Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/811

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1em  CAMDEN, (1713-1794), chief -justice of the Common Pleas, lord chancellor of England, and president of the council, was born in 1713. He was a descendant of an old Devonshire family of high standing, the third son of Sir John Pratt, chief-justice of the King s Bench in the reign of George I. He received his early education at Eton College, whence he passed, at the age of seventeen, to King s College, Cambridge. In 1734 he became a fellow of his college, and in the following year obtained his degree of B.A. Having adopted his father s profession, he had entered the Middle Temple in 1728, and ten years later he was called to the bar. He practised at first in the courts of Common Law, travelling also the western circuit. In 1740 he took his degree of M.A. For some years his practice was so limited, and he became so much discouraged, that he seriously thought of turning his back on the law and entering the church. He listened, however, to the advice of his friend Sir Robert Henley, a brother barrister, afterwards known as Lord Chancellor Northington, and persevered, working on and waiting for the success which in such case is usually slow to come. The first case which brought him prominently into notice and gave him assur ance of ultimate success was the Government prosecution, in 1752, of a bookseller, William Owen, for a libel on the House of Commons. Pratt was engaged as junior counsel for the defence, and he made his mark in an earnest and powerful speech, which contributed to the verdict for the defendant. In 1753 he undertook the defence of Murphy, who stood charged with the forgery of a will. Four years later, through the influence of William Pitt (afterwards earl of Chatham), with whom he had formed an intimate friendship while at Eton, he received the appointment of attorney-general. The same year he entered the House of Commons as member for the small borough of Downton in Wiltshire, which was subsequently dis franchised. Hs sat in parliament four years, but did not distinguish himself as a debater. His professional practice now largely increased. One of the most noticeable incidents of his tenure of office as attorney-general was the prosecution of Dr Shebbeare, a violent party writer of the day, for a libel against the Government contained in his notorious Letters to the People of England, which were published in the years 175G-1758. As a proof of Pratt s moderation in a period of passionate party warfare and frequent &quot; State Trials,&quot; it is noted that this was the only official prosecution for libel which he set on foot. In January 1762 Pratt was raised to the bench as chief-justice of the Common Pleas, this post being vacant by the death of Chief-Justice Willes. He was at the same time knighted. Soon after his elevation the nation was thrown into great excitement about the prosecution of the &quot; worthless profligate &quot; John Wilkes, and the question involved in it of the legality of &quot; general warrants.&quot; Chief-Justice Pratt pronounced, with decisive and almost passionate energy, against their legality, thus giving voice to the strong feeling of the nation, and winning for himself an extraordinary degree of popularity as one of the &quot; maintaincrs of English constitutional liberty.&quot; Honours fell thick upon him in the form of addresses from the city of London and many large towns, and of presenta tions of freedom from various corporate bodies. In July 1765 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in the county of Kent ; and in the following year he was removed from the court of Common Pleas to take his scat as lord chancellor (July 30, 1766). This seat he retained less than four years ; for although he discharged its duties in so efficient a manner that, with one exception, his decisions were never reversed on appeal, he took up a position of such uncompromising hostility to the Governments of the day, the Grafton and North adminis trations, on the greatest and most exciting matters, the treatment of the American Colonies and the proceedings against John Wilkes, that the Government had no choice but to require of him the surrender of the great seal. He retired from the Court of Chancery in January 1770, but he continued to take a warm interest in the political affairs and discussions of the time. In his speeches in the House of Lords he sometimes showed a strong ill-feeling against his great opponent, Lord Mansfield, on the doctrine of libel. He continued steadfastly to oppose the taxation of the American colonists, and signed, in 1778, the protest of the Lords in favour of an address to the king on the subject of the manifesto of the American commissioners. In 1782 he was appointed president of the council under the Rocking- ham administration, but retired in the following year. Within a few months he was reinstated in this office under the Pitt administration, and held it till his death. Lord Camden was a strenuous opponent of Mr Fox s India Bill, took an animated part in the debates on important public matters till within two years of his death, introduced in 1786 the scheme of a regency on occasion of the king s insanity, and to the last zealously defended his early views on the functions of juries, especially of their right to decide on all questions of libel. He was raised to the dignity of an earl in May 1786, and was at the same time created Viscount Bayham. Earl Camden died in London, April 18, 1794. His remains were interred in Seale church in Kent.  CAMEL, the Djemal of the Arabs and Gamal of the Hebrews, a genus of Ruminant Mammals, which, with the South American llamas, form the family Cameliclce, and which in their dentition, in the absence of horns and of hoofs completely enveloping the toes, and in the separation of the navicular and cuboid bones of the tarsus, show an affinity with certain of the Perissodactyle Ungidata. In common with the llamas, and unlike all other ruminants, the camel has two upper incisor teeth, conical and laterally com pressed, and somewhat resembling canine teeth, of which in the upper jaw there are two, in addition to twelve molars. Beneath there are six incisors, two canines, and ten molar teeth, the whole forming a dentition admirably suited for the tearing asunder and mastication of the coarse dry shrubs on which the camel usually feeds. It possesses besides many other peculiarities in form and structure specially adapted to its mode of life. Its nostrils are in the form of oblique slits, which can be opened or shut at will, and thus the organ of smell, which in the camel is of extraordinary acuteness, is preserved from contact with the hot acrid sand that, like a &quot; pillar of cloud,&quot; frequently sweeps across the desert. The extremities only of the two toes which form the foot are free, and are each terminated by a short and somewhat curved nail, the rest of the toes being connected together by means of a broad elastic pad on which the foot rests, and which buoys the camel up as it moves on the soft and ever-shifting surface. The horny callosities on the breast and limb-joints, on which the camel rests when being loaded, may possibly have resulted from the long ages of servitude to which it has been subjected, but whether they existed in the wild camel or not, traces of them are said to be now found on the new-born young. The hump or humps on the camel s back are mere masses of fat, without any corresponding curve on the vertebral column of the animal, and form a reserve of nourishment to be used when other supplies fail ; consequently during lengthened periods of pri vation, and during the rutting season, when the males almost cease to eat, these masses greatly diminish in size. The camel 