Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/417

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N E W N E W 393 College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. The faculty has 36 members, and there are 427 students. Its library contains 63,000 volumes. Government. The executive department consists of a governor and five councillors elected biennially by a majority vote, or by the general court when there is no popular election. In addition to the usual powers of the executive, the governor and council have the right of pardon, and appoint all judicial officers, the attorney general, notaries, coroners, judges of probate, and general and field officers of the militia. The legislative department consists of a senate of 24 members, elected by districts, and a house of representatives of 231 members, elected by the towns according to population. They are styled the General Court, and meet biennially in June. The judicial department is a supreme court consisting of a chief justice and six associate justices appointed by the governor, and holding office during good behaviour, or till they reach the age of seventy. Law terms are held twice each year at the capital, by the full bench, and by single justices two or four times yearly in each of the ten counties. This court has civil, criminal, and equity jurisdiction. Exceptions on questions of law, taken at the trial terms, are heard at the law terms, and cases not exceeding 100 in value, or affecting the title to real estate, may be tried before referees without jury. Commitments for offences are made by justices of the peace and by police courts. Probate courts are held by the judges of probate in the different counties, but there is a right of appeal to the supreme court. All native or naturalized male inhabitants of the State, except paupers, are entitled to vote. The State is represented in congress by two senators and two representatives, and has four votes in the electoral college. The enrolled militia under the command of the governor numbers 33,288 men, but the active militia, known as the New Hampshire National Guard," consists of infantry, cavalry, and a battery, and is formed into a brigade of 1208 men. An annual encampment of not less than four days is held in September. State Institutions. There are several institutions under State control. The State s prison in 1880 had 151 inmates. The number confined in the county jails was 122. The State reform school for juvenile and female offenders against the laws" was opened in 1858, and has received 1087 boys and girls. The asylum for insane, established in 1838, and partly supported by the State, had in 1880 285 patients (129 men and 156 women). The total number of insane in the State was 1056. History. New Hampshire was unknown to the earliest European explorers of America, who passed its short sea-coast without observa tion. The first recorded visit of a white man was that of Martin Pring, who in June 1603 sailed with two small ships into the Pis- cataqua. The French discoverer De Champlain visited it in July 1605, and discovered the Isles of Shoals, but in 1614 Captain John Smith made a more careful examination of this and the eontiguous coast. The map which he made was presented to Prince Charles of England, who gave to the whole country the name of New England. In November 1620 James I. chartered the Plymouth Company

  • for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New

England," which was the territory lying between the 34th and 43th parallels of north latitude. On the 1st of August 1622 this company gave a sub-charter to Sir Fernando Gorges and Captain John Mason of all land lying between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers and a line supposably 60 miles inland. This was called "Maine," though from another charter covering about the same territory sometimes spoken of as "Laconia." Under this charter settlements were made in 1623 at the places now known as Ports mouth and Dover, by companies sent out by Mason and Gorges. These continued for several years without enlargement, mere fishing and trading posts ; and the next settlements, those at Exeter and Hampton, were not made till 1638 and 1639. In November 1629 Gorges and Mason divided their grant, and Mason obtained from the Plymouth Company, of which he was then a member, a grant of the land between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua for 60 miles inland. To this tract he gave the name of New Hampshire, from the county of Hampshire, in which he had been a resident. The efforts of Mason, his heirs and assigns, to enforce the proprietary rights of this patent gave rise to litigation that lasted more than a century and a half. The settlers disturbed in their possession resisted his claim, opposing to it the rights of occupancy and a prior deed of a considerable portion of the same land, said to have been obtained of four Indian sagamores in May 1629 by one Wheelwright, a minister expelled from Boston for errors of doctrine. This deed was probably a forgery, but it was made the basis of resistance to Mason s grant. Cases arising from the conflict of the two deeds were repeatedly brought before the colonial courts and appealed to England. Conflicting decisions, resisted when adverse to those in possession, delayed settlement till 1746, when a company purchased the Mason claims, and by refraining from the extreme assertion of their claims brought the quarrel nearly to an end, but it did not wholly disappear till it was settled by the legislature in If 87. In 1641 the four New Hampshire settlements, fearful of their weakness, voluntarily petitioned for union with Massachusetts. They were received, and with some towns on the Merrimack formed into a county. This union continued till 1680, when the claim which Massachusetts had put forward for jurisdiction over New Hampshire, by the terms of its charter, was denied by royal authority, and New Hampshire was declared a separate province with a governor of its own. The province ceased to have a special governor when Joseph Dudley was appointed governor of New England in 1685. In 1691, when Massachusetts regained the charter of which it had been deprived, New Hampshire was anxious to unite with it, and did act with it for a time. It did not, however, cease to be a royal province until the Revolution, having governors of its own, or jointly with Massachusetts and all New England. New Hampshire suffered severely in the French and Indian wars, as its settlements were most exposed to the attacks that came from Canada. It furnished 500 men for the siege of Louisbourg in 1745, of whom 150 were paid by Massachusetts. It sent 500 to the attack on Crown Point in 1755, and raised 2600 in the succeeding years of the war. The boundaries of New Hampshire, owing to conflicting charters given in ignorance of the country, were long a matter of dispute. The claim of Massa chusetts to its whole territory was not settled, and the southern boundary definitively established, till 1740. In 1749 a controversy arose with New York, which claimed as far east as the Connecticut river, while New Hampshire claimed to extend as far west as did Massachusetts. It was determined in favour of New York in 1764, but not till New Hampshire had chartered 138 towns in the disputed territory. After the Revolution many of these towns attempted to unite with those on the western border of New Hampshire into a new State. The bitter quarrel that arose and proceeded almost to bloodshed was settled only by the interposition of congress. The settlement of New Hampshire, which had been retarded by fears of Indian invasions and questions of jurisdiction, followed very rapidly after the province was quieted, so that by the outbreak of the Revolu tion it had 80,000 inhabitants. It took a prominent place in the assertion of American liberty. It was represented in the successive continental congresses by two delegates, who in 1776 subscribed the declaration of independence, and in 1787 contributed to the forma tion of the constitution. Two New Hampshire regiments took part in the battle of Bunker Hill. The battle of Benuington, that turned the scale of the war, was won by New Hampshire and Vermont troops under the command of General Stark, who bore a commission from New Hampshire. In the whole war New Hamp shire furnished 12,497 soldiers. It was the ninth State to adopt the Federal constitution, June 21, 1788, thus securing the success of the Union. Its own provisional government, formed on the retirement of the royal governor in 1775, was replaced by a State constitution in 1784. This was thoroughly revised in 1792, and with minor changes continued till 1877, when another though less radical revision was made. In the war of 1812 the State, though divided on the question of the rights of the States and the general Govern ment, sent its quota of men. More than 2000 took part in the various battles. In the civil war of 1861-65 New Hampshire earnestly supported the Union cause. It furnished 18 regiments of infantry, 1 of cavalry, 1 light and 1 heavy battery, and 3 companies of sharpshooters, in all 32,750 men, or about 10 per cent, of the population. The earlier history of New Hampshire is given in Belknap s History of New Hampshire, and illustrated by a seiies of Provincial and State Papers. Its later history is found in Sanborn s History of Neic Hampshire, and various local histories and official reports. (J. K. L .*) NEWHAVEX (anciently MEECHIKG), a seaport of Sussex, is situated on the English Channel near the mouth of the Ouse, and on a branch of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, 56 miles south from London, 6J miles south of Lewes, and 8^ east of Brighton. The village, which is distant about half a mile from the sea, is clean and well built, but is little more than a shipping station, although it possesses a small ship building yard, flour-mills, and a brewery celebrated for its Tipper ale. The church of St Michael, which has a Norman square embattled tower surmounted by a spire, was restored in 1854. The cliffs in the neighbourhood of the port are about 200 feet in height, and Castle Hill, formerly a military encampment, is very strongly fortified. A harbour was first granted to Newhaven in 1713, and during the early part of the 18th century it possessed a large shipping trade. This afterwards declined, but within the last forty years has again revived, and it is now one of the principal points of communication between England and France. The roadstead is one of the finest on the whole coast of England. The extensive additions being made to the dock accommodation are expected to give a great impetus to the trade of the port. 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