obliged to accept the dispositions of his predecessors. Upon the death of Rattazzi in 1873, Depretis became leader of the Left, prepared the advent of his party to power, and was called upon to form the first cabinet of the Left in 1876. Overthrown by Cairoli in March 1878 on the grist-tax question, he succeeded, in the following December, in defeating Cairoli, became again premier, but on the 3rd of July 1879 was once more overturned by Cairoli. In November 1879 he, however, entered the Cairoli cabinet as minister of the interior, and in May 1881 succeeded to the premiership, retaining that office until his death on the 29th of July 1887. During the long interval he recomposed his cabinet four times, first throwing out Zanardelli and Baccarini in order to please the Right, and subsequently bestowing portfolios upon Ricotti, Robilant and other Conservatives, so as to complete the political process known as “trasformismo.” A few weeks before his death he repented of his transformist policy, and again included Crispi and Zanardelli in his cabinet. During his long term of office he abolished the grist tax, extended the suffrage, completed the railway system, aided Mancini in forming the Triple Alliance, and initiated colonial policy by the occupation of Massawa; but, at the same time, he vastly increased indirect taxation, corrupted and destroyed the fibre of parliamentary parties, and, by extravagance in public works, impaired the stability of Italian finance.
DEPTFORD, a south-eastern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N. by Bermondsey, E. by the river Thames and Greenwich, S. by Lewisham and W. by Camberwell. Pop. (1901) 110,398. The name is connected with a ford over the Ravensbourne, a stream entering the Thames through Deptford Creek. The borough comprises only the parish of Deptford St Paul, that of Deptford St Nicholas being included in the borough of Greenwich. Deptford is a district of poor streets, inhabited by a large industrial population, employed in engineering and other riverside works. On the river front, extending into the borough of Greenwich, are the royal victualling yard and the site of the old Deptford dockyard. The first supplies the navy with provisions, medicines, furniture, &c., manufactured or stored in the large warehouses here. The dockyard ceased to be used in 1869, and was filled up and converted into a foreign cattle market by the City Corporation. Of public buildings the most noteworthy are St Paul’s church (1730), of classic design; the municipal buildings; and the hospital for master mariners, maintained by the corporation of the Trinity House, which was founded at Deptford, the old hall being pulled down in 1787. Other institutions are the Goldsmiths’ Polytechnic Institute, New Cross; and the South-eastern fever hospital. A mansion known as Sayes Court, taken down in 1729, was the residence of the duke of Sussex in the reign of Elizabeth; it was occupied in the following century by John Evelyn, author of Sylva, and by Peter the Great during his residence in England in 1698. The site of its gardens is occupied by Deptford Park of 11 acres. Another open space is Telegraph Hill (912 acres). The parliamentary borough of Deptford returns one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen, and 36 councillors. Area, 1562.7 acres.
DEPUTY (through the Fr. from a Late Lat. use of deputare, to cut off, allot; putare having the original sense of to trim, prune), one appointed to act or govern instead of another; one who exercises an office in another man’s right, a substitute; in representative government a member of an elected chamber. In general, the powers and duties of a deputy are those of his principal (see also Representation), but the extent to which he may exercise them is dependent upon the power delegated to him. He may be authorized to exercise the whole of his principal’s office, in which case he is a general deputy, or to act only in some particular matter or service, when he is termed a special deputy. In the United Kingdom various officials are specifically empowered by statute to appoint deputies to act for them under certain circumstances. Thus a clerk of the peace, in case of illness, incapacity or absence, may appoint a fit person to act as his deputy. While judges of the supreme court cannot act by deputy, county court judges and recorders can, in cases of illness or unavoidable absence, appoint deputies. So can registrars of county courts and returning officers at elections.
DE QUINCEY, THOMAS (1785–1859), English author, was born at Greenheys, Manchester, on the 15th of August 1785. He was the fifth child in a family of eight (four sons and four daughters). His father, descended from a Norman family, was a merchant, who left his wife and six children a clear income of £1600 a year. Thomas was from infancy a shy, sensitive child, with a constitutional tendency to dreaming by night and by day; and, under the influence of an elder brother, a lad “whose genius for mischief amounted to inspiration,” who died in his sixteenth year, he spent much of his boyhood in imaginary worlds of their own creating. The amusements and occupations of the whole family, indeed, seem to have been mainly intellectual; and in De Quincey’s case, emphatically, “the child was father to the man.” “My life has been,” he affirms in the Confessions, “on the whole the life of a philosopher; from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been.” From boyhood he was more or less in contact with a polished circle; his education, easy to one of such native aptitude, was sedulously attended to. When he was in his twelfth year the family removed to Bath, where he was sent to the grammar school, at which he remained for about two years; and for a year more he attended another public school at Winkfield, Wiltshire. At thirteen he wrote Greek with ease; at fifteen he not only composed Greek verses in lyric measures, but could converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment; one of his masters said of him, “that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one.” Towards the close of his fifteenth year he visited Ireland, with a companion of his own age, Lord Westport, the son of Lord Altamont, an Irish peer, and spent there in residence and travel some months of the summer and autumn of the year 1800,—being a spectator at Dublin of “the final ratification of the bill which united Ireland to Great Britain.” On his return to England, his mother having now settled at St John’s Priory, a residence near Chester, De Quincey was sent to the Manchester grammar school, mainly in the hope of securing one of the school exhibitions to help his expenses at Oxford.
Discontented with the mode in which his guardians conducted his education, and with some view apparently of forcing them to send him earlier to college, he left this school after less than a year’s residence—ran away, in short, to his mother’s house. There his mother’s brother, Colonel Thomas Penson, made an arrangement for him to have a weekly allowance, on which he might reside at some country place in Wales, and pursue his studies, presumably till he could go to college. From Wales, however, after brief trial, “suffering grievously from want of books,” he went off as he had done from school, and hid himself from guardians and friends in the world of London. And now, as he says, commenced “that episode, or impassioned parenthesis of my life, which is comprehended in The Confessions of an English Opium Eater.” This London episode extended over a year or more; his money soon vanished, and he was in the utmost poverty; he obtained shelter for the night in Greek Street, Soho, from a moneylender’s agent, and spent his days wandering in the streets and parks; finally the lad was reconciled to his guardians, and in 1803 was sent to Worcester College, Oxford, being by this time about nineteen. It was in the course of his second year at Oxford that he first tasted opium,—having taken it to allay neuralgic pains. De Quincey’s mother had settled at Weston Lea, near Bath, and on one of his visits to Bath, De Quincey made the acquaintance of Coleridge; he took Mrs Coleridge to Grasmere, where he became personally acquainted with Wordsworth.
After finishing his career of five years at college in 1808 he kept terms at the Middle Temple; but in 1809 visited the Wordsworths at Grasmere, and in the autumn returned to Dove Cottage, which he had taken on a lease. His choice was of course influenced partly by neighbourhood to Wordsworth, whom he early appreciated;—having been, he says, the only man
