Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/78

Rh 66 RUSSELL tote, in reply to Dr Hickes's sermons, in which the lawful- ness of resistance in extreme cases was defended. In the wild schemes of Shaftesbury after the election of Tory sheriffs for London in 1682 he had no share ; upon the viola- tion of the charters, however, in 1683, he began seriously to consider as to the best means .of resisting the Government, and on one occasion attended a meeting at which treason, or what might be construed as treason, was talked. Mon- mouth, Essex, Hampden, Sidney, and Howard of Escrick were the principal of those who met to consult. On the breaking out of the Rye Plot, of which neither he, Essex, nor Sidney had the slightest knowledge, he was accused by informers of promising his assistance to raise an insurrection and compass the death of the king. Refusing to attempt to escape, he was brought before the council, when his attendance at the meeting referred to was charged against him. He was sent on June 26, 1683, to the Tower, and, looking upon himself as a dying man, betook himself wholly to preparation for death. Monmouth offered to appear to take his trial, if thereby he could help Russell, and Essex refused to abscond for fear of injuring his friend's chance of escape. Before a committee of the council Russell, on June 28, acknowledged his presence at the meeting, but denied all knowledge of the proposed insurrection. He reserved his defence, however, until his trial. He would probably have saved his life but for the perjury of Lord Howard. The suicide of Essex, the news of which was brought into court during the trial, was quoted as additional evidence against him, as pointing to the cer- tainty of Essex's guilt. On July 19 he was tried at the Old Bailey, his wife assisting him in his defence. Evidence was given by an informer that, while at Shaftesbury's hiding-place in Wapping, Russell had joined in the pro- posal to seize the king's guard, a charge indignantly denied by him in his farewell paper, and that he was one of a committee of six appointed to prepare the scheme for an insurrection. Howard, too, expressly declared that Russell had urged the entering into communications with Argyll in Scotland. Howard's perjury is clear from other wit- nesses, but the evidence was accepted. Russell spoke with spirit and dignity in his own defence, and, in especial, vehemently denied that he had ever been party to a design so wicked and so foolish as those of the murder of the king and of rebellion. It will be observed that the legality of the trial, in so far as the jurors were not properly quali- fied and the law of treason was shamefully strained, was denied in the Act of 1 William and Mary which annulled the attainder. Hallam maintains that the only overt act of treason proved against Russell was his concurrence in the project of a rising at Taunton, which he denied, and which, Ramsay being the only witness, was not sufficient to warrant a conviction. Russell was sentenced to dio. Many attempts were made to save his life. The old earl of Bedford offered 50,000 or 100,000, and Monmouth, Legge, Lady Ranelagh, and Rochester added their intercessions. Russell himself, in petitions to Charles and James, offered to live abroad if his life were spared, and nev f er again to meddle in the affairs of England. He refused, however, to yield to the influence of Burnet and Tillotson, who endeavoured to make him grant the unlawfulness of resistance, although it is more than probable that compliance in this would have saved his life. He drew up, with Burnet's assist- ance, a paper containing his apology, and he wrote to the king a letter, to be delivered after his death, in which he asked Charles's pardon for any wrong he had done him. A suggestion of escape from Lord Cavendish he refused. He behaved with his usual quiet cheerfulness during his stay in the Tower, spending his last day on earth as he had intended to spend the following Sunday if he had reached it. He received the sacrament from Tillotson, and Burnet twice preached to him. Having supped with his wife, the parting from whom was his only great trial, he slept peacefully, and spent the last morning in devotion with Burnet. He went to the place of execution in Lincoln's Inn Fields with perfect calmness, which was preserved to the last. He died on July 21, 1683, in the forty-fourth year of his age. A true and moderate summing up of his character will bo found in his Life, by Lord John Russell. (0. A.) RUSSELL, JOHN SCOTT (1808-1882), was born in 1808 near Glasgow, a "son of the manse," and was at first destined for the ministry. But this intention on his father's part was changed in consequence of the boy's early lean- ings towards practical science. He attended in succession the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, taking his degree in the last-named at the age of sixteen. After spending a couple of years in workshops, he settled in Edinburgh as a lecturer on science, and soon collected large classes. In 1832-33 he was engaged to give the natural philosophy course at the university, the chair having {become vacant by the death of Leslie. In the following year he began that remarkable series of obser- vations on waves whose results, besides being of very great scientific importance, were the chief determining j factor of his subsequent practical career. Having been consulted as to the possibility of applying steam-naviga- tion to the Edinburgh and Glasgow Canal, he replied that the question could not be answered without experi- ments, and that he was willing to undertake such if a portion of the canal were placed at his disposal. The results of this inquiry are to be found in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (vol. xiv.), and in the British Association Reports (seventh meeting). We need not say more than that the existence of the long wave, or wave of translation, as well as many of its most important features, were here first recognized, and (to give one very simple idea of the value of the investigation) that it was clearly pointed out why there is a special rate, depending on the depth of the water, at which a canal-boat can be towed at the least expenditure of effort by the horse. The elementary mathematical theory of the long wave is very simple, and was soon supplied by commentators on Scott Russell's work; a more complete investigation has been since given by Stokes ; and the subject may be considered as certainly devoid of any special mystery. Russell held an opposite opinion, and it led him to many extraordinary and groundless speculations, some of which have been pub- lished in a posthumous volume, TJie Wave of Translation (1885). His observations led him to propose and experi- ment on a new system of shaping vessels, which is known as the wave system. This culminated in the building of the enormous and unique "Great Eastern," of which it has been recently remarked by a competent authority that " it is probable that, if a new ' Great Eastern ' were now to be built, the system of construction employed by Mr Scott Russell would be followed exactly." Though his fame will rest chiefly on the two great steps we have just mentioned, Scott Russell's activity and ingenuity displayed themselves in many other fields, steam-coaches for roads, improvements in boilers and in marine engines, the immense iron dome of the Vienna exhi- bition, cellular double bottoms for iron ships, <tc. Along with Mr Stafford Northcote (now Lord Iddesleigh), he was joint secretary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 ; and he was one of the chief founders of the Institution of Naval Architects, from the twenty-third volume of whose Trans- actions we have extracted much of what is stated above. Russell contributed the articles STEAM, STEAM-ENGINE, STEAM NAVIGATION, &c., to the 7th edition of the Ency- clopaedia Britahnica. He died at Ventnor. June 8, 1882.