Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/168

 162 BOUTWELL BOVES BOUTWKLL, George Sewall, an American states- man, born in Brookline, Mass, Jan. 28, 1818. He is the son of a farmer, and received a com- mon school education, which he supplemented by a course of reading and self-instruction, con- tinued far into manhood. In 1835 he became a merchant's clerk in Groton, Mass., and sub- sequently was made a partner in the business. At 18 years of age he began the study of law, which he pursued chiefly by night, and of which he acquired a considerable knowledge, although he never became a practitioner. In 1840 he entered political life as an advocate of the election of Van Buren to the presidency, and between 1842 and 1851 he was seven times elected as a democratic member from Groton of the Massachusetts house of repre- sentatives, where he developed ability as a debater, and was recognized as a leader of his party. In 1844, 1846, and 1848 he was the democratic candidate of his district for mem- ber of congress, but failed in each instance of an election ; and in 1849 and 1850 he was nominated by the same party for governor of the commonwealth. In 1849-'50 he was state bank commissioner. In 1851, by a coalition of democrats and freesoilers, he was elected governor, and in the succeeding year was again returned for the same office. After the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854 he left the democrafic party, and the next year helped or- ganize the republican party, with which he has since acted. He was a delegate in 1860 to the republican convention at Chicago, which nom- inated Lincoln for the presidency, and a mem- ber of the peace conference which assembled in Washington in February, 1861. In 1862, at the invitation of President Lincoln, he organ- ized the new department of internal revenue, and was its first commissioner till March 4, 1863, when he became a member of congress, and was twice reflected to that office. In 1868 he was one of the managers in the impeachment trial of President Johnson. He was secretary of the treasury from March, 1869, to March, 1873, when he was elected United States senator from Massachusetts. He has opposed any considerable diminution of national tax- ation, and advocated a large annual reduc- tion of the public debt. In 1870 congress at his recommendation passed an act providing for the funding of the national debt, by the terms of which the secretary of the treasury was authorized to sell certain bonds under cer- tain plainly expressed conditions, but not to in- crease the debt. He attempted to effect this object through the instrumentality of a " syn- dicate," but in funding the new loan expended more than one half of one per cent., which was alleged to be in defiance of the law. The com- mittee of ways and means of the house of rep- resentatives subsequently absolved Mr. Bout- well from this charge. He has been an over- seer of Harvard college, was for five years secre- tary of the Massachusetts state board of edu- cation, in which capacity he prepared elaborate annual reports, and was a leading member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1853. He is the author of " Educational Top- ics and Institutions," a "Manual of the United States Direct and Revenue Tax " (1863), and a volume of "Speeches and Papers" (1869). BOUVART, Alexis, a Swiss astronomer, born near Mont Blanc, June 27, 1767, died June 7, 1843. He went to Paris in 1785, attended the free lectures at the college de France, was at- tached to the observatory, in 1804 became a member of the bureau of longitudes, and was elected to the academy of sciences through the influence of Laplace, whom he assisted in the Mecanique celeste. In 1808 he published new tables of Jupiter and Saturn, to which in 1821 he added those of Uranus, whose perturbations he was the first to point out and explain. Le- verrier's discovery of Neptune in 1846 con- firmed Bouvart's hypothesis. BOIVET, Joachim, a French Jesuit missionary, born at Le Mans about 1662, died in Peking, June 28, 1732. Sent by Louis XIV. to China, ho was employed by the Chinese emperor in directing various public buildings, and allowed to build a church within the imperial city. On his return to France in 1697, he presented to Louis XIV. 49 Chinese works, and in 1699 de- parted again for China with 10 other mission- aries. He labored for nearly 50 years to pro- mote the progress of the sciences in that em- pire, gave an account of the state of China in several treatises and letters, and composed a Chinese dictionary, which has never been printed. BOUVIER, John, an American jurist, born at Codognan, France, in 1787, died in Phila- delphia, Nov. 18, 1851. He was of a Quaker family, which emigrated to this country and settled in Philadelphia when he was in his 15th year. He obtained employment for several years in a bookstore, published a newspaper for a short time at Brownsville, was admitted to the bar in 1818, and in 1822 began to prac- tise in Philadelphia. In 1838 he became asso- ciate judge of the court of criminal sessions. He published in 1839 a "Law Dictionary, adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America, and of the several States of the American Union," the fruit of 10 years' labor (2 vols. 8vo). In 1841 he com- menced a new edition of Bacon's " Abridgment of the Law," in 10 vols. royal 8vo. His great- est work, published two months before his death, was the " Institutes of American Law " (4 vols. 8vo). His daughter and only child, HANNAH M. BOUVIEK, born in 1811, is the au- thor of a popular work entitled "Familiar As- i tronomy," illustrated by celestial maps and engravings, with a "Treatise on the Globes," &c. (8vo, Philadelphia, 1857). BOVES, Jose Tomas, a Spanish American mili- tary adventurer, born in Spain, killed at Urica, Venezuela, Dec. 5, 1814. While employed as a naval officer on the northern coast of South America he was tried and imprisoned for brib-