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 The legislature of the latter state in 1873 adopted a report declaring that between 1822 and 1861, during which period the debt had been incurred, the western counties had paid an excess of taxes, more than equal to the amount which had been expended in the west for the purposes for which the debt had been incurred, and concluded with the statement: “West Virginia owes no debt, has no bonds for sale and asks no credit.” In 1906 Virginia entered suit in the U.S. Supreme Court to compel West Virginia to assume a portion of the debt. West Virginia demurred, but was overruled, and on the 4th of May 1908 a master was appointed to take testimony. The state rejected decisively the overtures made by Virginia in 1866, looking towards a reunion of the commonwealths.

 WESTWARD HO, a small seaside village in the Barnstaple parliamentary division of Devonshire, England, on the east of Barnstaple Bay, 2½ m. N.W. of Bideford, on the Bideford, Appledore & Westward Ho railway. Of modern growth, it takes its name from a famous novel by Charles Kingsley. Many visitors are attracted in summer by its pure and bracing air, its quiet, and, above all, by its golf club, with links laid out on the sand hills known as Braunton Burrows. Westward Ho forms part of the urban district of, which had a population in 1901 of 5355.  WETHERSFIELD, a township of Hartford county, Connecticut, U.S.A., on the Connecticut river, adjoining on the N. the city of Hartford, of which it is a residential suburb. Pop. (1890) 2271; (1900) 2637 (489 foreign-born); (1910) 3148. Area, about 12 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway and by electric lines to Hartford. Among its old buildings are the house in which in 1781 George Washington and Count Rochambeau met to plan the Yorktown campaign; the First Church of Christ (Congregational), erected in 1761 and remodelled in 1838 and 1882; and the old academy building, which was built in 1802, is now used as a town hall, and houses a public library. There is a giant elm here, 26½ ft. in girth. The Connecticut state prison is in Wethersfield. In the township tobacco, vegetables and garden seeds are raised and dairy interests are of considerable importance; the principal manufactures are small tools and mattresses. Wethersfield is the oldest permanently

inhabited township in the state; it was first settled in the winter of 1634-1635 by colonists from Watertown, Massachusetts, and received its present name in 1637. With Hartford and Windsor in 1639 it framed the Fundamental Orders of the Colony of Connecticut. Before 1660 its inhabitants aided in the founding of Stamford and Milford, Connecticut, and of Hadley, Massachusetts.

 WETSTEIN (also ), JOHANN JAKOB (1693-1754), New Testament critic, was born at Basel on the 5th of March 1693. Among his tutors in theology was Samuel Werenfels (1657-1740), an influential anticipatory of modern scientific exegesis. While still a student he began to direct his attention to the special pursuit of his life—the text of the Greek New Testament. A relative, Johann Wetstein, who was the university librarian, gave him permission to examine and collate the principal MSS. of the New Testament in the library, and he copied the various readings which they contained into his copy of Gerard of Maestricht's edition of the Greek text. In 1713 in his public examination he defended a dissertation entitled De variis Novi Testamenti lectionibus, and sought to show that variety of readings did not detract from the authority of the Bible. Wetstein paid great attention also to Aramaic and Talmudic Hebrew. In the spring of 1714 he undertook a learned tour, which led him to Paris and England, the great object of his inquiry everywhere being manuscripts of the New Testament. In 1716 he made the acquaintance of Richard Bentley at Cambridge, who took great interest in his work. The great scholar induced him to return to Paris to collate carefully the Codex Ephraems, Bentley having then in view a critical edition of the New Testament. In July 1717 Wetstein returned to take the office of a curate at large (diaconus communis) at Basel, a post which he held for three years, at the expiration of which he exchanged it to become his father's colleague and successor in the parish of St Leonard's. At the same time he pursued his favourite study, and gave private lectures on New Testament exegesis. It was then that he decided to prepare a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. He had in the meantime broken with Bentley, whose famous Proposals appeared in 1720. His earlier teachers, however, J. C. Iselin and J. L. Frey, who were engaged upon work similar to his own, became so unfriendly towards him that after a time he was forbidden any further use of the manuscripts in the library. Then a rumour got abroad that his projected text would take the Socinian side in the case of such passages as 1 Timothy iii. 16; and in other ways (e.g. by regarding Jesus's temptation as a subjective experience, by explaining some of the miracles in a natural way) he gave occasion for the suspicion of heresy. At length in 1729 the charge of projecting an edition of the Greek Testament savouring of Arian and Socinian views was formally laid against him. The end of the long and unedifying trial was his dismissal, on the 13th of May 1730, from his office of curate of St Leonard's. He then removed from Basel to Amsterdam, where a relative, Johann Heinrich Wetstein, had an important printing and publishing business, from whose office excellent editions of the classics were issued, and also Gerard of Maestricht's edition of the Greek Testament. Wetstein had begun to print in this office an edition of the Greek Testament, which was suddenly stopped for some unknown reason. As soon as he reached Amsterdam he published anonymously the Prolegomena ad Novi Testamenti Graeci editionem, which he had proposed should accompany his Greek Testament, and which was republished by him, with additions, as part of his great work, 1751. The next year (1731) the Remonstrants offered him the chair of philosophy in their college at Amsterdam, vacated by the illness of Jean le Clerc, on condition that he should clear himself of the suspicion of heresy. He thereupon returned to Basel, and procured a reversal (March 22, 1732) of the previous decision, and readmission to all his clerical offices. But, on his becoming a candidate for the Hebrew chair at Basel, his orthodox opponents procured his defeat and his retirement to Amsterdam. At