Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/535

Rh be in part ascribed to improvements in legal remedies in the sense which Bentham indicated. A notable instance is Lord Campbell s Act of, by which, in the case of a newspaper libel, a public apology coupled with a pecuniary payment is allowed to bar a plea. In the Indian Code there are special enactments concerning duelling, which is punishable not as murder but as homicide. Suggestions have from time to time been made for the establishment of courts of honour, but the need of such tribunals is doubtful, while the objections to them are obvious. The present tendency of political philosophy is to contract rather than extend the province of law, and any interference with social life is justly resented. Real offences against reputation are sufficiently punished, and the rule of the lawyers, that mere scurrility or opprobrious words, which neither of themselves import nor are attended with any hurtful effects, are not punishable, seems on the whole a wise one. What in a higher rank is looked upon as a gross insult may in a lower rank be regarded as a mere pleasantry or a harmless joke. Among the lower orders offences against honour can hardly be said to exist ; the learned professions have each its own tribunal to which its members are amenable; and the highest ranks of society, however imperfect their standard of morality may be, are perfectly competent to enforce that standard by means of social penalties without resorting either to trial by law or trial by battle.

1em  DUFOUR, (–), a Swiss general, director of the topographical survey of Switzerland, was born at Constance, of Genevese parents temporarily in exile, on the 15th September. During his early studies at Geneva he showed no special capacity, and he took a low place in the entrance examination to the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris, to which he went in. By two years close study he so greatly improved his posi tion that he was ranked among the first in the exit examina tion. Immediately on leaving the school he received a commission in the engineers, and was sent to serve in Corfu, which was blockaded by the English. During the Hundred Days he attained the rank of captain, and was employed in raising fortifications at Grenoble for its defence against the Austrians. After the peace that followed Waterloo he retired from the French army on half-pay, and resumed his status as a Swiss citizen. Refusing the offer of a command at Briancon on condition that he would again adopt the French nationality, he devoted himself to the military service of his native land. From to  he was chief instructor in the military school of Thoune, which had been founded mainly through his in strumentality. Among other distinguished foreign pupils he had the honour of instructing Prince Louis Napoleon, afterwards emperor of the French. In he was raised to the rank of colonel, and commanded the Federal army in a series of field manoeuvres. In he became chief of the staff, and soon afterwards he was appointee! quarter master-general. The most important work of his life was commenced in, when the Diet commissioned him to superintend the execution of a trigonometrical survey of Switzerland. He had already proved his fitness for the task by making a cadastral survey of the canton of Geneva, and publishing a map of the canton in four sheets on the scale of 25QOO- The larger work occupied thirty-two years, and was accomplished with complete success. The map in 25 sheets on the scale of x 0*0 o o was published at intervals between and, and is an admirable specimen of cartography. In recognition of the ability with which Dufour had carried out his task, the Federal Council in ordered the highest peak of Monte Rosa to be named Dufour Spitze. In Dufour received the command of the Federal Army, which was employed in reducing the revolted Catholic cantons to submission. The quickness and thoroughness with which he performed the painful task, and the wise moderation with which he treated his van quished fellow-countrymen, were acknowledged by a gift of 60,000 francs from the Diet and various honours from different cities and cantons of the confederation. In politics he belonged to the moderate conservative party, and he consequently lost a good deal of his popularity in. In he presided over the International Conference which framed the so-called Geneva Convention as to the treatment of the wounded in time of Avar, &amp;lt;fec. He died on the 14th July. Dufour was the author of a Memoirs sur Vartillerie des anciens et sur celle du moyen-dge , De la fortification permanente, Manuel de tactique pour les officiers de toutes armes, and various other works in military science.  DUFRENOY,, geologist and miner alogist, was born at Sevran, in the department of Seine-et- Oise, in France, in, and died March 20,. After leaving the Imperial Lyceum in, he studied till at the Polytechnic School, and then, at the age of twenty- one, entered the corps des mines. In conjunction with M. Elie de Beaumont he in published a great geological map of France, the result of investigations carried on during thirteen years (–). Five years (–) were spent in writing the text to accompany the map. The two authors had already together published Voyage metal- lurgique en Angleterre (, 2d ed. –), Memoires pour servir a une description geologiqrie de la France (–), and a Memoire on Cantal and Mont-Dore. Other literary productions of Dufrenoy are an account of the iron-mines of the eastern Pyrenees, a treatise on mineralogy (, 2d ed. -), and numerous papers contributed to the Annales des Mines and other scientific publications, one of the most interesting of which is entitled Des terrains volcaniques des environs de Naples. Dufre noy was a member of the Academy of Sciences, a commander of the Legion of Honour, an inspector-general of mines, and professor of geology at L flcole des Fonts et Chaiissces, and of mineralogy at the Imperial School of Mines, of which latter institution he was the director.  DUFRESNY, (–), a French dramatist, better remembered by the comedy of his own life than by any of the numerous plays which he contributed to the Theatre Italien and the Theatre Francois. The fact that his grandfather was an illegitimate son of Henry IV. procured him the liberal patronage of Louis XIV., who not only gave him the post of valet de chambre, but affixed his name now to one lucrative privilege and now to another. The protege, however, appeared as eager to squander as the king was to bestow ; and the pathetic confession of exhausted generosity &quot; I cannot enrich Dufresny &quot; was probably taken by the careless spendthrift as a signal com pliment; though to one of his friends who consoled him with the remark that poverty is no sin, he replied, &quot; It is worse. On Louis s death he was almost as necessitous as if Louis had never lived ; but he obtained 200,000 francs from the duke of Orleans in answer to an ingenious request 