Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/437

Rh some of the most important reports of the council. Among his separate publications at this time are noted, Du Conseil d Etat envisage comme conseil et comme juridiction dans notre monarchic constitiLtionelle (1818), and De la responsabih te des agents du gouvernement. In the former he claimed, for the protection of the rights of private persons in the administration of justice, the institution of a special court whose members should be irremovable, the right of oral defence, and publicity of trial. In 1822 appeared his Questions de droit administratif, in which he for the first time brought together and gave scientific shape to the scattered elements of administrative law. These he arranged and stated clearly in the form of aphorisms, with logical deductions, establishing them by proofs drawn from the archives of the council of state. This is recognized as his most important work as a jurist, and has become the chief authority on its subject. It has passed through five editions, the fifth, which was published in 1840, being thoroughly revised. In 1828 Cormenin entered the Chamber of Deputies as member for Orleans, took his seat in the Left Centre, and began a vigorous opposition to the Government of Charles X. As he was not gifted with the qualifications of the orator^ he seldom appeared at. the tribune; but in the various committees he defended all forms of popular liberties, and at the same time delivered, in a series of powerful pamphlets, under the pseudonym of &quot; Timon,&quot; the most formidable blows against tyranny and all political and administrative abuses. The ministerialists named him &quot; 1 homme du contentieux.&quot; After the revolu tion of July 1830, Cormenin was one of the 221 who signed the protest against the elevation of the Orleans dynasty to the throne; and he resigned both his office in the council of state and his seat in the chamber. He was, however, soon re-elected deputy, and now voted with the extreme Left. The discussions on the budget in 1831 gave rise to the publication of his famous series of Lettres sur la liste civile, which in ten years ran through twenty-five editions. In the following year he had the distinction of being elected by four arrondissements; he took his seat for Belley. In 1834 he was elected by two arrondissements, and sat for Joigny, which he represented till 1846. In this year he lost his seat in consequence of the popular prejudice aroused against him by his trenchant pamphlet Oui et non (1845) against attacks on religious liberty, and a second entitled feu! Feu! (1846), written in reply to those who demanded a retractation of the former. In this he re-asserted his principles still more relentlessly. Sixty thousand copies were rapidly sold. One inevitable penalty which he had to suffer for these incisive manifestoes was exclusion from the French Academy and the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Cormenin was an earnest advocate of universal suffrage before the revolution of February 1848, and had remorselessly exposed the corrupt practices at elections in his pamphlet Ordre du jour sur la corruption electoral?. After the revolution he was elected by four departments to the constituent assembly, and became one of its vice- presidents. He was also member and president of the con stitutional commission, and for some time took a leading part in drawing up the republican constitution. But the disputes which broke out among the members led him to resign the presidency. He was soon after named member of the council of state and president of the comite du con tentieux. It was at this period that he published two pamphlets Sur V independence de V Italic. After the coup d etat of December 2, 1851, Cormenin, who had under taken the defence of Prince Louis Napoleon after his attempt at Strasburg, accepted a place in the new council of state of the empire. Four years later, by imperial ordin ance, he was made a member of the Institute. One of the most characteristic works of Cormenin, not yet mentioned is the Livre des orateurs, a series of brilliant studies of the principal parliamentary orators of the restoration and the monarchy of July, the first edition of which appeared in 1838, and the eighteenth in 1860. In 1846 he published his Entretiens de village, which procured him the Montyon prize, and of which six editions were called for the same year. His last work was Le droit de tonnage en Algerie (1860). Cormenin was distinguished also as a practical philanthropist, and is said to have established more chari table institutions than any layman of his time in France. He was admitted to the Legion of Honour in 1821, and was promoted commander in 1865. He died at Paris, May 6, 1868.  CORMONTAIGNE, (1696-1752), a French military engineer, was born at Strasburg. He was present as a volunteer at the sieges of Friburg and Landau, and in 1715 he entered the Engineers. From 1733 to 1745 he took part in several of the most important sieges in the Polish and Austrian wars. Having gained the rank of marechal de ccynp he received charge of the line of fortifica tions from Calais to the Rhone; and he built new defences at Strasburg, Metz, and Thionville, at which last place he died.

1em  CORMORANT from the Latin corvus marinus, through the French (in some patois of which it is still &quot; cor marin,&quot; and in certain Italian dialects &quot; corvo marin &quot; or &quot;corvo marine&quot;) a large sea-fowl belonging to the genus Phalacrocorax (Carbo, Halieus, and Graculus of some ornithologists), and that group of the Linnaean Order Anseres, now partly generally recognized by Illiger s term Staganopodes, of which it with its allies forms a Family Phalacrocoracidce. {{ti|1em|The Cormorant (P. carlo} frequents almost all the sea- coast of Europe, and breeds in societies at various stations, most generally on steep cliffs, but occasionally on rocky islands as well as on trees. The nest consists of a large mass of sea-weed, and, with the ground immediately sur rounding it, generally looks as though bespattered with whitewash, from the excrement of the bird, which lives entirely on fish. The eggs, from four to six in number, are small, and have a thick, soft, calcareous shell, bluish-white when first laid, but soon becoming discoloured. The young are hatched blind, and covered with an inky-black skin. They remain for some time in the squab-condition, and are then highly esteemed for food by the northern islanders, their flesh being said to taste as well as a roasted hare s. Their first plumage is of a sombre brownish- black above, and more or less white beneath. They take two or three years to assume the fully adult dress, which is deep black, glossed above with bronze, and varied in the breeding- season with white on the cheeks and flanks, besides being adorned by filamentary feathers on the head, and further set off by a bright yellow gape. The old Cormorant looks as big as a Goose, but is really much smaller; its flesh is quite uneatable.}} Taken when young from the nest, this bird is easily tamed and can be trained to fish for its keeper, as was of old time commonly done in England, where the Master of 