle for the idle and depraved of almost every Country, and certainly from every quarter of the dominions of the Crown; --where the temptations and resources for Criminal Pleasures--Gambling--Fraud and Depredation, as well as for Pursuits of honest industry, almost exceed imagination; since besides being the seat of Government, and the centre of Fashion, Amusements, Dissipation, Extravagance, and Folly, it is not only the greatest commercial City in the Universe, but perhaps of the first manufacturing Towns that is known to exist.

Under these circumstances, while immorality, licentiousness, and Crimes, are known to advance in proportion to riches, it is much to be lamented that in the rapid and progressive increase of the latter, sufficient attention has not been bestowed on the means of checking the enormous strides made by the former.

This is to be attributed principally to those deficiencies and imperfections in the System of Police, which are explained and pointed out in the Treatise, now offered to the attention of the Reader.

It opens a wide field for doing good, to men of opulence, talents, and virtue; to Patriots and Philanthropists who love their Country and glory in its prosperity.

Such men will speedily discover through this medium, that, like the Roman Government when enveloped in riches and luxury, the National prosperity may be of short duration; that the same calamities are to be dreaded wherever public morals are neglected, and no effectual measures adopted for the purpose either of checking the alarming growth of Depravity and Crimes, or of guarding the rising generation against evil examples; which are exhibited in the Metropolis, perhaps in a greater degree than was ever before experienced, particularly among the lower ranks of Society.

It is therefore earnestly to be wished, that the subject of this Treatise may excite in the public mind an ardent desire for the adoption of such Remedies as shall apply to the improvement of the morals of the People, as well as to remove the danger and insecurity, which at present exist; and which unquestionably must be greatly augmented at the conclusion of the war, by the return of a multitude of Delinquents to their associates in iniquity.

The sole intention of the Author, in pointing out these accumulated wrongs, is to secure the inhabitants of the Metropolis against the alarming consequences to be dreaded from the existence of such an atrocious and criminal Confederacy. --That this may be the more easily effected, in all instances where Evils are represented to exist, Remedies are uniformly proposed: And these are such as have forced themselves upon the mind, more from practical observation, than by indulging in speculative theories. --They are suggested under a conviction that they perfectly accord with the spirit of the Laws; and that their adoption will be practicable; without disturbing, in any material degree, the System of Criminal Jurisprudence which at present exists.

The object is to extend to that System a greater portion of energy and effect, by establishing agencies, regulations and restraints, rendered necessary by the great magnitude and extent of the enormities committed.

It is by the operation of legal and proper restraints, that the possession of all things valuable in Society is secured.

It is by the general influence of good Laws and regulations, that the blessings of true Liberty and the undisturbed enjoyment of property is preserved; as far as Legislative Authority, aided by a well-regulated and energetic Police, can prove a security against iniquity and depredation.

The restraints, however, proposed in this Work as the means of preventing Crimes, are such as must produce this salutary effect, without abridging the privileges of innocence; since they apply to those classes only, the nature of whose dealings, from being in many instance both unlawful and immoral, immediately affect not only the useful and innocent inhabitants of their Metropolis, but in the remoter consequences, the Country at large.

If the pressure experienced, joined to a more extensive information relative to the Evils and the Remedies, shall operate as a spur to men of influence, property, and consequence, to employ means for improving the Police of the Capital -- the purpose of the Author will be attained. -- The morals of the People will experience a favourable change; and that species of security will be extended to the inhabitants of this great Metropolis, which has not heretofore been experienced, while many evils will be prevented, which, in their consequences, threaten to be productive of the most serious mischiefs to the Liberty of the People, and the happiness and security of the whole Nation.

Filed under:

• Crime
• Police
• Theft
• London
• British
• Prison
• Execution
• 1790's