Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/260

244 clergymen who were sent to the great Westminster As sembly. In 1649 he was one of the commissioners sent to Holland for the purpose of inviting Charles II. to Scot land, and of settling the terms of his admission to the government. He continued to take an active part in all the minor disputes of the church, and in 1661, after the ejection of Gillespie, he was made principal of the Glasgow University. He died in August of the following year, his death being probably hastened by his mortification at the apparently firm establishment of Episcopacy in Scot land. Baillie was a man of learning and ability; his views were not extreme, and he played but a secondary part in the stirring events of the time. His Letters, by which he is now chiefly remembered, are of considerable historical importance, and give a very lively picture of the period. A complete memoir and a full notice of all his writings will be found in Dr Laing s edition of the Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, Bannatyne Club, 3 vols., Edin burgh, 1841-42.  BAILLY,, a French astronomer and orator, was born at Paris on the 15th September 1736. He was originally intended for the profession of a painter ; his own inclinations, however, tended strongly towards literary pursuits, and it is said that at a very early age he had com pleted two tragedies. But his acquaintance and friendship with the celebrated mathematician Lacaille, and perhaps the example of his brilliant young contemporary Clairaut, finally decided the direction of his studies, which were then entirely devoted to science and scientific investigation. The first of his labours was a calculation of the comet which appeared in the year 1759. In 1763 he was admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences ; and in the same year he published a reduction of the observations made by Lacaille in 1760 and 1761 on the zodiacal stars, a compila tion of great labour and utility. In 1764 he competed for the prize offered by the Academy for a dissertation on the theory of Jupiter s satellites. Lagrange, who was a complete master of the most powerful analysis, was the successful competitor ; but Bailly s memoir, which was published in an expanded form in 1766, showed great ability, and at once established the author s reputation as a physical astronomer. He followed up his dissertation in 1771 with an able and important memoir on the Liyht of the Satellites, in which he expounded some novel and elegant methods of observation. His attention, meantime, was not solely devoted to ab stract science ; he was equally distinguished for eloquence and brilliancy of style. His tloges on Corneille, Leibnitz, Moliere, and others, were universally admired. In 1773 he was proposed as a candidate for the secretaryship of the Academy of Sciences, and was supported by Buffon ; the influence of D Alembert, however, secured the appointment of the famous Condorcet. In 1784 Bailly was made secre tary of the French Academy, and in the following year he was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. This was the only instance, from the time of Fontenelle, of any writer being at the same time a member of all the three academies. In the year 1775 he published the first volume of his most extensive work, History of Astronomy, which con tained the history from its origin down to the foundation of the Alexandrian school. This was followed by three volumes on Modern Astronomy, published between 1776 and 1783. The work is of little or no historical value, but it is admirably written, and added greatly to the author s reputation as a master of narrative exposition. In 1787 he completed the history by a volume on Indian and Ori ental astronomy, which shows considerable erudition, but is not founded on a complete knowledge of the Indian records, and is highly fantastic in its speculations. The quiet course of Bailly s life, hitherto devoted to literature and science, was now broken in upon by that great convulsion, the French Revolution, of which he was one of the first and most zealous promoters. In the part which he acted, he has had the singular good fortune to be well spoken of by opposite factions, and has never been charged either with want of integrity or with selfish de signs. When the states-general of France were assembled in 1789, he was elected a deputy to the tiers-etat, of which he was afterwards chosen president; and when the na tional assembly had been constituted, he continued in the chair, and officiated as president at the time the king s proclamation was issued ordering that body to disperse. During the struggle which took place between the national assembly and the court, Bailly was amongst the most for ward in asserting those popular rights which were then new in France ; and it was he who dictated the famous oath to the members of the tiers-etat, by which they pledged themselves &quot;to resist tyrants and tyranny, and never to separate till they had obtained a free constitu tion.&quot; On the 14th of July following, the day on which the Bastille was stormed and taken by the people, he was by universal consent appointed mayor of Paris. In this high office he is allowed to have acted with great integrity, courage, and moderation, and to have discharged its ardu ous and sometimes perilous duties in a highly honourable manner, and during its course he was instrumental in pro moting the various measures by which the popular party at length prevailed over that of the court ; for which, as well as for his conduct in other respects, he obtained a high degree of popularity. But the multitude, newly un shackled from the fetters of despotism, greedy of novelty, fired with enthusiastic and unsettled notions of freedom, and daily panting for change, would brook no opposition to their wild schemes. Bailly, who probably saw too late the general disposition of the people to anarchy, still wished the laws to be respected, and hoped by the vigorous enforce ment of them to restore and maintain tranquillity. He ordered some deputies from the military insurgents of Nancy to be arrested, and firmly opposed the rash proceedings of Marat and Hebert ; he ceased to be a member of the Jacobin club; and he exerted himself strongly to persuade the populace to permit the king and royal family to depart to St Cloud. By these measures, which were very distasteful to the fickle and infuriated people, he lost their confidence and favour ; and his popularity was finally destroyed by his conduct on the occasion of the tumultuous meeting of the populace on the 17th of July 1791, to demand the abolition of monarchy ; for, when called on by the national assembly to disperse the mob, who had assaulted the sol diery, he ordered the latter to fire, by which means 40 persons were killed and above 100 wounded. Finding himself after this an object of hatred and suspicion to the people, whom he had faithfully served, he resigned his office at the dissolution of the constituent assembly in the end of the year 1791, and retired to Nantes. From there he wrote to Laplace, who was residing at Melun, and pro posed, if it were safe, to join him. Laplace, finding that a de tachment of revolutionary troops had been ordered to Melun, advised Bailly not to venture, but his advice was neglected. The ex-mayor was recognised by one of the soldiers, arrested, and thrown into prison. Arraigned on 10th November 1793 before a sanguinary tribunal, he was on the llth condemned to death as a conspirator, and exe cuted the day following, near the spot where he had given the order for the military to fire on the people. He met his death with the greatest calmness and courage.

