Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/228

Rh 208 y i A V I A paper, which is placed in an urn under official control. In some cantons important financial resolutions involving large state expenses are also submitted to the decision of the people. In the revised federal constitution of 1874, under certain suppositions which have no further interest for us at present, a facultative referendum (i.e., the possi bility of demanding a plebiscite under exceptional circum stances) has been introduced for federal laws. Since that period it has often been employed and has operated like a veto. It is evident that by the compulsory referendum in the cantons the mere veto is rendered superfluous. 1 In examining the question as to what position the veto occupies in jurisprudence, we must separate quite different conceptions which are comprised under the same name. 1. The veto may be a mere right of intervention on the part of a magistrate against the order of another official, or against that of an authority of equal or inferior rank. This was the case in ancient Rome. To this class belong also those cases in which, in the present French republic, the president makes his &quot; no &quot; valid against decisions of the general councillors, and the prefect does the same against decisions of the communal councillors. The use of the expression here is quite justifiable, and this veto is not confined to bills, but refers particularly to adminis trative measures. It affords a guarantee against the abuse of an official position. 2. The veto may be a safety-valve against precipitate decisions, and so a preventive measure. This task is ful filled by the suspensory veto of the president of the North American Union. Similarly, to this class belong the above- mentioned prescriptions of the Spanish and Norwegian constitutions, and also the veto of the governor of an English colony against decisions of the legislature ; for this protest is only intended to prevent a certain want of harmony between the general and the colonial legislation, by calling forth a renewed investigation. This veto is neither an interference with the competence of an authority, nor a division of the legislative power among different factors, but simply a guarantee against precipitancy in the case of a purely legislatiye measure. The wisdom of establishing this veto power by the constitution is thus manifest. 3. It is wrong to apply the term veto to what is merely the negative side of the sanctioning of the laivs, in other words, an act of sovereignty. It would not be in accord ance with the nature of a constitutional monarchy to de clare the monarch s consent to a law unnecessary, or make it a compulsory duty; the legislative power is divided between him and the chambers. The sovereign must therefore be perfectly at liberty to say &quot; yes &quot;or &quot; no &quot; in each single case according to his opinion. If he says the latter, we speak of it as his veto, but this if he possesses an absolute and not merely a suspensory veto is not an intervention and not a preventive measure, but the nega tive side of the exercise of the legislative power, and there fore an act of sovereignty. That this right belongs fully and entirely to the holder of sovereign power however he may be called is self-evident. One chamber can also by protest prevent a bill of the other from coming into force. The &quot;placet of the temporal power for church affairs when it occurs also involves in this manner in itself the veto or non placet.&quot; Where in pure democracies the people in their assembly have the right of veto or referendum, the exercise of it is also a result of the sovereign rights of legislature. The peculiar power of veto possessed by the (Prussian) 1 A. v. Orelli, Das Staatsrecht der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, ]&amp;gt;p. 101 and lOo, and Marquardsen, Handbuch des ii/entlichen Redds der Gegenwart in Monographien, vol. iv,, Freiburg (in Breisgau), 1885. president of the federal council of Germany lies on the boundary between (2) and (3). (A. v. o.) VIAREGGIO, a coast town of Italy, in the province of Lucca, 13 miles by rail north-north-west from Pisa, had in 1881 a population of 10,190 (commune 12,735). The principal industry is fishing, and the place is also a favourite sea-bathing resort. VIATICUM. This word, which in classical Latinity means &quot; provision for a journey &quot; (Gr. ra If/jo8ia), is often used by early Christian writers to denote the sacrament of the Eucharist, and sometimes even is applied to baptism. Ultimately it came to be employed in a restricted sense to denote the last communion given to the dying. The 13th canon of the council of Nice is to the effect that &quot; none, even of the lapsed, shall be deprived of the last and most necessary viaticum (e^oSt ou),&quot; and that the bishop, on ex amination, is to give the oblation to all who desire to partake of the Eucharist on the point of death. The same principle still rules the canon law, it being of course under stood that penitential discipline, which in ordinary cir cumstances would have been due for their offence, is to be undergone by lapsed persons who have thus received the viaticum, in the event of recovery. In extreme cases it is lawful to administer the viaticum to persons not fasting. The ritual to be observed in its administration does not differ from that laid down in the office for the communion of the sick, except in the words of the formula, which is &quot; accipe, carissime f rater (carissima soror), viaticum corporis nostri Jesu Christi, quod te custodiat ab hoste maligno, protegat te, et perducat te ad vitam aeternam. Amen.&quot; VIATKA. See VYATKA. VIAU, or VIAUD, THEOPHILE DE (1590-1626), more com monly called both in his own time and since simply THEO PHILE, a poet of unfortunate life and of great but misused powers, was born at Clairac near Agen in 1590. He went to the capital in his twentieth year and ingratiated himself with at least one patron, the ill-fated duke of Montmorency, who was always constant to him. He also became ac quainted with most of the literary men of the time, and in 1617 composed and produced with success the tragedy of Pyrame et Thisbe. This piece, written in the extravagant Spanish-Italian manner which was fashionable in the in terval between the Pleiade model and the innovations of Corneille, was later the subject of much ridicule, especially directed to the passage in which a sword, reddened with the blood of its master, is said to &quot; blush for its treason,&quot; no very unpardonable conceit in eyes less pedantic than Boileau s. Theophile s prosperity was not lasting. Only two years after the success of Pyrame he was accused of blasphemous and indecent writings, and was exiled to England. Re turning in 1621 and joining the Roman Church (he had been a Huguenot), he served in two campaigns. But he was, rightly or wrongly, associated with the publication of the Parnasse Satirique, a collection of poems of the same character as those which had formerly got him into trouble, and in 1623 was tried, condemned in his absence to death, arrested, and imprisoned in the conciergerie. At length the sentence of death which hung over him was reduced to banishment, and the influence of Montmorency enabled him to hide himself in Paris till his death on 25th Sep tember 1626. For his singular persecution, which, even if the charges had been much better established than they are, would have been surprising enough in an age of unusually loose conduct and writing, the machi nations of the Jesuits are sometimes held responsible. But if Tlieophile had bitter enemies he had warm friends. Six years after his death Georges de Scudery edited his work with a Tomlcau (copy of obituary verses), and a challenge in the preface to any one who might be offended by the editor s eulogy of the poet. This was in 1632 ; the year before had appeared a tragedy entitled Pasi- phad, where the awkwardness of the subject is not redeemed by any merit of treatment ; but it is by no means certainly or even prob-