DELAWARE, a city of the United States, capital of a county of the same name in Ohio, is situated on the west bank of the Olentangy, nearly in the centre of the State, 24 miles north of Columbus. Its principal public institutions are the Ohio Wesleyan university and a female college belonging to the same body. The manufactures consist of oil, cordage, hempen cloth, and iron work. A medicinal spring in the neighbourhood is resorted to for the benefit of its waters. Population (1870), 5641.
DEL CREDERE AGENT is one who, selling goods for his principal on credit, undertakes for an additional commission to guarantee the solvency of the purchaser.
DELFICO, Melchiorre (1744–1835), an eminent Italian writer on political economy, was born, at Teramo in the Abruzzi on the 1st August 1744, and was educated at Naples. He devoted himself specially to the study of jurisprudence and political economy, and thus qualified himself for the valuable service he was to render to his native country by his writings on legal and economic subjects. His first publication, Saggio filosofico nel matrimonio (1774), was an eloquent vindication of marriage against the loose views that were prevalent. To his Memorie sul Tribunate della Grascia e sulle Legge Economiche nelle Provincie conftnante del Begno, addressed to the king, the Neapolitans owed the abolition of the most vexatious and absurd restrictions on the sale and exporta tion of agricultural produce. Other Memorie on kindred subjects followed, and did much to promote reform in the direction of free trade. Equally beneficial was the adop tion of the principles developed in his Riflessioni sulla Vendita dei Feudi Devohiti, in 1790, and his Lettera al Duca di Cantalupo su i Feudi Devohtti, in 1795, which were so powerfully reasoned that a law was promulgated for the sale of all feudalities reverting to the crown as free estates. During the short reign of Joseph Bonaparte at Naples, Delfico was made a councillor of state, and employed in the formation of the new judicial organization of Naples. He was employed in a similar manner under Murat; and, when Ferdinand was restored in 1815, Delfico was made president of the commission of the archives, an office which he filled until 1823, when he tendered his resignation on account of his advanced age. His sovereign acknowledged his eminently patriotic services by the grant of a large pension for life. Soon after, he retired to his native town, where he died on the 21st June 1835, at the advanced age of ninety-one. Besides the works we have noticed, on which his Neapolitan fame may be said chiefly to rest, we owe to him several general works of no mean reputation, especially Eicerche sul vero Carattere della Giurisprudenza Komana, e di sue Cultore, 1790, and Pensieri sulla Storia, e sull Incertetsa ed Inutilitfr della Medesima, 1806, which have both been several times reprinted. In the latter he has anticipated the scepticism of Niebuhr on the early history of Rome, which he treats as fabulous ; and he denies to the Romans before the second Punic war all arts but that of agriculture, and of making war on their neighbours.
See Gregoire de Filippis Delfico s Delia Vita e dclle Opere di Mdchiorre Delfico (Teramo, 1836), and Tipaldo s Biografia, degli Italiani illustri (vol. ii.)
DELFT, a town of Holland, in the province of South Holland, on the Schie, nearly ten miles from Rotterdam, and in the line of the canal between that city and the Hague. It is well and regularly built in the form of a square, but has a rather gloomy appearance from its streets being traversed by narrow stagnant canals. The public buildings comprise the Prinsenhof, or palace, where William of Orange was assassinated in 1584; the town-house, erected in 1618, with antiquarian and artistic collections; the Old Church, dating from the 11th century, and containing monuments to Van Tromp and Piet Hein, and the tomb of Leeuwenhoek, the naturalist; the New Church, founded in 1381, and interesting both for its chime of 500 bells, and as the burial-place of the princes of the house of Orange from the days of the Liberator down to the present century; the arsenal, originally erected as a warehouse for the East India Company; and the polytechnic school, with the fine collection of mechanical models formerly preserved in the dockyard at Amsterdam. It is sufficient to mention the powder-magazine, the school of military engineering, the theatre, the municipal school for the education of civil service students for the colonies, the school of design, the lunatic asylum, and Madame Renswonde’s orphanage. For a long time the name of Delft was associated, not only in Holland, but even abroad, with the manufacture of excellent earthenware; but this industry, as well as the beer-brewing which was of great importance last century, has become almost extinct. The present branches are carpet-weaving, cooperage, dyeing, and distilling. The town was founded about 1075 by Duke Geoffrey of Lorraine after his conquest of Holland from Count Thierry. It was almost totally ravaged by fire in 1536; and in 1654 it lost about 1200 of its population by the explosion of a powder-magazine. In 1797 the Christo Sacrum Society was founded by Onder van Vyngaard-Ceanzius, the burgomaster of the city, for the Utopian purpose of uniting in one community all the various branches of the Christian church. Of the celebrities of the town the most famous is Grotius, whose tomb is shown in the New Church. Population in 1874, 23,900.
tion of the lieutenant-governor of the Punjab, situated between 28 13 and 29 13 N. lat. and 76 53 and 77 34 // E. long. It consists of a strip of territory on the right or west bank of the River Jumna, 75 miles in length, and varying from 15 to 23 miles in breadth, bounded on the N. by the district of Karnal, on the E. by the Jumna river separating it from Meerut (Mirat) and Bulandshahr dis tricts, on the S. by Rohtak, and on the W. by Gurgaon. With the exception of a low-lying alluvial tract in the north, and a narrow fringe of fertile soil along the river bank to the south of Delhi city, the country consists of stony or hard sandy soil, where cultivation mainly depends upon artificial irrigation. This is supplied by the Western Jumna canal, which has a course of 51 miles in the district; by the Ali Murdan canal, constructed by a celebrated
Persian nobleman of that name ; by the new Agra canal ;
- ↑ The name is also applied to a Division or Commissionership, com prising the districts of Delhi, Gurgaon, and Karnal, containing a total area of 5557 square miles, with a population of 1,920,912.
