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 He acquired a great reputation as a lawyer, less by practice in the courts than in a consultative capacity. He strenuously opposed the “parlement Maupeou,” devised by the Chancellor Maupeou to replace the old judiciary bodies, and refused to plead before it. He was counsel for the cardinal de Rohan in the (q.v.). In 1785 he was elected to the French Academy. In 1789 he was returned as one of the deputies of the Third Estate in Paris to the states-general, where he supported all such revolutionary measures as the union of the orders, the suspensive veto, the civil constitution of the clergy, &c. His excessive obesity, which in the Constituent Assembly made him the butt of the Royalists, had prevented him from practising at the bar for some years before 1789, and when Louis XVI. invited him to undertake his defence he excused himself on this ground. At the same time he published in 1792 some Observations in extenuation of the action of the king, from the constitutional point of view, which in the circumstances of the time argued much courage. For the rest, he took no part in public affairs during the Terror. Under the Directory he was made a member of the Institute (1796) and of the Court of Cassation (1798). He lived to collaborate in the earlier stages of the new criminal code. Among his writings may be mentioned a paper on the grain trade (1776) and a Mémoire sur l’état des Protestants en France (1787), in which he pleaded for the restoration of civil rights to the Protestants.

TARGET, a mark to shoot at, so called from its resemblance in shape to the “targe” or small round shield, particularly the round wood and leather buckler, with metal bosses, and long spike protruding from the central boss, which was carried by the Highland clans; at the back was a leathern sleeve in which the left arm was inserted. In the 17th century, as body armour ceased to be used, the infantry soldier often carried a light shield of various forms which was known as a “target,” which is a diminutive of targe; such soldiers were known as “targeteers.” “Targe” is a word that has been the subject of much etymological discussion. On the one hand is found the O.E. targe, with hard g, a shield, cf. Icel. targa, shield, target, and O.H. Ger. zarga, frame, side, border; on the other is Fr. targe, Sp. and Port, tarja, Ital. targa, buckler, shield. The soft and hard g’s point to two distinct words. In Sp. and Port., is found adarga, a square target or buckler, which is an Arabic word, al darkat or darakat, a leather shield. The O.E. and Icel. words can hardly have come from an Arab, source, and the relation between the two words is an etymological puzzle (see Skeat, Etym. Dict., 1910). The target as a mark to shoot at is, for archery, a circular canvas-covered frame stuffed with straw and marked with concentric rings surrounding the centre or bull’s-eye. For shooting with the rifle the target is usually square.

In the days of the smooth-bore musket, and for many years after the introduction of small arms of precision, the targets used in musketry training were of a “match” and not a “service” character. The target was white with a black bull’s-eye (counting 5 points) and two rings, invisible to the firer, called the “inner” and the “magpie,” and scoring 4 and 3; the rest of the target was called the “outer” and counted 2 points. This system was the basis of all match shooting, whether with match or service rifles, and (with the trifling difference that the bull counted 4, the inner 3 and the magpie and outer alike 2) it was followed in military range practice. For collective fire regular rows of black silhouettes on white screens were employed. These were a compromise between bull’s-eye and service targets which possessed the virtues of neither. But after the S. African war bull’s-eye practices were eliminated from the musketry course of the British army, and in the musketry regulations of 1909 they were restricted to the earliest stages of recruits' training and trained soldiers’ “refresher” courses. The use of the bull’s-eye to-day is to teach the soldier to shoot uniformly, that is, to “group” his shots closely. The position of his shot group with reference to the bull’s-eye docs not matter; if his group is comprised within a 6 or 12-inch ring (at 100 yards range) he is passed on to more advanced practices at service targets. The latter are no longer coloured black-and-white, but are of the dull colours which are met with in the field, either brown head-and-shoulders painted on a green-grey canvas background or brown silhouettes held up against the face of the stop-butt. The National Rifle Association in 1910 followed the lead of the War Office to some extent as regards the targets used at the Bisley meeting in “service-rifle” competitions. For collective practices at the more important military stations large areas of ground are prepared with silhouettes in entrenchments, dummy guns, &c. Mechanical “running-man” and “disappearing” targets are also used for training in snap-shooting and rapid fire. The target used in naval gunnery is a large floating frame of timber either fixed by buoys or anchors or towed at a distance by a vessel (see : § Naval Gunnery).

TARGUM. The Targums are the Aramaic translations—or rather paraphrases—of the books of the Old Testament, and, in their earliest form, date from the time when Aramaic superseded Hebrew as the spoken language of the Jews (see ). In their origin they were designed to meet the needs of the unlearned among the people who had ceased to understand the Hebrew of the Old Testament. In the absence of any precise evidence on the point it is impossible to give more than a rough estimate as to the period at which Hebrew, as a spoken language, was finally displaced by Aramaic. It is, however, certain that the latter language was firmly established in Palestine in the 1st century By that time, as we know from many sources, Aramaic was not only the language in common use, but had also received official recognition, despite the fact that Hebrew still remained the learned and sacred tongue. Hence we may reasonably infer that the mass of the people had adopted Aramaic at a considerably earlier period, probably, as early as the 2nd century, and that the need of Aramaic translations of the sacred text made itself felt but little later. By the Jews the introduction of Targums is ascribed to Ezra; but this tradition, which probably owes its origin to the Talmudic explanation of Neh. viii. 8, is inconsistent with the linguistic evidence furnished by the post-exilic literature of the Old Testament, and must be rejected as unhistorical, if only because the process by which Aramaic took the place of Hebrew was admittedly a very gradual one. The Talmudic tradition, however, is, doubtless, correct in connecting the origin of Targums with the custom of reading sections from the Law at the weekly services in the synagogues, since the need for a translation into the vernacular must first have arisen on such occasions. As we know from the New Testament, the custom of reading in the synagogues both from the Law and from the Prophets was well established in the 1st century : its introduction, therefore, will date from a much earlier period. The practice of accompanying these readings with a translation into Aramaic is, further, so generally recognized by the 2nd century that the Mishna takes it for granted, and merely inculcates certain regulations to be observed by the Meturgeman (translator), who had by this time acquired a definite status. From it we learn that the Meturgeman, who was distinct from the reader, translated each verse of the Law into Aramaic as soon as it had been read in Hebrew: in the readings from “the Prophets” three verses might be read at a time. Later regulations are also laid down in the Talmuds in order to prevent any appearance of authority attaching to the translation, and also to ensure reverential