Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/122

 112 PARKMAN PARLIAMENT tile and well timbered, and contains petroleum, coal, iron, and salt. Four medicinal springs, 6 m. from the city and 2 m. from the Little Kanawha, have been much frequented. There is a covered bridge across the Little Kanawha, and one across the Ohio costing $1,000,000, over which the Parkersburg division of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad passes into Ohio. Regular lines of steamers run to Wheeling, Charleston, Cincinnati, and other points on the Ohio and Great Kanawha rivers. Recent im- provements in the Little Kanawha render it navigable 38 m. above Parkersburg, and afford abundant water power. One of the most im- portant interests is the refining of petroleum, for which there are six or seven establish- ments, producing about 200,000 barrels of illu- minating and 100,000 of lubricating oil annu- ally. The annual value of oil shipments is about $3,000,000. Other important establish- ments are a barrel factory, a chemical labora- tory, three founderies, with two of which ma- chine shops are connected, the repair shops of the railroad, two flouring mills, two saw mills, a mill for sawing, planing, and manufacturing doors, blinds, &c., a boat-building yard, a fur- niture factory, a carriage factory, a tannery, three tobacco factories, two potteries, two brick yards, and a sandstone quarry. There are three national banks, with an aggregate capital of $450,000, a fire insurance company, a high school, several free ward schools, sev- eral academies, two daily and three weekly newspapers, a monthly periodical, and ten churches : Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist, Pres- byterian, Roman Catholic, and United Breth- ren. The United States circuit court is held here annually. Parkersburg was incorporated as a town in 1820, and as a city in 1860. PARKJIAA, Francis, an American author, born in Boston, Sept. 16, 1823. He made in the latter part of 1843 and the beginning of 1844 a rapid tour in Europe, graduated at Harvard college in the latter year, and studied law for .two years, but abandoned it in 1846 and start- ed to explore the Rocky mountains. He lived
 * for several months among the Dakota Indians

and the still wilder and remoter tribes, and incurred hardships and privations which made him an invalid for the rest of his life. An ac- count of this expedition was given in "Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life " (New York, 1849), reissued subsequently as " The California and Oregon Trail." This was followed by "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" (Boston, 1851), the first of a series intended to illustrate the his- tory of the rise and fall of the French dominion in America. His next work was " Vassall Morton " (Boston, 1856), a novel the scene of which was partly in America and partly in Europe. He visited France in 1858, and again in 1868, to examine the French archives, and the result of his researches is given in " Pio- neers of France in the New "World" (1865), "Jesuits in North America" (1867), "Discov- ery of the Great West " (1869), and " The Old Regime in Canada" (1874). These works are distinguished for their brilliant style and for accurate research, and have been written under the disadvantages of feeble health and of an affection of the eyes which renders him often wholly unable to read or write. In 1866 Mr. Parkman published " The Book of Roses," and in 1871 he was appointed professor of horti- culture in the agricultural school of Harvard university, which post he resigned in 1872. PARLIAMENT (low Lat. parlamentum ; Fr. parlement, from parler, " to speak "), original- ly a meeting or assembly for conference or de- liberation ; afterward applied in France to the principal judicial courts, and in England to the legislature of the kingdom. The word, or one very like it, was long in use in France, and was first applied there to general assemblies in the time of Louis VII., about the middle of the 12th century. I. THE BEITISH PAELIAMENT. The earliest mention of the word parliament in the statutes of England occurs in the preamble to the statute of Westminster, 1272. Many wri- ters have asserted the identity of the modern parliament with the general councils of the Saxons, with their michel-gemote or great meet- ing, or their witena-gemote or meeting of the wise men ; and also with the commune conci- lium and magnum concilium of later times. It is indeed indisputable, as Blackstone says, that general councils are coeval with the kingdom itself ; but that those of early times bore any essential resemblance to the present parliament is far from certain. We may probably with safety assume that the present constitution of parliament existed early in the 14th century. In Magna Charta, King John promises to sum- mon all archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons personally, and all other tenants in chief under the crown by the sheriffs and bailiffs ; and there are still extant writs of the date of 1265, summoning " knights, citizens, and burgesses " to parliament. A statute passed in the reign of Edward II. (1322) declares that certain matters shall be established in par- liament " by the king and by the assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and the commonalty of the realm, as has before been accustomed." The imperial parliament of the United King- dom of Great Britain and Ireland is composed of the crown and the three estates of the realm, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons. It is the prerogative of the crown to convoke, continue, or dissolve it. Former- ly it was the theory of English constitutional law, that the power of the crown in these re- spects was measured only by its pleasure ; that the sovereign might omit during, his whole reign to call a parliament ; or if he called one, might keep it undissolved for the same period. But now, on the authority of statute and other- wise, it is established that no parliament can last longer than seven years, and that writs for summoning a new parliament shall issue within three years from the dissolution of the last one. The sessions of parliament may be suspended