Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/849

* BLDER. 737 ELDOBA. of water, and thi-ee ounces of spirits, from which mixture about one gallon is distilled. This dis- lillalu is used to llavor wines, jellies, etc. The joiin^ llower-huds are sometunes pickled like capers. Numerous household remedies are pre- pared from dilVereiit parts of the plants. A num- ber iif other plants are known by the name ehlor, as wild elder {Aralia hispida), Marsh- eUUr {Ira frutcscens), box-elder (.Yct/uiirfo acer- oiJta I, ctr. EL'DER, .loii.N (1824-69). An Knglish en- gineer anil ship-builder. He was born in Glasgow, and was a son of David Klder (died ISGG), who built the lirst marine engine in the establishment of Xapier in 182:i. He was educated in Glasgow, and after directing the drawing ollice in Xapier's establishment became a member of the firm which after ISliO was conducted under the name of Ran- dolph, Elder & Co. (18G0). Elder is especially celebrated as the inventor of the compound or combined high and low pressure engines, in which the economy of fuel amounted to nearly forty per cent. Jlore than 4000 men were employed in his factory. ELDER, William Henry ( 1810-1!)04). An American prelate. He was born in Baltimore, was educated in that city and at the College of the Propaganda, Rome ; was successively profess- or in and president of ^fount Saint Jlary's Col- lege, Emmitshurg. Md.: and was consecrated Ro- man Catholic Bishop of Natchez. Miss., in 1857. For some time he was coadjutor to Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, and upon the death of the latter prelate in 1883 was elevated to the archi- episcopal see. ELDEST SON OF THE CHURCH ( Fr., Fi7s a'nic (/f I'Eylist). A title appli»'d in I'Uiiier times to the King of France, to show his relation to the Church. EL'DON, Lord (Joii.v Scoti) (1751-1838). I.onl lli'jli Chancellor of England, and one of the greatest of English judges; born at New- castle-on-Tyne, June 4, 1751. In 170(3 he went to O.xford, where his brother was then a tutor, and entered University College. In 1770 he took his bachelor's degree, and in 1771 gained the Chancellor's Prize for an English essay. A clan- destine marriage with a Miss Surtees, the daugh- ter of a Newcastle banker, into which he entered in 1772, not only lost him his fellowship and cut off his clerical prospects, but threatened for a time to throw him into mercantile life. How- ever, his brother's influence was strong enough to prevent this, and by his advice .fohn returned to the university, where he supported himself by tutoring and in the meantime devoted himself assiduously to the study of law. His legal stud- ies covered a narrow range, being confined almost entirely to Littleton, Coke, and the law reports, but must have been of the most intense and thorough character. In the year 177(>. in which he was admitted to the bar. the death of his father placed him in possession of a small but sufKcicnt fortune. In 1783. after only seven years at the bar. he won the distinction of becoming a King's counsel and a iK-nclier of the Jliddle Tem- ple. In the same year he became a member of Parliament, where he supported the administra- tion of the younger Pitt. Though not a natural orator, and though he never became a good de- bater, his sreat energj- and the force of his intellect and character made him a valuable and inlluential member of Parliament, and speedily gained for him political preferment. In June, 1788, he was made Solicitor-General and received the honor of knighthood. In 17'J3 he was made Attorney-General, and in that capacity conducted the famous State trials of the following year. In 17'.l!l he was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Eldon, of Eldon, and two years later he became Lord Chancellor of England, and. with the ex- ception of the year of the (hcnville and Fox administration ( 180G-07) ,' held that high otiice until 1827. The great dignity of the chancellor- shiii and its close relations to the Crown made it in Eldon's c;jse as much a position of political a3 of legal authority and inlluence. The Chancellor of George III., of the Regency, and of (Jeorge IV., who was at the same time the close friend and the most trusted adviser of the monarch, was prac- tically the mainstay of the Crown and Govern- ment during that long period of Tory ascendency. His share in the administration of afVairs was scarcelj' disguised by the composition of the suc- cessive ministries whose policy he shaped and in whose behalf he used without scru])le the great powers of his high office. In 1821, perhajjs as a reward for the part taken by him in the matter of the proposed divorce of the King, he was fur- ther honored with the dignity of Viscount En- combe and Earl of Eldon. On the advent of the Canning Ministry in 1827 he resigned the great seal and retired to private life. Though not a lawyer of wide and extensive learning, knowing nothing of the Roman jurisprudence or of the civil law of modern Europe, his complete mastery of the eommon-law system, and the subtlety and acuteness of his reasoning powers, made him a common-law judge of the highest, or all but the highest, order. It is here that his fame most securely rests. Though recognized also as one of the greatest of equity judges, the lack of pre- cision and definiteness in the rules of equity jurisdiction, and the scope which it permitted to the administration of justice on conscientious grounds, proved an embarrassment to his logical mind. He was at his best when he had definite rules and binding precedents to follow and to evade by subtle distincticms. Though he, by these very qualities, contributed not a little to give definiteness and certainty to the equity system, he allowed the business of the Court of Chancery to fall so much in arrears as seriously to embar- rass the administration of justice and to give the court the reputation for dilaloriness from which it still unjustly sufl'ers. He survived his retire- ment from office for nearly eleven years, dying in London, January 13, 1838. For his biography, consult : Twiss, The Public and Priimte Life of Lord Eldon (Philadelphia, 1844) ; Surtees, filetch of the Lives of Lords l^loircll and Eldon (London, 1846); Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lords Clinncrllors of England (London, 1874-75). ELDO'RA. A city and the county-seat of Hardin Comity, Iowa, 80 miles north by east of Des Moines: on the Iowa Central and the Chi- cago. Iowa and Dakota railroads (Map: Iowa, D 2). It has a park, a hospital, and a public library, and the State Industrial School fur boys is near by. The city is in the centre of an agri- cultural and stock-raising region. Deposits of fire and brick day ami building-^lniic nrc fuund in the vicinity. The manufactures include brick,