Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/640

Rh 616 R O C R O D 1766 he succeeded his former chief as first lord of the treasury and prime minister. Then followed many years of fruitless opposition to the king's personal authority as exhibited through his ministers, but at last, on 27th March 1782, Lord Rockingham again became prime minister with Fox and Shelburne as secretaries of state. This time he enjoyed office for but a few weeks, for he died on 1st July 1782. A few words from his epitaph by Burke deserve quotation as giving the reason of the pre- dominance of such an ordinary man as Lord Rockingham over a party abounding in men of great abilities : " A man worthy to be held in esteem, because he did not live for himself. . . . He far exceeded all other statesmen in the art of drawing together, without the seduction of self- interest, the concurrence and co-operation of various dis- positions and abilities of men, whom he assimilated to his character and associated in his labours." See Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and his Contemporaries by George Thomas, Earl of Albemarle, 2 vols. , 1852, and such bio- graphical works as Macknight's Life of Burke, Lord E. Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord Shelburne, &c. ROCK ISLAND, a city of the United States, the capital of Rock Island county, Illinois, is situated opposite Davenport on the left bank of the Mississippi, about 3 miles above the mouth of the Rock river and at the foot of the Upper Rapids, which extend for about 16 miles. Distant by rail 181 miles west of Chicago and 247 miles north of St Louis, Rock Island is one of the great centres of railroad and river traffic. With Davenport (in Iowa) it is connected by a two -story road and railway bridge constructed by the Government in 1870. Among the public buildings are a large public library and St Augus- tana College, founded by the Swedish Lutherans. Glass- works, a plough factory, a distillery, flour -mills, and a stove factory are the principal industrial establishments. The city, however, is best known from the great national arsenal situated on the island from which it derives its name. This island is a ridge of limestone rock about 3 miles long and with an area of 960 acres. As the site of Fort Armstrong it became known in the Black Hawk War ; the prison was used for the detention of Confederate prisoners during the Civil War ; and since that date the Government has constructed the present extensive Avorks, intended to be the central United States armoury. There are ten vast stone workshops, each with a stone house in the rear, as well as officers' quarters, offices, &c. The population of Rock Island city was 5130 in 1860, 7890 in 1870, and 11,659 in 1880. Its charter dates from 1849. ROCKLAND, a city and seaport of the United States, county town of Knox county, Maine, is situated 60 miles by rail east-north-east of Portland on Owl's Head Bay, an inlet of Ponobscot Bay. It was incorporated in 1854, has an area of 7000 acres and a sea frontage of about 4^ miles, and numbered 7599 inhabitants in 1880 (in 1870 7074). Lime-burning is the staple trade (1,000,000 barrels per annum). The adjacent islands Dix Island, Hurricane Island, &c. are known by their granite quarries. Water for the city is obtained from Lake Chickawaukie. ROCKY MOUNTAINS. See UNITED STATES. ROCROI, a town of France, the chef-lieu of an arron- dissement in the department of Ardennes, lies 15 miles in a straight line north-north-west of M6zieres and within 2 miles of the Belgian frontier, at a height of 1083 feet above the sea. As a fortified place it commands the Ardennes plateau between the valley of the Meuse and the headwaters of the Oise. The present fortifications were constructed by Vauban. In 1881 the population was 1649 (commune 2977). This spot, originally called Croix-de-Rau or Rau Croix, was fortified in the 16th century and besieged by the imperialists in 1555. Invested by the Spaniards in 1643, it was relieved by the young duke of Enghien (afterwards the Great Conde) after a brilliant victory. Captured in 1658 by the same duke, then in the Spanish service, it was not restored to France till the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. In 1815 Rocroi was besieged for a month by the allies. RODBERTUS, KARL JOHANN (1805-1875), by some considered to be the founder of scientific socialism, was born at Greifswald on 12th August 1805, his father being a professor at the university there. He studied law at Gottingen and Berlin, thereafter engaging in various legal occupations ; and, after travelling for some time, he bought the estate of Jagetzow in Pomerania, whence his name of Rodbertus-Jagetzow. In 1836 he settled on this estate, and henceforward devoted his life chiefly to economic and other learned studies, taking also some interest in local and provincial affairs. After the revolution of March 1848 Rodbertus was elected member of the Prussian national assembly, in which body he belonged to the left centre ; and for fourteen days he filled the post of minister of public worship and education. He sat for Berlin in the second chamber of 1849, and moved the adoption of the Frankfort imperial constitution, which was carried. When the system of dividing the Prussian electorate into three classes was adopted, Rodbertus recommended abstention from voting. His only subsequent appearance in public life was his candidature for the first North German diet, in which he was defeated. His correspondence with Lassalle was an interesting feature of his life. At one time Rodbertus had some intention of forming a " social party " with the help of the conservative socialist Rudolf Meyer and of Hasenclevefr, a prominent follower of Lassalle; but no progress was made in this. Rodbertus was neither disposed nor qualified to be an agitator, being a man of a quiet and critical temperament, who believed that society could not be improved by violent changes, but by a long and gradual course of development. He warned the work- ing men of Germany against connecting themselves with any political party, enjoining them to be a " social party " pure and simple. He died on 8th December 1875. The general position of Rodbertus was "social, monarchical, and national." With his entire soul he held the purely economic part of the creed of the German social-democratic party, but he did not agree with their methods, and had no liking for the productive associations with state help of Lassalle. He regarded a socialistic republic as a possible thing, but he cordially accepted the monarchic institution in his own country and hoped that a German emperor might undertake the role of a social emperor. He was also a true patriot and was proud and hopeful of the career that lay before the regenerated empire of Germany. The basis of the economic teach- ing of Rodbertus is the principle laid down by Adam Smith and Ricardo and insisted on by all the later socialists, that labour is the source and measure of value. In connexion with this he developed the position that rent, profit, and wages are all parts of a national income produced by the united organic labour of the workers of the community. Consequently there can be no talk of the wages of labour being paid out of capital ; wages is only that part of the national income which is received by the workmen, of a national income which they have themselves entirely produced. The wages fund theory is thus summarily disposed of. But the most important result of the theory is his position that the possession of land and capital enables the landholders and capitalists to compel the workmen to divide the product of their labour with those non- working classes, and in such a proportion that the workers only obtain as much as can support them in life. Thus the iron law of wages is established. Hence also Rodbertus deduces his theory of commercial crises and of pauperism, and in the following way. In spite of the increasing productivity of labour, the workers obtain in general only sufficient to support their class, and therefore a smaller relative share of the national income. But the producers form also the large mass of consumers, and, with the decline of their relative share in the national income, must decline the relative purchasing power of this large class of the people. The growing production is not met by a correspondingly growing consumption ; expansion is succeeded by contraction of production, by a scarcity of employ- ment, and a further decline in purchasing power on the part of the workers. Thus we have a commercial crisis bringing with it pau- perism as a necessary result. In the meantime the purchasing power of the non-producing capitalists and landholders continues relatively to increase ; but, as they have already had enough to buy