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BOW on purely philosophical subjects, which secured no little distinction for Bowdoin at home and abroad. Their letters were transmitted to London, and read together at the Royal Society, of which Franklin was soon made a fellow. The correspondence was afterwards published; and at a later day Bowdoin himself was elected a fellow of the society. But it was as a politician and statesman that Bowdoin was most distinguished in his own day, and will be longest remembered in American history. He entered political life in the year 1753, as a representative of Boston in the provincial legislature; and was a leading advocate of that great plan of a "union of the colonies" against the encroachments of France, and for the regulation of trade, which Franklin proposed at the Albany convention in 1754. In 1757 Bowdoin was transferred to the higher branch of the provincial legislature, historically known as the council; and there he served with signal ability and zeal for sixteen years. Thomas Pownall was the provincial governor when Bowdoin entered the council; and with him Bowdoin maintained the most amicable and even affectionate relations. But Sir Francis Bernard, his successor, was another sort of person; and from his accession in 1760, down to the very last day on which British rule was exercised in America, there was a continued conflict between the legislative and executive authorities. Bowdoin was, by all acknowledgment, the leader of the Massachusetts council, in their opposition to that ill-advised and arbitrary policy of Governors Bernard and Hutchinson, which ultimately led to the American revolution; and he finally had the distinction of being negatived by Governor Gage, and set aside from the list of councillors in 1774, "by express orders from his majesty." He was thereupon elected to head the delegates to the congress which declared the independence of the colonies; but circumstances compelled him to decline a journey to Philadelphia. John Hancock was chosen in his place, and became the president of that memorable assembly. Bowdoin remained at home, however, to render most important services to his country as president of the council elected to exercise the supreme executive authority of the colony after hostilities with the mother country had broken out. In this capacity he was brought into immediate relations with General Washington, who had just assumed the command of the American army encamped around Boston; and an intimate and enduring friendship was formed between them.

In 1780 Bowdoin presided over the convention which framed the constitution of Massachusetts, and took an active part in the preparations of an instrument which was justly regarded as a model of free government. Under that constitution Bowdoin became governor of the commonwealth in 1785, and held the office for two years. The second of these years was the most momentous year in the history of Massachusetts. Heavy taxes had been necessarily laid to sustain the public credit. An insurrection broke out against the legal processes of collection. Had "Shay's Rebellion" (as it is called from the name of Daniel Shay, its leader), been successful, the whole American republican systems would have been in danger, and the British colonies in North America might have vied with the Spanish colonies in South America, in their proverbial liability to political convulsions and revolutions. But by the vigilant and vigorous exercise of the whole civil and military power of the state, Governor Bowdoin succeeded in arresting and extinguishing the insurrection, and he will go down to posterity, in company with his distinguished military friend, General Lincoln (to whom he assigned the chief command in the field), as having accomplished the first great vindication of law and order within the limits of the American republic. Governor Bowdoin was among the very earliest proposers and advocates of the constitution of the United States, and was a leading member of the convention of Massachusetts which ratified that constitution. He lived to see the government organized under it, and to welcome, beneath his own roof, his illustrious friend, Washington, on his visit to Boston in 1789, as the first president of the United States. With Franklin, too, his correspondence continued, both on political and philosophical subjects, to the last year of their lives; and their last letters contained a playful, but, as it proved, a prophetic proposition for an excursion together among the stars. Both died in 1790; Franklin on the 17th of April, at the age of eighty-four; Bowdoin on the 6th of November, at the age of sixty-four.

In private life he was no less estimable than in public. He has left it upon record, that Butler's Analogy was of the greatest service to him in satisfying his mind as to the truths of christianity. "From the time of my reading that book," said he, "I have been a humble follower of the blessed Jesus." Governor Bowdoin was early married to Elizabeth Erving (of the same old stock of the Irvines of Drum), a lady of most estimable qualities. By her he had two children.  * BOWEN,, born in 1811 in Charlestown, Massachusetts; graduated at Harvard college in 1833. From 1835 to 1839 he was an instructor in this college, in the department of mental philosophy and political economy. Since 1841 he has resided in Cambridge, Mass., engaged in literary and academical pursuits. In 1842 he published a volume of "Critical Essays on the History and Present Condition of Speculative Philosophy;" and in the same year an octavo edition of "Virgil, with English Notes, prepared for the use of Schools and Colleges." In January, 1843, he became the editor and proprietor of the North American Review, and it continued under his exclusive management till January, 1854; nearly one-fourth part of the contents of this work during these eleven years being written by him. In 1849 he published an octavo volume of "Lowell Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion, delivered before the Lowell Institute in Boston in the winters of 1848-49." This work passed to a second edition in 1855, when it was revised and enlarged, with notes. In 1856 he published an octavo volume, entitled the "Principles of Political Economy applied to the Condition, the Resources, and the Institutions of the American People." These last two works have been in use ever since their publication, as text-books of instruction at Harvard and some other American colleges. In 1854 he abridged and edited, with critical and explanatory notes, Dugald Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; and in the same year he published "Documents of the Constitution of England and America, from Magna Charta to the Federal Constitution of 1789, compiled and edited with Notes." In 1853 he was appointed to the chair he now holds in the same institution, the Alford professorship of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity, and was confirmed by the overseers by a nearly unanimous vote.  BOWER,, was born at or near Dundee in 1686. He was sent to the Scotch college at Douay, whence in 1706 he proceeded to Rome, and entered as a novice in the order of the jesuits. After completing his novitiate, he held various employments, having been, according to his own account, public professor of rhetoric, history, and philosophy, in the universities of Rome and Fermo, until in 1723 he was appointed to a professorship in the university of Macerata. At the end of three years, something happened which caused his removal from Macerata. His own statement is, that his feelings were harrowed to such a degree by witnessing the cruelties practised by the inquisition, to which he was counsellor, that he could no longer remain at his post. His enemies assert that he was removed on the ground of incontinence. He went to Perugia, whence he escaped secretly soon after, and after various adventures, reached England. Introduced to Dr. Clarke and Bishop Berkeley, he became convinced that the Roman church was in error, and accordingly abandoned its communion. After six years of doubt or scepticism, he conformed to the church of England, as being, in his judgment, the farthest removed of all the protestant bodies from the errors of popery, and the one least tinged, on the other hand, with enthusiasm or fanaticism. He was warmly patronized by Lord Aylmer and Lord Lyttleton; the former of whom intrusted him with the education of his two sons. He supported himself partly by tuition, partly by writing for the booksellers, by whom he was employed in compiling, jointly with Psalmanazar, the Universal History. Having thus amassed a considerable sum of money, he entered into a secret negotiation with a Mr. Hill, a jesuit, by which it was arranged that he should place his money in the hands of the society, receiving interest for it at the rate of seven per cent., and be readmitted into the order. He was accordingly readmitted in the year 1744. But he broke with the society again before long, and withdrew his money. In 1747, and following years, he published his "History of the Popes," a work conceived and written in a spirit of extreme hostility to the papacy and the hierarchy. It naturally called forth rejoinders from the catholic body, and now the whole story of his correspondence with the jesuits came out. He defended himself vigorously, but did not succeed in clearing his character in the eyes of the public. All his former friends abandoned him with 