Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/279

 in 1875 made it possible to pass various constitutional laws. In May 1877, however, the constitutional crisis became once more acute. A peremptory letter of censure from MacMahon to Jules Simon caused the latter to resign with his colleagues. The duc de Broglie formed a ministry, but Gambetta carried a resolution in the Chamber of Deputies in favour of parliamentary government. The president declined to yield, and being supported by the Senate, he dissolved the Chamber, by decree, on the 25th of June. The prosecution of Gambetta followed for a speech at Lille, in which he had said “the marshal must, if the elections be against him, se soumettre ou se démettre.” In a manifesto respecting the elections, the president referred to his successful government and observed, “I cannot obey the injunctions of the demagogy; I can neither become the instrument of Radicalism nor abandon the post in which the constitution has placed me.” His confidence in the result of the elections was misplaced. Notwithstanding the great pressure put upon the constituencies by the government, the elections in October resulted in the return of 335 Republicans and only 198 anti-Republicans, the latter including 30 MacMahonists, 89 Bonapartists, 41 Legitimists, and 38 Orleanists. The president endeavoured to ignore the significance of the elections, and continued his reactionary policy. As a last resort he called to power an extra-parliamentary cabinet under General Rochebouet, but the Republican majority refused to vote supplies, and after a brief interval the president was compelled to yield, and to accept a new Republican ministry under Dufaure. The prolonged crisis terminated on the 14th of December 1877, and no further constitutional difficulties arose in 1878. But as the senatorial elections, held early in 1879, gave the Republicans an effective working majority in the Upper Chamber, they now called for the removal of the most conspicuous anti-Republicans among the generals and officials. The president refused to supersede them, and declined to sanction the law brought in with this object. Perceiving further resistance to be useless, however, MacMahon resigned the presidency on the 30th of January 1879, and Jules Grévy was elected as his successor.

MacMahon now retired into private life. Relieved from the cares of state, his simple and unostentatious mode of existence enabled him to pass many years of dignified repose. He died at Paris on the 17th of October 1893, in his eighty-sixth year. A fine, tall, soldierly man, of a thoroughly Irish type, in private life MacMahon was universally esteemed as generous and honourable; as a soldier he was brave and able, without decided military genius; as a politician he was patriotic and well-intentioned, but devoid of any real capacity for statecraft.

 McMASTER, JOHN BACH (1852–), American historian, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on the 29th of June 1852. He graduated from the college of the City of New York in 1872, worked as a civil engineer in 1873–1877, was instructor in civil engineering at Princeton University in 1877–1883, and in 1883 became professor of American history in the university of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (1883 sqq.), a valuable supplement to the more purely political writings of Schouler, Von Holst and Henry Adams.

 MACMILLAN, the name of a family of English publishers. The founders of the firm were two Scotsmen, Daniel Macmillan (1813–1857) and his younger brother Alexander (1818–1896). Daniel was a native of the Isle of Arran, and Alexander was born in Irvine on the 3rd of October 1818. Daniel was for some time assistant to the bookseller Johnson at Cambridge, but entered the employ of Messrs Seeley in London in 1837; in 1843 he began business in Aldersgate Street, and in the same year the two brothers purchased the business of Newby in Cambridge. They did not confine themselves to bookselling, but published educational works as early as 1844. In 1845 they became the proprietors of the more important business of Stevenson, in Cambridge, the firm being styled Macmillan, Barclay & Macmillan. In 1850 Barclay retired and the firm resumed the name of Macmillan & Co. Daniel Macmillan died at Cambridge on the 27th

of June 1857. In that year an impetus was given to the business by the publication of Kingsley’s Two Years Ago. A branch office was opened in 1858 in Henrietta Street, London, which led to a great extension of trade. These premises were surrendered for larger ones in Bedford Street, and in 1897 the buildings in St Martin’s Street were opened. Alexander Macmillan died in January 1896. By his great energy and literary associations, and with the aid of his partners, there had been built up in little over half a century one of the most important publishing houses in the world. Besides the issue of many important series of educational and scientific works, they published the works of Kingsley, Huxley, Maurice, Tennyson, Lightfoot, Westcott, J. R. Green, Lord Roberts, Lewis Carroll, and of many other well-known authors. In 1898 they took over the old-established publishing house of R. Bentley & Son, and with it the works of Mrs Henry Wood, Miss Rhoda Broughton, The Ingoldsby Legends, and also Temple Bar and the Argosy. In 1893 the firm was converted into a limited liability company, its chairman being Frederick Macmillan (b. 1851), who was knighted in 1909. The American firm of the Macmillan Company, of which he was also a director, is a separate business.

See Thomas Hughes, Memoir of Daniel Macmillan (1882); A Bibliographical Catalogue of Macmillan & Co’s Publications from 1843 to 1889 (1891), with portraits of the brothers Daniel and Alexander after Lowes Dickinson and Hubert Herkomer; also articles in Le Livre (September 1886), Publishers’ Circular (January 14, 1893), the Bookman (May 1901), &c.

 MACMONNIES, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1863–), American sculptor and painter, was born at Brooklyn, New York, on the 20th of September 1863. His mother was a niece of Benjamin West. At the age of sixteen MacMonnies was received as an apprentice in the studio of Augustus St Gaudens, the sculptor, where he remained for five years. In 1884 he went to Paris and thence to Munich, where he painted for some months. Returning to Paris next year he became the most prominent pupil of Falguière. His “Diana” brought him a mention at the Salon of 1889. Three life-sized figures of angels for the church of St Paul, New York, were followed by his “Nathan Hale,” in the City Hall Park, New York, and a portrait of James S. T. Stranahan, for Brooklyn. This last brought him a “second medal” in the Salon of 1891, the first time an American sculptor had been so honoured. In 1893 he was chosen to design and carry out the Columbian Fountain for the Chicago World’s Fair, which placed him instantly in the front rank. His largest work is a decoration for the Memorial Arch to Soldiers and Sailors, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, consisting of three enormous groups in bronze. In Prospect Park, Brooklyn, MacMonnies has also a large “Horse Tamer,” a work of much distinction. A “Winged Victory” at the U.S. military academy at West Point, New York, is of importance; and his “Bacchante,” an extraordinary combination of realism and imagination, rejected by the Boston Public Library, is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He also became well known as a painter, mainly of portraits. In 1888 he married Mary Fairchild, a figure painter of distinction, but in 1909 they were divorced and she married Will H. Low.

 MACNAGHTEN, SIR WILLIAM HAY,. (1793–1841), Anglo-Indian diplomatist, was the second son of Sir Francis Macnaghten, Bart., judge of the supreme courts of Madras and Calcutta. He was born in August 1793, and educated at Charterhouse. He went out to Madras as a cadet in 1809, but was appointed in 1816 to the Bengal Civil Service. He early displayed a great talent for languages, and also published several treatises on Hindu and Mahommedan law. His political career began in 1830 as secretary to Lord William Bentinck; and in 1837 he became one of the most trusted advisers of the governor-general, Lord Auckland, with whose policy of supporting Shah Shuja against Dost Mahommed, the reigning amir of Kabul, Macnaghten was closely identified. As political agent at Kabul he came into conflict with the military authorities and subsequently with his subordinate Sir Alexander Burnes. Macnaghten attempted to placate the Afghan chiefs with heavy subsidies, but when the drain on the Indian exchequer became too great,