Chapter 49

ACHILLE CHARLES LÉONCE VICTOR, DUC DE BROGLIE (1785-1870), statesman and diplomatist, son of the last-named, was born at Paris on the 28th of November 1785. His mother had shared her husband's imprisonment, but managed to escape to Switzerland, where she remained till the fall of Robespierre. She now returned to Paris with her children and lived there quietly until 1796, when she married a M. d'Argenson, grandson of Louis XV.'s minister of war. Under the care of his step-father young de Broglie received a careful and liberal education and made his entrée into the aristocratic and literary society of Paris under the Empire. In 1809, he was appointed a member of the council of state, over which Napoleon presided in person; and was sent by the emperor on diplomatic missions, as attaché, to various countries. Though he had never been in sympathy with the principles of the Empire, de Broglie was not one of those who rejoiced at its downfall. In common with all men of experience and sense he realized the danger to France of the rise to power of the forces of violent reaction. With Decazes and Richelieu he saw that the only hope for a calm future lay in "the reconciliation of the Restoration with the Revolution." By the influence of his uncle, Prince Amédée de Broglie, his right to a peerage had been recognized; and to his own great surprise he received, in June 1814, a summons from Louis XVIII. to the Chamber of Peers. There, after the Hundred Days, he distinguished himself by his courageous defence of Marshal Ney, for whose acquittal he, alone of all the peers, both spoke and voted. After this defiant act of opposition it was perhaps fortunate that his impending marriage gave him an excuse for leaving the country. On the 15th of February 1816, he was married at Leghorn to the daughter of Madame de Staël. He returned to Paris at the end of the year, but took no part in politics until the elections of September 1817 broke the power of the "ultra-royalists" and substituted for the _Chambre introuvable_ a moderate assembly. De Broglie's political attitude during the years that followed is best summed up in his own words: "From 1812 to 1822 all the efforts of men of sense and character were directed to reconciling the Restoration and the Revolution, the old régime and the new France. From 1822 to 1827 all their efforts were directed to resisting the growing power of the counter-revolution. From 1827 to 1830 all their efforts aimed at moderating and regulating the reaction in a contrary sense." During the last critical years of Charles X.'s reign, de Broglie identified himself with the _doctrinaires_, among whom Royer-Collard and Guizot were the most prominent. The July revolution placed him in a difficult position; he knew nothing of the intrigues which placed Louis Philippe on the throne; but, the revolution once accomplished, he was ready to uphold the _fait accompli_ with characteristic loyalty, and on the 9th of August took office in the new government as minister of public worship and education. As he had foreseen, the ministry was short-lived, and on the 2nd of November he was once more out of office. During the critical time that followed he consistently supported the principles which triumphed with the fall of Laffitte and the accession to power of Casimir Périer in March 1832. After the death of the latter and the insurrection of June 1832, de Broglie took office once more as minister for foreign affairs (October 11th). His tenure of the foreign office was coincident with a very critical period in international relations. But for the sympathy of Great Britain under Palmerston, the July monarchy would have been completely isolated in Europe; and this sympathy the aggressive policy of France in Belgium and on the Mediterranean coast of Africa had been in danger of alienating. The Belgian crisis had been settled, so far as the two powers were concerned, before de Broglie took office; but the concerted military and naval action for the coercion of the Dutch, which led to the French occupation of Antwerp, was carried out under his auspices. The good understanding of which this was the symbol characterized also the relations of de Broglie and Palmerston during the crisis of the first war of Mehemet Ali (_q.v._) with the Porte, and in the affairs of the Spanish peninsula their common sympathy with constitutional liberty led to an agreement for common action, which took shape in the treaty of alliance between Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, signed at London on the 22nd of April 1834. De Broglie had retired from office in the March preceding, and did not return to power till March of the following year, when he became head of the cabinet. In 1836, the government having been defeated on a proposal to reduce the five per cents, he once more resigned, and never returned to official life. He had remained in power long enough to prove what honesty of purpose, experience of affairs, and common sense can accomplish when allied with authority. The debt that France and Europe owed him may be measured by comparing the results of his policy with that of his successors under not dissimilar circumstances. He had found France isolated and Europe full of the rumours of war; he left her strong in the English alliance and the respect of Liberal Europe, and Europe freed from the restless apprehensions which were to be stirred into life again by the attitude of Thiers in the Eastern Question and of Guizot in the affair of the "Spanish marriages." From 1836 to 1848 de Broglie held almost completely aloof from politics, to which his scholarly temperament little inclined him, a disinclination strengthened by the death of his wife on the 22nd of September 1838. His friendship for Guizot, however, induced him to accept a temporary mission in 1845, and in 1847 to go as French ambassador to London. The revolution of 1848 was a great blow to him, for he realized that it meant the final ruin of the Liberal monarchy--in his view the political system best suited to France. He took his seat, however, in the republican National Assembly and in the Convention of 1848, and, as a member of the section known as the "Burgraves," did his best to stem the tide of socialism and to avert the reaction in favour of autocracy which he foresaw. He shared with his colleagues the indignity of the _coup d'état_ of the 2nd of December 1851, and remained for the remainder of his life one of the bitterest enemies of the imperial regime, though he was heard to remark, with that caustic wit for which he was famous, that the empire was "the government which the poorer classes in France desired and the rich deserved." The last twenty years of his life were devoted chiefly to philosophical and literary pursuits. Having been brought up by his step-father in the sceptical opinions of the time, he gradually arrived at a sincere belief in the Christian religion. "I shall die," said he, "a penitent Christian and an impenitent Liberal." His literary works, though few of them have been published, were rewarded in 1856 by a seat in the French Academy, and he was also a member of another branch of the French Institute, the Academy of Moral and Political Science. In the labours of those learned bodies he took an active and assiduous part. He died on the 25th of January 1870.

Besides his _Souvenirs_, in 4 vols. (Paris, 1885-1888), the duc de Broglie left numerous works, of which only some have been published. Of these may be mentioned _Écrits et discours_ (3 vols., Paris, 1863); _Le Libre Échange et l'impôt_ (Paris, 1879); _Vues sur le gouvernement de la France_ (Paris, 1861). This last was confiscated before publication by the imperial government. See Guizot, _Le Duc de Broglie_ (Paris, 1870), and _Mémoires_ (Paris, 1858-1867); and the histories of Thureau-Dangin and Duvergier de Hauranne.

JACQUES VICTOR ALBERT, DUC DE BROGLIE (1821-1901), his eldest son, was born at Paris on the 13th of June 1821. After a brief diplomatic career at Madrid and Rome, the revolution of 1848 caused him to withdraw from public life and devote himself to literature. He had already published a translation of the religious system of Leibnitz (1846). He now at once made his mark by his contributions to the _Revue des deux Mondes_ and the Orleanist and clerical organ _Le Correspondant_, which were afterwards collected under the titles of _Études morales et littéraires_ (1853) and _Questions de religion et d'histoire_ (1860). These were supplemented in 1869 by a volume of _Nouvelles études de littérature et de morale_. His _L'Église et l'empire romain au IVe siècle_ (1856-1866) brought him the succession to Lacordaire's seat in the Academy in 1862. In 1870 he succeeded his father in the dukedom, having previously been known as the prince de Broglie. In the following year he was elected to the National [v.04 p.0628] Assembly for the department of the Eure, and a few days later (on the 19th of February) was appointed ambassador in London; but in March 1872, in consequence of criticisms upon his negotiations concerning the commercial treaties between England and France, he resigned his post and took his seat in the National Assembly, where he became the leading spirit of the monarchical campaign against Thiers. On the replacement of the latter by Marshal MacMahon, the duc de Broglie became president of the council and minister for foreign affairs (May 1873), but in the reconstruction of the ministry on the 26th of November, after the passing of the septennate, transferred himself to the ministry of the interior. His tenure of office was marked by an extreme conservatism, which roused the bitter hatred of the Republicans, while he alienated the Legitimist party by his friendly relations with the Bonapartists, and the Bonapartists by an attempt to effect a compromise between the rival claimants to the monarchy. The result was the fall of the cabinet on the 16th of May 1874. Three years later (on the 16th of May 1877) he was entrusted with the formation of a new cabinet, with the object of appealing to the country and securing a new chamber more favourable to the reactionaries than its predecessor had been. The result, however, was a decisive Republican majority. The duc de Broglie was defeated in his own district, and resigned office on the 20th of November. Not being re-elected in 1885, he abandoned politics and reverted to his historical work, publishing a series of historical studies and biographies written in a most pleasing style, and especially valuable for their extensive documentation. He died in Paris on the 19th of January 1901.

Besides editing the _Souvenirs_ of his father (1886, &c.), the _Mémoires_ of Talleyrand (1891, &c.), and the _Letters_ of the Duchess Albertine de Broglie (1896), he published _Le Secret du roi, Correspondance secrète de Louis XV avec ses agents diplomatiques, 1752-1774_ (1878); _Frédéric II et Marie Thérèse_ (1883); _Frédéric II et Louis XV_ (1885); _Marie Thérèse Impératrice_ (1888); _Le Père Lacordaire_ (1889); _Maurice de Saxe et le marquis d'Argenson_ (1891); _La Paix d'Aix-la-Chapelle_ (1892); _L'Alliance autrichienne_ (1895); _La Mission de M. de Gontaut-Biron à Berlin_ (1896); _Voltaire avant et pendant la Guerre de Sept Ans_ (1898); _Saint Ambroise_, translated by Margaret Maitland in the series of "The Saints" (1899).

BROGUE, (1) A rough shoe of raw leather (from the Gael. _brog_, a shoe) worn in the wilder parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. (2) A dialectical accent or pronunciation (of uncertain origin), especially used of the Irish accent in speaking English.

BROHAN, AUGUSTINE SUSANNE (1807-1887), French actress, was born in Paris on the 22nd of January 1807. She entered the Conservatoire at the age of eleven, and took the second prize for comedy in 1820, and the first in 1821. She served her apprenticeship in the provinces, making her first Paris appearance at the Odéon in 1832 as Dorine in _Tartuffe_. Her success there and elsewhere brought her a summons to the Comédie Française, where she made her _début_ on the 15th of February 1834, as Madelon in _Les Précieuses ridicules_, and Suzanne in _Le Mariage de Figaro_. She retired in 1842, and died on the 16th of August 1887.

Her elder daughter, JOSEPHINE FÉLICITÉ AUGUSTINE BROHAN (1824-1893), was admitted to the Conservatoire when very young, twice taking the second prize for comedy. The soubrette part, entrusted for more than 150 years at the Comédie Française to a succession of artists of the first rank, was at the moment without a representative, and Mdlle Augustine Brohan made her _début_ there on the 19th of May 1841, as Dorine in _Tartuffe_, and Lise in _Rivaux d'eux-mêmes_. She was immediately admitted _pensionnaire_, and at the end of eighteen months unanimously elected _sociétaire_. She soon became a great favourite, not only in the plays of Molière and de Regnard, but also in those of Marivaux. On her retirement from the stage in 1866, she made an unhappy marriage with Edmond David de Gheest (d. 1885), secretary to the Belgian legation in Paris.

Susanne Brohan's second daughter, ÉMILIE MADELEINE BROHAN (1833-1900), also took first prize for comedy at the Conservatoire (1850). She was engaged at once by the Comédie Française, but instead of making her _début_ in some play of the _répertoire_ of the theatre, the management put on for her benefit a new comedy by Scribe and Legouvé, _Les Contes de la reine de Navarre_, in which she created the part of Marguerite on the 1st of September 1850. Her talents and beauty made her a success from the first, and in less than two years from her _début_ she was elected _sociétaire_. In 1853 she married Mario Uchard, from whom she was soon separated, and in 1858 she returned to the Comédie Française in leading parts, until her retirement in 1886. Her name is associated with a great number of plays, besides those in the classical _répertoire_, notably _Le Monde où l'on s'ennuie_, _Par droit de conquête_, _Les Deux Veuves_, and _Le Lion amoureux_, in which, as the "marquise de Maupas", she had one of her greatest successes.

BROKE, or BROOKE, ARTHUR (d. 1563), English author, wrote the first English version of the story of Romeo and Juliet. _The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Julieit_ (1562) is a rhymed account of the story, taken, not directly from Bandello's collection of novels (1554), but from the French translation (_Histoires tragiques_) of Pierre Boaistuau or Boisteau, surnamed Launay, and François de Belleforest. Broke adds some detail to the story as told by Boisteau. As the poem contains many scenes which are not known to exist elsewhere, but which were adopted by Shakespeare in _Romeo and Juliet_, there is no reasonable doubt that it may be regarded as the main source of the play. Broke perished by shipwreck in 1563, on his way from Newhaven to join the English troops fighting on the Huguenot side in France.

The genesis of the Juliet story, and a close comparison of Shakespeare's play with Broke's version, are to be found in a reprint of the poem and of William Paynter's prose translation from the _Palace of Pleasure_, edited by Mr P. A. Daniel for the New Shakespere Society (1875).

BROKE, SIR PHILIP BOWES VERE, BART. (1776-1841), British rear-admiral, was born at Broke Hall, near Ipswich, on the 9th of September 1776, a member of an old Suffolk family. Entering the navy in June 1792, he saw active service in the Mediterranean from 1793 to 1795, and was with the British fleet at the battle of Cape St Vincent, 1797. In 1798 he was present at the defeat and capture of the French squadron off the north coast of Ireland. From 1799 to 1801 he served with the North Sea fleet, and in the latter year was made captain. Unemployed for the next four years, he commanded in 1805 a frigate in the English and Irish Channels. In 1806 he was appointed to the command of the "Shannon", 38-gun frigate, remaining afloat, principally in the Bay of Biscay, till 1811. The "Shannon" was then ordered to Halifax, Nova Scotia. For a year after the declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, the frigate saw no important service, though she captured several prizes. Broke utilized this period of comparative inactivity to train his men thoroughly. He paid particular attention to gunnery, and the "Shannon" ere long gained a unique reputation for excellence of shooting. Broke's opportunity came in 1813. In May of that year the "Shannon" was cruising off Boston, watching the "Chesapeake", an American frigate of the same nominal force but heavier armament. On the 1st of June Broke, finding his water supply getting low, wrote to Lawrence, the commander of the "Chesapeake", asking for a meeting between the two ships, stating the "Shannon's" force, and guaranteeing that no other British ship should take part in the engagement. Before this letter could be delivered, however, the "Chesapeake", under full sail, ran out of Boston harbour, crowds of pleasure-boats accompanying her to witness the engagement. Broke briefly addressed his men. "Don't cheer," he concluded, "go quietly to your quarters. I feel sure you will all do your duty." As the "Chesapeake" rounded to on the "Shannon's" weather quarter, at a distance of about fifty yards, the British frigate received her with a broadside. A hundred of the "Chesapeake's" crew were struck down at once, Lawrence himself being mortally wounded. A second broadside, equally well-aimed, increased the confusion, and, her tiller-ropes being shot away, the American frigate drifted foul of the "Shannon". Broke sprang on board with some sixty of his men following him. After a brief struggle [v.04 p.0629] the fight was over. Within fifteen minutes of the firing of the first shot, the "Chesapeake" struck her flag, but Broke himself was seriously wounded. For his services he was rewarded with a baronetcy, and subsequently was made a K.C.B. His exploit captivated the public fancy, and his popular title of "Brave Broke" gives the standard by which his action was judged. Its true significance, however, lies deeper. Broke's victory was due not so much to courage as to forethought. "The 'Shannon,'" said Admiral Jurien de La Gravière, "captured the 'Chesapeake' on the 1st of June 1813; but on the 14th of September 1806, when he took command of his frigate, Captain Broke had begun to prepare the glorious termination to this bloody affair." Broke's wound incapacitated him from further service, and for the rest of his life caused him serious suffering. He died in London on the 2nd of January 1841.

BROKEN HILL, a silver-mining town of Yancowinna county, New South Wales, Australia, 925 m. directly W. by N. of Sydney, and connected with Adelaide by rail. Pop. (1901) 27,518. One of the neighbouring mines, the Proprietary, is the richest in the world; gold is associated with the silver; large quantities of lead, good copper lodes, zinc and tin are also found. The problem of the profitable treatment of the sulphide ores has been practically solved here. In addition Broken Hill is the centre of one of the largest pastoral districts in Australia. The town is the seat of the Roman Catholic bishop of Wilcannia.

BROKER (according to the _New English Dictionary_, from Lat. _brocca_, spit, spike, _broccare_, to "broach"--another Eng. form of the same word; hence O. Fr. _vendre à broche_, to retail, e.g. wine, from the tap, and thus the general sense of dealing; see also for a discussion of the etymology and early history of the use of the word, J.R. Dos Passos, _Law of Stockbrokers_, chap. i., New York, 1905). In the primary sense of the word, a broker is a mercantile agent, of the class known as general agents, whose office is to bring together intending buyers and sellers and make a contract between them, for a remuneration called brokerage or commission; e.g. cotton brokers, wool brokers or produce brokers. Originally the only contracts negotiated by brokers were for the sale or purchase of commodities; but the word in its present use includes other classes of mercantile agents, such as stockbrokers, insurance-brokers, ship-brokers or bill-brokers. Pawnbrokers are not brokers in any proper sense of the word; they deal as principals and do not act as agents. In discussing the chief questions of modern legal interest in connexion with brokers, we shall deal with them, firstly, in the original sense of agents for the purchase and sale of goods.

_Relations between Broker and Principal._--A broker has not, like a factor, possession of his principal's goods, and, unless expressly authorized, cannot buy or sell in his own name; his business is to bring into privity of contract his principal and the third party. When the contract is made, ordinarily he drops out altogether. Brokers very frequently act as factors also, but, when they do so, their rights and duties as factors must be distinguished from their rights and duties as brokers. It is a broker's duty to carry out his principal's instructions with diligence, skill and perfect good faith. He must see that the terms of the bargain accord with his principal's orders from a commercial point of view, e.g. as to quality, quantity and price; he must ensure that the contract of sale effected by him be legally enforceable by his principal against the third party; and he must not accept any commission from the third party, or put himself in any position in which his own interest may become opposed to his principal's. As soon as he has made the contract which he was employed to make, in most respects his duty to, and his authority from, his principal alike cease; and consequently the law of brokers relates principally to the formation of contracts by them.

The most important formality in English law, in making contracts for the sale of goods, with which a broker must comply, in order to make the contract legally enforceable by his principal against the third party, is contained in section 4 of the Sale of Goods Act 1893, which (in substance re-enacting section 17 of the Statute of Frauds) provides as follows:--"A contract for the sale of any goods of the value of ten pounds or upwards shall not be enforceable by action unless the buyer shall accept part of the goods as sold, and actually receive the same, or give something in earnest to bind the contract, or in part payment, or _unless some note or memorandum in writing of the contract be made and signed by the party to be charged or his agent in that behalf_."

From the reign of James I. till 1884 brokers in London were admitted and licensed by the corporation, and regulated by statute; and it was common to employ one broker only, who acted as intermediary between, and was the agent of both buyer and seller. When the Statute of Frauds was passed in the reign of Charles II., it became the practice for the broker, acting for both parties, to insert in a formal book, kept for the purpose, a memorandum of each contract effected by him, and to sign such memorandum on behalf of both parties, in order that there might be a written memorandum of the contract of sale, signed by the agent of the parties as required by the statute. He would then send to the buyer a copy of this memorandum, called the "bought note", and to the seller a "sold note", which would run as follows:--

"I have this day bought for you from A B [or "my principal"] ..." [signed] "M, _Broker_."

"I have this day sold for you to A B [or "my principal"] ..." [signed] "M, _Broker_."