the degree of LL.D. lie officiated as vice-president of the chemical section of the British Association at Dublin in 1835, and at Bristol in 1836. On the 18th April 1837, lie was seized with an attack of paralysis, a disease of which his brother had died in December 1834. In the following year, on the 15th February, he had a second attack, after which, though still able to make experiments, lie was manifestly much enfeebled, both physically and mentally, and required constant medical attendance. On May 20, 1844, he suffered from another fit. On the 26th of July 1844, he recorded, with trembling hand, his last meteo rological observation, and on the morning of the 27th he fell from his bed, and was found lifeless by his attendant. He was publicly buried on the 12th of August at Ardvvick
cemetery, about a mile and a half from Manchester.In person Dalton was robust and muscular, and his countenance was open, and expressive of the earnestness, simplicity, and truth of his character. His height was about 5 feet 7 inches; he stooped slightly; and his gait was stiff and awkward, but rapid. In dress he adhered to, the mode of the Quakers. His manners were singularly free from pedantry and ostentation, and he had a grave, quiet demeanour. Generally he enjoyed excellent health. His medical attendant, finding him once greatly recovered from an attack of catarrh, attributed the improvement to a dose of James s powder prescribed on the previous day. " I do not well see how that can be," said Dalton, " as I kept the powder until I could have an opportunity of analyzing it." Dalton was somewhat silent in general company, but with his familiar friends he would often indulge in active conversation. His letters to his acquaint ances evince no small power of observation. On religious topics he appears to have been peculiarly reserved, and his friends found it difficult to gain an idea of his doctrinal views. He " never had time " to get married, he said ; but his correspondence, and the testimony of those who knew him, show that he delighted in the society of women of education and refinement ; his pinched circumstances in early life were perhaps the chief cause why he remained single. He liked tobacco, and remarked of Davy, " the principal failing in his character as a philosopher is that he does not smoke." Dalton was careful, though not parsimonious, in his expenditure, and left at his death a small fortune ; when occasion required he could show himself remarkably open-handed. Davy wrote of Dalton in 1829: "He was a very coarse experimenter, and almost always found the results he required, trusting to his head rather than to his hands. Memory and observa tion were subordinate qualities in his mind ; he followed with ardour analogies and inductions ; and however his claims to originality may admit of question, I have no doubt that he was one of the most original philosophers of his time, and one of the most ingenious." Superadded to his natural talents, and " his almost intuitive skill in tracing the relations of material phenomena," there was in Dalton, to use the words of Professor Sedgwick, " a beauti ful moral simplicity and singleness of heart, which made him go on steadily in the way he saw before him, without turning to the right hand or to the left, and taught him to do homage to no authority before that of truth."
Henry, Life of Dalton, Cavendish Society, 1854; Robert Angus Smith, Memoir of John Dalton and History of the Atomic Theory, 1856. A list of Dalton s papers and other publications is given on pp. 253-63 of the latter work. See also Koscoe, " On Dalton s First Table of Atomic Weights," in Nature, Nov. 19, 1874.
DAMAGES, the compensation to which a person is by law entitled who has been injured by another. The principle of compensation in law makes its first appearance as a substitute for personal retaliation. In primitive law something of the nature of the Anglo-Saxon were-gild, or the 71-011/77 of the Iliad, appears to be universal.[1] It is a payment due from the offender to the person he has offended, or to his family or kin. The system relates to personal injuries. It marks out with great minuteness the measure of the compensation appropriate to each particular case. And there is sometimes a resemblance between the legal compensation, as it may be called, and the compensation which an injured person, .seeking his own remedy, would be likely to exact for himself. In such a system the two entirely different objects of personal satis faction and criminal punishment are not clearly separated, and even in modern law damages are still occasionally penal.
The object of legal compensation should be to place the injured person as nearly as possible in the situation in which he would have been but for the injury. In the law of England the two historical systems of common law and equity viewed this problem from two different points of view. The principle of the common law was that the amount of every injury might be estimated by pecuniary valuation. The object of equity was to place the injured party in the actual position to which he was entitled. This difference comes out most clearly in cases of breach of con tract. The common law, with a few partial exceptions, would do no more than compel the defaulters to make good the loss of the other party, by paying him an ascertained sum of money as damages. Equity, recognizing the fact that complete satisfaction was not in all cases to be obtained by mere money payments, compelled the defaulter to specifically perform his contract. Again, in those injuries which do not fall under the head of breach of contract, equity, on satisfactory proof that a wrong was contemplated, would interfere to prevent it by injunction ; while at com mon law no action could be brought until the injury was accomplished, and then only pecuniary damages could be obtained. Common law and equity are now so far fused by the Judicature Act of 1873 that the appropriate remedy can be awarded in any of the divisions of the High Court of Justice.
The assessment of damages is peculiarly the business of the jury, arid the court will only interfere with their decision on strong cause being shown. Thus a verdict may be set aside on the ground that damages are excessive, or that they are palpably insufficient. And if it appear that the result was arrived at by mere hazard, as, for instance, by each juryman naming a sum and an average being struck, that would be an impropriety which would invalidate the verdict. There are, moreover, certain pirn ciples according to which the damages must be ascertained.
said, the motive of the defendant is an irrelevant considera tion. He has broken his contract, and all that has to be done is to fix the amount of the loss occasioned thereby. So wherever there has been a breach of contract, some damages, though they should be merely nominal, are recoverable. And when the contract was for a payment of a fixed sum of money, the damages recoverable for a breach thereof would be that sura with interest. Where, in other cases, the parties themselves have fixed the sum which should be due as damages in case of the contract not bein" fulfilled, such sum will be the proper damages to be awarded by a jury On this point, however the cases run rather fine. When a contract provides that a r. sum shall be payable for breach, the law will ask whether it has been fixed as a penalty or as liquidated (i.e., ascer tained) damages. In the former case it will not allow the fixed sum to be awarded, but will require evidence to
show what the amount of loss
- ↑ The were was the price of a man s life-the fine a murderer had to pay to the family or relations of the deceased, as the unte v fine paid to the magistrate.
