Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/99

Rh A C C A C C 83 to pay in some other way, as, for example, partly in money and partly by another bill. Acceptance may be absolute, conditional, or partial Absolute acceptance is an engage ment to pay the bill strictly according to its tenor, and is made by the drawee subscribing his name, with or without the word &quot; accepted,&quot; at the bottom of the bill, or across the face of it. Conditional acceptance is a promise to pay on a contingency occurring, as, for example, on the sale of Certain goods consigned by the drawer to the acceptor. No contingency is allowed to be mentioned in the body of the bill, but a contingent acceptance is quite legal, and equally binding with an absolute acceptance upon the acceptor when the contingency has occurred. Partial acceptance is where the promise is to pay only part of the sum mentioned in the bill, or to pay at a different time or place from those specified. In all cases acceptance involves the signature of the acceptor either by himself or by some person duly authorised on his behalf. A bill can be accepted in the first instance only by the person or persons to whom it is addressed ; but if he or they fail to do so, it may, after being protested for non-acceptance, be accepted by another &quot; supra protest,&quot; for the sake of the honour of one or more of the parties concerned in it. ACCESSION is applied, in a historical or constitutional sense, to the coming to the throne of a dynasty or line of sovereigns, as the accession of the House cf Hanover. The corresponding term, when a single sovereign is spoken of, is &quot; succession.&quot; In law, accession is a method of acquiring property, by which, in things that have a close connection with or dependence on one another, the property of the principal draws after it the property of the accessory, according to the principle, accessio cedet principally or accessor ium sequitur principale. Thus, the owner of a cow becomes likewise the owner of the calf, and a landowner becomes proprietor of what is added to his estate by alluvion. Accession produced by the art or industry of man has been called industrial accession, and may be by specification, as when wine is made out of grapes, or by confusion or commixture. Accession sometimes likewise signifies consent or acquiescence. Thus, in the bankrupt law of Scotland, when there is a settlement by a trust-deed, it is accepted on the part of each creditor by a deed of accession. ACCESSORY, a person guilty of a felonious offence, not as principal, but by participation; as by advice, command, aid, or concealment. In treason, accessories are excluded, every individual concerned being considered as a principal. In crimes under the degree of felony, also, all persons concerned, if guilty at all, are regarded as principals. (See 24 and 25 Viet. c. 94. s. 8.) There are two kinds of accessories before the fact, and after ic. The first is he who commands or prociires another to commit felony, and is not present himself ; for if he be present, he is a principal. The second is he who receives, assists, or comforts any man that has done murder or felony, whereof he has knowledge. An accessory before the fact is liable to th &amp;gt; same punishment as the principal ; and there is now indeed no practical difference between such an accessory and a principal in regard either to indictment, trial, or punishment (24 and 25 Viet. c. 94). Accessories after the fact are in general punishable with imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years (ib. s. 4). The law of Scotland makes no distinction between the accessory to any crime (called art and part} and the principal. Except in the case of treason, accession after the fact is not noticed by the law of Scotland, unless as an element of evidence to prove previous accession. ACCIAJUOLI, DONATO, was born at Florence in 1428. He was famous for his learning, especially in Greek and mathematics, and for his services to his native state. Having previously been intrusted with several important embassies, he became Gonfalonier of Florence in 1473. Ho died at Milan in 1478, when on his way to Paris to ask the aid of Louis XL on behalf of the Florentines against Pope Sixtus IV. His body was taken back to Florence, and buried in the church of the Carthusians at the public expense, and his daughters were portioned by his fellow- citizens, the fortune he left being, owing to his probity and disinterestedness, very small. He wrote a Latin transla tion of some of Plutarch s Lives (Florence, 1478) ; Com mentaries on Aristotle s Ethics and Politics ; and the lives of Hannibal, Scipio, and Charlemagne. In the work on Aristotle he had the co-operation of his master Argyropylus. ACCIDENT. An attribute of a thing or class of things, which neither belongs to, nor is in any way deducible from, the essence of that thing or class, is termed its accident. An accident may be either inseparable or separable : the former, when we can conceive it to be absent from that with which it is found, although it is always, as far as we know, present, i.e., when it is not necessarily but is uni versally present ; the latter, when it is neither necessarily nor universally present. It is often difficult to determine whether a particular attribute is essential or accidental to the object we are investigating, subsequent research frequently proving that what we have described as accidental ought to be classed as essential, and vice versa. Practically, and for the time being, an attribute, which neither directly nor indirectly forms part of the signification of the term used to designate the object, may be considered an accident; and many philosophers look upon this as the only intelligible ground for the distinction. Propositions expressing the relation between a thing or class and an accident, and also between a thing or class and its property (i.e., something deducible from, but not strictly forming part of, its essence), are variously styled &quot;accidental,&quot; &quot;synthetical,&quot; &quot;real,&quot; &quot; ampliative,&quot; in contradistinction to &quot; essential,&quot; &quot; analy tical,&quot; &quot;verbal,&quot; and &quot; explicative&quot; propositions. The former give us information that we could not have dis covered from an analysis of the subject notion e.g., &quot;man is found in New Zealand ;&quot; the latter merely state what we already know, if we understand the meaning of the language employed, e.g., &quot;man is rational.&quot; ACCIUS, a poet of the 16th century, to whom is attributed A Paraphrase of jEsop s Fables, of which Julius Scaliger speaks with great praise. ACCIUS (or ATTITJS), Lucius, a Latin tragic poet, was the son of a freedman, born, according to St Jerome, in the year of Rome 583, though this appears somewhat uncertain. He made himself known before the death of Pacuvius by a dramatic piece, which he exhibited the same year that Pacuvius brought one on the stage, the latter being then eighty years of age, and Accius only thirty. We do not know the name of thio piece of Accius s, but the titles of several of his tragedies are mentioned by various authors. He wrote on the most celebrated stories which had been represented on the Athenian stage ; but he did not always take his subject from Grecian story ; for he composed at least one dramatic piece wholly Roman, entitled Brutm, and referring to the expulsion of the Tarquins. Only fragments of his tragedies remain. He did not confine himself to dramatic writing, having left other productions, particularly his Annals, mentioned by Macrobius, Priscian, Festus, and Nonnius Marcellu?. He has been censured for the harshness of his style, but in other respects he has been esteemed a great poet. He died at an advanced age ; and Cicero, who evidently attaches considerable weight to his opinions, speaks of having conversed with him in his youth. ACCLAMATION, the expression of the opinion, favour able or unfavourable, of any assembly by means of the voice. Applause denotes strictly a similar expression by