Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/627

Rh menced against him for some assertions in one of his speeches, but he escaped with nothing more severe than a censure by the Council of Advocates. By this time he had a very large business as advocate, and was engaged on behalf of journalists in many press prosecutions. He stood forward with a noble resolution to maintain the freedom of the press, and severely censured the rigorous measures of the police department. In 1830, not long before the fall of Charles X., Berryer was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He appeared there as the cham pion of the king, and encouraged him in his tyrannical course. After the Revolution of July, when the Legitimists withdrew in a body, Berryer alone retained his seat as deputy ; and though avowedly the friend of the deposed king, he took an independent course, not making himself an unscrupulous partizan, but guided in his advocacy or his opposition by reason and prudence. He was one of the influential men who resisted, but unsuccessfully, the abolition of the hereditary peerage. He advocated trial by jury in press prosecutions, the extension of municipal franchises, and other liberal measures. In May 1832 he hastened from Paris to see the duchess of Berri on her landing in the south of France for the purpose of organizing an insurrection in favour of her son, the duke of Bor deaux, since known as the count of Chambord. Berryer attempted to turn her from her purpose ; and failing in this he set out for Switzerland. He was, however, arrested, imprisoned, and brought to trial as one of the in surgents. He was immediately acquitted. In the follow ing year he pleaded for the liberation of the countess; made a memorable speech in defence of Chateaubriand, who was prosecuted for his violent attacks on the Government of Louis Philippe ; and undertook the defence of several Legitimist journalists. In 1834 he defended two deputies in a Government prosecution for libel, and the same year opposed the passing of a new rigorous law against political and other associations. Among the more noteworthy events of his subsequent career were his defence of Louis Napoleon after the ridiculous affair of Boulogne, in 1840, and a visit to England in December 1843, for the purpose of formally acknowledging the pretender, the duke of Bordeaux, then living in London, as Henry V., and lawful king of France. This proceeding brought on him the cen sure of M. Guizot, then first minister of Louis Philippe. Berryer was an active member of the National Assembly convoked after the Revolution of February 1848, again visited the pretender, then at Wiesbaden, and still fought in the old cause. This long parliamentary career was closed by a courageous protest against the coup d etat of December 2, 1851. After a lapse of twelve years, however, he appeared once more in his forsaken field as a deputy to the Corps Le&quot;gislatif. Meanwhile he had been a diligent promoter of the much talked of fusion of the two branches of the Bourbon family, and had distinguished himself at the bar by great speeches on the trial of Montalembert in 1858, and in the civil proceedings set on foot by M. Patterson against Jerome Bonaparte in I860. Berryer vas elected member of the French Academy in 1854. A visit paid by this famous orator to Lord Brougham in 1865 &amp;gt;vas made the occasion of a banquet given in his honour by the benchers of the Temple and of Lincoln s Inn. In November 1868 he was removed by his own desire from Paris to his country seat at Augerville, and there he died on the 29th of the same month.  BERTHOLLET,, one of the most dis tinguished chemists of the French school, was born at Talloire, near Annecy, in Savoy, in 1748. He studied first at Chambery, and subsequently at Turin, where he took his degree as a physician. In 1772 he settled at riSj and eoon became the medical attendant of Philip^ duke of Orleans. By the publication of a volume of chemical essays, he gained such reputation that he was admitted in 1781 into the Academic des Sciences. He was appointed Government superintendent of the establishment for the improvement of dyeing; and in 1791 he published his essay Sur la Teinture, a work that first systematized and chemically explained the principles of the art. It was translated into English by Dr William Hamilton, 1794. Berthollet early adopted the chemical views of Lavoisier, and took part with him in the formation of a new system of chemical nomenclature. He confirmed and extended the discoveries of Priestley on ammonia, discovered ful minating silver, and greatly extended our knowledge of the dephlogisticated marine acid of Scheele, for which the name of oxymuriatic acid was then proposed, and which is now termed chlorine. It was he who in 1785 first proposed to apply it to bleaching. He discovered the remarkable salt now called chlorate of potash ; and we owe to him also an excellent essay on the chemical constitution of soaps. Berthollet s contributions to chemistry are scattered through the pages of the Journal de Physique, Annales dc Chimie, Mtmoires de Vlnstitut, and Memoires d Arceuil. At the commencement of the French Revolution the scarcity of saltpetre for the manufacture of gunpowder was much felt; and Berthollet was placed at the head of a commission for improving the processes for obtaining and purifying this important product within the territory of France. Soon afterwards we find him one of a commission for improving the processes in the smelting of iron, and con verting it into steel. In 1792 he was appointed a director of the mint, and in 1794 he became a member of the committee on agriculture and the arts ; while he filled the office of teacher of chemistry in the Polytechnic and Normal Schools of Paris, and took an active part in the remodel ling of the National Institute in 1795. In the following year Berthollet and Monge were appointed heads of a commission to select in Italy the choicest specimens of ancient and modern art, for the national galleries of Paris. In .1798 Berthollet accompanied General Bonaparte to Egypt. On the overthrow of the Directory he was made a senator and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. Under the empire he was created a count, and he sat as a peer on the restoration of the Bourbons. His last work was his curious essay on Chemical Statics (1803), in which he controverted the views of Bergman. Berthollet was a man of great modesty and unostentatious manners. For some years he lived retired at Arcueil, especially after the misconduct and suicide of his only son. He died at Paris of a painful malady bravely borne, November 0, 1822.  BERTHOUD,, a celebrated Swiss chrono meter-maker, was born in Neufchatel. The date of his birth is variously given as 1725, 1727, and 1729. His father was an architect, and the son was intended for the church ; but, showing a taste for mechanics, he was placed under an experienced workman to be instructed in clock and watch making, and was afterwards sent to Paris to improve himself in the knowledge and practice of the art. He settled in Paris in 1745, and applied himself to the making of chronometers, an art which was then in its infancy. He soon attained distinction for the excellence of his workmanship and the accuracy of his chronometers. Fleurieu and Borda, by order of the French Government, made a voyage from La Rochelle to the West Indies and Newfoundland for the purpose of testing them, and they found that they gave the longitude with an error of only a quarter of a degree, after a cruise of six weeks. Satisfac tory results were also obtained in the expedition of Verdun, Borda, and Pingr6, which was appointed to try these chronometers and those of his only rival, Lo Roy. Sully, 