Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/501

Rh P P P P 481 of slavery in the Southern States until its abolition modi fied the system of relief. The searching inquiry into the administration of the poor laws in 1832-34 was not confined to the United King dom or to the States of America. Returns were obtained through the foreign ministers, and the result as to Europe is thus comprehensively stated by Nassau Senior in 1835: &quot;A legal claim to relief exists in Norway, Sweden, Rus sia, Denmark, Mecklenburg, Prussia, Wiirtemberg, Bavaria, and the canton of Bern, but does not exist in the Hanse- atic towns, Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, the Sar dinian states, Frankfort, Venice, Greece, or Turkey.&quot; In the north of Europe the great peculiarity of the system is stated to be &quot; the custom of affording relief by quartering the paupers on the landholders in the country and on house holders in the towns.&quot; Senior arrived at the conclusion that, in those portions of the Continent in which the Eng lish principle of acknowledging in every person a right to be supported by the public existed, the compulsory relief had not, except perhaps in the canton of Bern, produced evils resembling either in intensity or extent those then experienced in the United Kingdom, and that in the major ity of the nations that had adopted it the existing system appeared to work well. The poor laws of Russia, however, if they could be called poor laws, were merely parts of her system of slavery. The absence of poor laws in France, and the charitable establishments, many of them under state management, are noticed in the article FRANCE. Senior arrived at the conclusion that the comprehensive and discriminate system of public relief established in France in relation to these institutions was not so complete as in Belgium. For the poor there see BELGIUM, where benevolent and charitable institutions and hospitals, charity workshops and depots of mendicity or workhouses, and the bureaux de bienfaisance are noticed. The power of expulsion pour vagabondage exercised as a matter of daily routine in France operates as a restraint on vagrancy, although having a wider range than the English vagrancy laws. The majority of the indigent who receive public relief in France are foreigners. The beneficent, including eleemosynary, institutions of united Italy are treated of under that head in ITALY. The &quot; pauper colonies &quot; of Holland, established in the first quarter of the present century (the first idea of which seems to have been derived from a colony of Chinese in Java), attracted public attention in England and Europe generally about the time the provision for the poor and the administration of the poor laws were under considera tion, immediately before their reform in 1834. The object of the institutions in Holland was to remove those persons who were a burden to society to the poorest waste lands, where under judicious regulations they were enabled to the number of many thousands to provide for their own sub sistence. It is remarkable that various schemes put forth in the 17th and 18th centuries for the reform of the British poor laws already cited teem with comparisons favourable to Holland. Sir Matthew Hale refers to the industry and orderly management prevailing in Holland and Flanders. Sir J. Child and others do the like. Among various works 011 poor laws see Burn s History and the modern work of Sir G. Nicholls; Nassau Senior s Poor Laius of European States ; Const s and Davis s treatises ; Glen s Poor-law Orders ; Reports of Poor-Law Commissioners ; Reports of Poor-Law and Local Government Boards from 1834. (J. E. D. ) POPAYAN, a city of the republic of Colombia, capital of the state of Cauca, is situated in 2 26 N. lat. and 76 D 49 W. long., at a height of 5948 feet (E. Andre, 1876), on the banks of one of the head streams of the Cauca in the great plain in the heart of the Cordilleras. It was founded by Belalcazar in 1538 on the site of an Indian settlement, and in 1558 it received a coat of arms from the king of Spain and the title of &quot;Muy noble y muy leal.&quot; Pope Paul III. made it a bishop s see in 1547. By means of its gold mines and its share in the commerce between Quito and the valley of the Magdalena Popayan became a large and flourishing city ; but political disturbances and earthquakes (1827 and 1834) have reduced it to a place of 7000 to 10,000 inhabitants (8485 in 1870). It has a cathedral built by the Jesuits, several considerable churches, two seminaries founded about 1870 by French Lazarists (who occupy and have restored the old Jesuit convent), a mint, and a bank. The university was at one time celebrated ; and the city is the birthplace of Caldas the astronomer and Mosquera the geographer. The volcano of Purace, 20 miles south-east of the town, had according to Caldas a height of 17, 000 feet, but Andre s measurement gave only 16,102 feet. From a vent 6 feet across at a height of 14,970 feet ( Boussingault, 1831) steam and gas are discharged with violence sufficient to blow a man away like a straw. On the flanks of the mountain are several hot sulphurous springs and those of Coconuco are frequented by the Colombians. POPE is the name given in England to a small fresh water perch (Acerina cernud), also called RUFFE, which is generally distributed in the rivers of central Europe and common in most fresh waters of England. It was first made known by Dr Caius, a keen observer who lived in the middle of the 16th century, and is well known by his work De Canibus Britannicis. He found the fish in the river Yar, and figured it under the name of Aspredo, the Latin translation of ruffe, which name refers to the re markable roughness of the scales with which it is covered. In general structure, shape, and habits the pope resembles much the common perch, but rarely exceeds a length of seven inches, and differs in its coloration, which is olive- brown with irregular darker spots on the body and numerous blackish dots on the dorsal and caudal fins. It is most destructive to the fry of other fish, but in many parts of the country is esteemed as food. It spawns generally in the month of April. POPE, ALEXANDER (1688-1744), was the most famous English poet of his century. His own century dwelt most upon his merits; the 19th century is disposed rather to dwell upon his defects, both as a poet and as a man, with a persistency and minuteness that more than counter balance any exaggeration in the estimate formed when it was the fashion to admire his verse and treat his moral obliquity as a foible. Substantially, the best judgment of the two centuries is at one, only different sides are pro minent in the bulk of current criticism. All are agreed that he was not a poet of the first rank, and nobody can deny that he did certain things in literature in a way that has been the despair of all who have since attempted the same kind of thing. The great point of difference lies in the importance to be assigned to such work as Pope s satires. The polemic against his title to the name of poet would be contemptible were it not that beneath the dispute about the name there is a desire to impress on the public a respect for the highest kinds of poetry. The 19th century takes the poet s mission more seriously than the 18th. Similarly with Pope s moral delinquencies. With the exception of some details recently brought to light with an industry worthy of a better subject, his con temporaries were as well aware of these delinquencies as we are now, only none but his bitter enemies were so earnest in denouncing them. &quot;In this design,&quot; Johnson says in his comments on the Dunciad, &quot;there was petulance and malignity enough, but I cannot think it very criminal.&quot; And this was the general verdict of his contemporaries about the poet s moral weakness. They knew that he was insincere, intriguing, touchy, and spiteful, but, as nobody was much harmed by his conduct, they could not think it very criminal. Perhaps his physical weakness made them XIX. 6 1