m. That the nucleus is a body of appreciable mass seems to be made

probable by the fact that, except for the central attraction of such a body, a comet would speedily be dissipated by the different attractions of the sun on different parts of the mass, which would result in each particle pursuing an orbit of its own. It follows that there must be a mass sufficient to hold the parts of the comet, if not absolutely together, at least in each other's immediate neighbourhood. How great a central mass may be required for this is a subject not yet investigated. It might be supposed that the amount of matter must be sufficient to make the nucleus quite opaque. But two considerations based on observations militate against this view. One is that an opaque body, reflecting much sunlight, would show a brighter continuous spectrum than has yet been found in any comet. Another and yet more remarkable observation is on record which goes far to prove not only the tenuity, but the transparency of a cometary nucleus. The great comet of 1882 made a transit over the sun on the 17th of September, an occurrence unique in the history of astronomy. But the fact of the transit escaped attention except at the observatory of the Cape of Good Hope. Here the comet was watched by W. H. Finlay and by W. L. Elkin as it approached the sun, and was kept in sight until it came almost or quite in contact with the sun's disk, when it disappeared. It should, if opaque, have appeared a few minutes later, projected on the sun's disk; but not a trace of it could be seen. The sun was approaching Table Mountain at the critical moment, and its limb was undulating badly, making the detection of a minute point difficult. The possibility of a very small opaque nucleus is therefore still left open; yet the remarkable conclusion still holds, that, immediately around a possible central nucleus, the matter of the head of the comet was so rare as not to intercept any appreciable fraction of the sun's light. This result seems also to show that, with the possible exception of a very small central mass, what seems to telescopic vision as a nucleus is really only the central portion of the coma, which, as the distance from the centre increases, becomes less and less dense by imperceptible gradations.

Another fact tending towards this same conclusion is that after this comet passed perihelion it showed several nuclei following each other. Evidently the powerful attraction of the sun had separated the parts of the apparent nucleus, which were following each other in nearly the same orbit. As they could not have been completely brought together again, we may suppose that in such cases the smaller nuclei were permanently separated from the main body. In addition to this, the remarkable similarity of the orbit of this comet to that of several others indicates a group of bodies moving in nearly the same orbit. The other members of the group were the great comets of 1843, 1880 and 1887. The latter, though so bright as to be conspicuous to the naked eye, showed no nucleus whatever. The closely related orbits of the four bodies are also remarkable for approaching nearer the sun at perihelion than does the orbit of any other known body. All of these comets pass through the matter of the sun's corona with a velocity of more than 100 m. per second without suffering any retardation. As it is beyond all reasonable probability that several independent bodies should have moved in orbits so nearly the same, the conclusion is that the comets were originally portions of one mass, which gradually separated in the course of ages by the powerful attraction of the sun as the collection successively passed the perihelion. It may be remarked that observations on the comet of 1843 seemed to show a slight ellipticity of the orbit, corresponding to a period of several centuries; but the deviation of all the orbits from a parabola is too slight to be established by observations. The periods of the comets are therefore unknown except that they must be counted by centuries and possibly by thousands of years.

Another fact which increases the complexity of the question is the well-established connexion of comets with meteoric showers. The shower of November 13-15, now known as the Leonids, which recurred for several centuries at intervals of about one-third of a century, are undoubtedly due to a stream of particles left behind by a comet observed in 1866. The same is true of Biela's comet, the disintegrated particles of which give rise to the Andromedids, and probably true also of the Perseids, or August meteors, the orbits of which have a great similarity to a comet seen in 1862. The general and well-established conclusion seems to be that, in addition to the visible features of a comet, every such body is followed in its orbit by a swarm of meteoric particles which must have been gradually detached and separated from it. (See METEOR.)

The source of the repulsive force by which the matter forming the tail of a comet is driven away from the sun is another question that has not yet been decisively answered. Two causes have been suggested, of which one has only recently been brought to light. This is the repulsion of the sun's rays, a form of action the probability of which was shown by J. Clerk Maxwell in 1870, and which was experimentally established about thirty years later. The intensity of this action on a particle is proportional to the surface presented by the particle to the rays, and therefore to the square of its diameter, while its mass, and therefore its gravitation to the sun, are proportional to the cube of the diameter. It follows that if the size and mass of a particle in space are below a certain limit, the repulsion of the rays will exceed the attraction of the sun, and the particle will be driven off into space. But, in order that this repulsive force may act, the particles, however minute they may be, must be opaque. Moreover, theory shows that there is a lower as well as an upper limit to their magnitude, and that it is only between certain definable limits of magnitude that the force acts. Conceiving the particle to be of the density of water, and considering its diameter as a diminishing variable, theory shows that the repulsion will balance gravity when the diameter has reached 0.0015 of a millimetre. As the diameter is reduced below this limit the ratio of the repulsive to the attractive force increases, but soon reaches a maximum, after which it diminishes down to a diameter of 0.00007 mm., when the two actions are again balanced. Below this limit the light speedily ceases to act. It follows that a purely gaseous body, such as would emit a characteristic bright line spectrum, would not be subject to the repulsion. We must therefore conclude that both the solid and gaseous forms of matter are here at play, and this view is consonant with the fact that the comet leaves behind it particles of meteoric matter.

Another possible cause is electrical repulsion. The probability of this cause is suggested by recent discoveries in radioactivity and by the fact that the sun undoubtedly sends forth electrical emanations which may ionize the gaseous molecules rising from the nucleus, and lead to their repulsion from the sun, thus resulting in the phenomena of the tail. But well-established laws are not yet sufficiently developed to lead to definite conclusions on this point, and the question whether both causes are combined, and, if not, to which one the phenomena in question are mainly due, must be left to the future.

A curious circumstance, which may be explained by a duplex character of the matter forming a cometary tail, is the great difference between the visual and photographic aspect of these bodies. The soft, delicate, feathery-like form which the comet with its tail presents to the eye is wanting in a photograph, which shows principally a round head with an irregularly formed tail much like the knotted stalk of a plant. It follows that the light emitted by the central axis of the tail greatly exceeds in actinic power the diffuse light around it. A careful comparison of the form and intensity of the photographic and visual tails may throw much light on the question of the constitution of these bodies, but no good opportunity of making the comparison has been afforded since the art of celestial photography has been brought to its present state of perfection.

The main conclusion to which the preceding facts and considerations point is that the matter of a comet is partly solid and partly gaseous. The gaseous form is shown conclusively by the spectroscope, but in view of the extreme delicacy of the indications with this instrument no quantitative estimate of the gas can be made. As there is no central mass sufficient to hold together a continuous atmosphere of elastic gas of any sort, it seems probable that the gaseous molecules are only those rising from the coma, possibly by ordinary evaporation, but more probably by the action of the ultra-violet and other rays of the sun giving rise to an ionization of disconnected gaseous molecules. The matter cannot be wholly gaseous because in this case there could be no central force sufficient to keep the parts of the comet together.

The facts also point to the conclusion that the solid matter of a comet is formed of a swarm or cloud of small disconnected masses, probably having much resemblance to the meteoric masses which are known to be flying through the solar system and possibly of the same general kind as these. The question whether there is any central solid of considerable mass is still undecided; it can only be said that if so, it is probably small relative to cosmic masses in general--more likely less than greater than 100 m. in diameter. The light of the comet therefore proceeds from two sources: one the incandescence of gases, the other the sunlight reflected from the solid parts. No estimate can be formed of the ratio between these two kinds of light until a bright comet shall be spectroscopically observed during an entire apparition.

_Origin and Orbits of Comets._--The great difference which we have pointed out between comets and the permanent bodies of the solar system naturally suggested the idea that these bodies do not belong to that system at all, but are nebulous masses, scattered through the stellar spaces, and brought one by one into the sphere of the sun's attraction. The results of this view are easily shown to be incompatible with the observed facts. The sun, carrying the whole solar system with it, is moving through space with a speed of about 10 m. per second. If it approached a comet nearly at rest the result would be a relative motion of this amount which, as the comet came nearer, would be constantly increased, and would result in the comet describing relative to the sun a markedly hyperbolic orbit, deviating too widely from a parabola to leave any doubt, even in the most extreme cases. Moreover, a large majority of comets would then have their aphelia in the direction of the sun's motion, and therefore their perihelia in the opposite direction. Neither of these results corresponds to the fact. The conclusion is that if we regard a comet as a body not belonging to the solar system, it is at least a body which before its approach to the sun had the same motion through the stellar spaces that the sun has. As this unity of motion must have been maintained from the beginning, we may regard comets as belonging to the solar system in the sense of not being visitors from distant regions of space.

The acceptance of this seemingly inevitable conclusion leads to another: that no comet yet known moves in a really hyperbolic orbit, but that the limit of eccentricity must be regarded as 1, or that of the parabola. It is true that seeming evidence of hyperbolic eccentricity is sometimes afforded by observations and regarded by some astronomers as sufficient. The objections to the reality of the hyperbolic orbit are two: (1) A comet moving in a decidedly hyperbolic orbit must have come from so great a distance within a finite time, say a few millions of years, as to have no relation to the sun, and must after its approach to the sun return into space, never again to visit our system. In this case the motion of the sun through space renders it almost infinitely improbable that the orbit would have been so nearly a parabola as all such orbits are actually found to be. (2) The apparent deviation from a very elongated ellipse has never been in any case greater than might have been the result of errors of observation on bodies of this class.

This being granted, a luminous view of the causes which lead to the observed orbits of comets is readily gained by imagining these bodies to be formed of nebulous masses, which originally accompanied the sun in its journey through space, but at distances, in most cases, vastly greater than that of the farthest planet. Such a mass, when drawn towards the sun, would move round it in a nearly parabolic orbit, similar to the actual orbits of the great majority of comets. The period might be measured by thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years, according to the distances of the comet in the beginning; but instead of bodies extraneous to the system, we should have bodies properly belonging to the system and making revolutions around the sun.

Were it not for the effect of planetary attraction long periods like these would be the general rule, though not necessarily universal. But at every return to perihelion the motion of a comet will be to some extent either accelerated or retarded by the action of Jupiter or any other planet in the neighbourhood of which it may pass. Commonly the action will be so slight as to have little influence on the orbit and the time of revolution. But should the comet chance to pass the orbit of Jupiter just in front of the planet, its motion would be retarded and the orbit would be changed into one of shorter period. Should it pass behind the planet, its motion would be accelerated and its period lengthened. In such cases the orbit might be changed to a hyperbola, and then the comet would never return. It follows that there is a tendency towards a gradual but constant diminution in the total number of comets. If we call [Delta]e the amount by which the eccentricity of a cometary orbit is less than unity, [Delta]e will be an extremely minute fraction in the case of the original orbits. If we call ±[delta] the change which the eccentricity 1 - [Delta]e undergoes by the action of the planets during the passage of the comet through our system, it will leave the system with the eccentricity 1 - [Delta]e ± [delta]. The possibilities are even whether [delta] shall be positive or negative. If negative, the eccentricity will be diminished and the period shortened. If positive, and greater than [Delta]e, the eccentricity 1 - [Delta]e + [delta] will be greater than 1, and then the comet will be thrown into a hyperbolic orbit and become for ever a wanderer through the stellar spaces.

The nearer a comet passes to a planet, especially to Jupiter, the greatest planet, the greater [delta] may be. If [delta] is a considerable negative fraction, the eccentricity will be so reduced that the comet will after the approach be one of short period. It follows that, however long the period of a comet may be, there is a possibility of its becoming one of short period if it approaches Jupiter. There have been several cases of this during the past two centuries, the most recent being that of Brooks's comet, 1889, V. Soon after its discovery this body was found to have a period of only about seven years. The question why it had not been observed at previous returns was settled after the orbit had been determined by computing its motion in the past. It was thus found that in October 1886 the comet had passed in the immediate neighbourhood of Jupiter, the action of which had been such as to change its orbit from one of long period to the short observed period. A similar case was that of Lexel's comet, seen in 1770. Originally moving in an unknown orbit, it encountered the planet Jupiter, made two revolutions round the sun, in the second of which it was observed, then again encountered the planet, to be thrown out of its orbit into one which did not admit of determination. The comet was never again found.

A general conclusion which seems to follow from these conditions, and is justified by observations, so far as the latter go, is that comets are not to be regarded as permanent bodies like the planets, but that the conglomerations of matter which compose them are undergoing a process of gradual dissipation in space. This process is especially rapid in the case of the fainter periodic comets. It was first strikingly brought out in the case of Biela's comet. This object was discovered in 1772, was observed to be periodic after several revolutions had been made, and was observed with a fair degree of regularity at different returns until 1852. At the previous apparition it was found to have separated into two masses, and in 1852 these masses were so widely separated that they might be considered as forming two comets. Notwithstanding careful search at times and places when the comet was due, no trace of it has since been seen. An examination of the table of periodic comets given at the end of this article will show that the same thing is probably true of several other comets, especially Brorsen's and Tempel's, which have each made several revolutions since last observed, and have been sought for in vain.

In view of the seemingly inevitable dissipation of comets in the course of ages, and of the actually observed changes of their orbits by the attraction of Jupiter, the question arises whether the orbits of all comets of short period may not have been determined by the attraction of the planets, especially of Jupiter. In this case the orbit would, for a period of several centuries, have continued to nearly intersect that of the planet. We find, as a matter of fact, that several periodic comets either pass near Jupiter or have their aphelia in the neighbourhood of the orbit of Jupiter. The approach, however, is not sufficiently close to have led to the change unless in former times the proximity of the orbits was much greater than it is now. As the orbits of all the bodies of the solar system are subject to a slow secular change of their form and position, this may only show that it must have been thousands of years since the comet became one of short period. The two cases of most difficulty are those of Halley's and Encke's comets. The orbit of the former is so elongated and so inclined to the general plane of the planetary orbits that its secular variation must be very slow indeed. But it does not pass near the orbit of any planet except Venus; and even here the proximity is far from being sufficient to have produced an appreciable change in the period. The orbit of Encke's comet is entirely within the orbit of Jupiter, and it also cannot have passed near enough to a planet for thousands of years to have had its orbit changed by the action in question. It therefore seems difficult to regard these two comets as other than permanent members of the solar system.

_Special Periodic Comets._--One of the most remarkable periodic comets with which we are acquainted is that known to astronomers as Halley's. Having perceived that the elements of the comet of 1682 were nearly the same as those of two comets which had respectively appeared in 1531 and 1607, Edmund Halley concluded that all the three orbits belonged to the same comet, of which the periodic time was about 76 years. After a rough estimate of the perturbations it must sustain from the attraction of the planets, he predicted its return for 1757,--a bold prediction at that time, but justified by the event, for the comet again made its appearance as was expected, though it did not pass through its perihelion till the month of March 1759, the attraction of Jupiter and Saturn having caused, as was computed by Clairault previously to its return, a retardation of 618 days. This comet had been observed in 1066, and the accounts which have been preserved represent it as having then appeared to be four times the size of Venus, and to have shone with a light equal to a fourth of that of the moon. History is silent respecting it from that time till the year 1456, when it passed very near to the earth: its tail then extended over 60° of the heavens, and had the form of a sabre. It returned to its perihelion in 1835, and was well observed in almost every observatory. But its brightness was far from comparing with the glorious accounts of its former apparitions. That this should have been due to the process of dissipation does not seem possible in so short a period; we must therefore consider either that the earlier accounts are greatly exaggerated, or that the brightness of the comet is subject to changes from some unknown cause. Previous appearances of Halley's comet have been calculated by J. R. Hind, and more recently by P. H. Cowell and A. C. D. Crommelin of Greenwich, the latter having carried the comet back to 87 B.C. with certainty, and to 240 B.C. with fair probability. It was detected by Max Wolf at Heidelberg on plates exposed on Sept. 11, 1909, and subsequently on a Greenwich plate of Sept. 9.

The known comet of shortest period bears the name of J. F. Encke, the astronomer who first investigated its orbit and showed its periodicity. It was originally discovered in 1789, but its periodicity was not recognized until 1818, after it had been observed at several returns. This comet has given rise to a longer series of investigations than any other, owing to Encke's result that the orbit was becoming smaller, and the revolutions therefore accelerated, by some unknown cause, of which the most plausible was a resisting medium surrounding the sun. As this comet is almost the only one that passes within the orbit of Mercury, it is quite possible that it alone would show the effect of such a medium. Recent investigations of this subject have been made at the Pulkova Observatory, first by F. E. von Asten and later by J. O. Backlund who, in 1909, was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his researches in this field. During some revolutions there was evidence of a slight acceleration of the return, and during others there was not.

The following is a list (compiled in 1909) of comets which are well established as periodic, through having been observed at one or more returns. In addition to what has already been said of several comets in this list the following remarks may be made. Tuttle's comet was first seen by P. F. A. Méchain in 1790, but was not recognized as periodic until found by Tuttle in 1858, when the resemblance of the two orbits led to the conclusion of the identity of the bodies, the period of which was soon made evident by continued observations. The comets of Pons and Olbers are remarkable for having an almost equal period. But their orbits are otherwise totally different, so that there does not seem to be any connexion between them. Brorsen's comet seems also to be completely dissipated, not having been seen since 1879.

_List of Periodic Comets observed at more than one Return._

+------------+-----------------+-----------------+-------+-----------+-----------+ |Designation.| 1st Perih. | Last Perih. | Period|Least Dist.| Gr. Dist. | | | Passage. | Passage obs. | Years.|Ast. Units.|Ast. Units.| +------------+-----------------+-----------------+-------+-----------+-----------+ |Halley | 1456 June 8.2 | 1835 Nov. 15.9 | 75.9 | 0.58 | 35.42 | |Biela | 1772 Feb. 16.7 | 1852 Sept. 23.4 | 6.67 | 0.98 | 6.18 | |Encke | 1786 Jan. 30.9 | 1905 Jan. 11.4 | 3.29 | 0.34 | 4.08 | |Tuttle | 1790 Jan. 30.9 | 1899 May 4.5 | 13.78 | 1.03 | 10.53 | |Poris | 1812 Sept. 15.3 | 1884 Jan. 25.7 | 72.28 | 0.78 | 33.70 | |Olbers | 1815 April 26.0 | 1887 Oct. 8.5 | 73.32 | 1.21 | 33.99 | |Winnecke | 1819 July 18.9 | 1898 Mar. 20.4 | 5.67 | 0.77 | 5.55 | |Faye | 1843 Oct. 17.1 | 1896 Mar. 19.3 | 7.50 | 1.69 | 5.93 | |De Vico | 1844 Sept. 2.5 | 1894 Oct. 12.2 | 5.66 | 1.19 | 5.01 | |Brorsen | 1846 Feb. 11.1 | 1879 Mar. 30.5 | 5.52 | 0.65 | 5.63 | |D'Arrest | 1851 July 8.7 | 1897 May 21.7 | 6.56 | 1.17 | 5.71 | |Tempel I. | 1867 May 23.9 | 1879 May 7.0 | 5.84 | 1.56 | 4.82 | |Tempel-Swift| 1869 Nov. 18.8 | 1891 Nov. 15.0 | 5.51 | 1.06 | 5.16 | |Tempel II. | 1873 June 25.2 | 1904 Nov. 10.5 | 5.28 | 1.34 | 4.66 | |Wolf | 1884 Nov. 17.8 | 1898 July 4.6 | 6.80 | 1.59 | 5.57 | |Finlay | 1886 Nov. 22.4 | 1893 July 12.2 | 6.64 | 0.99 | 6.17 | |Brooks | 1889 Sept. 30.3 | 1903 Dec. 6.5 | 7.10 | 1.95 | 5.44 | |Holmes | 1892 June 13.2 | 1899 April 28.1 | 6.89 | 2.14 | 4.50 | +------------+-----------------+-----------------+-------+-----------+-----------+

There are also a number of cases in which a comet has been observed through one apparition, and found to be apparently periodic, but which was not seen to return at the end of its supposed period. In some of these cases it seems likely that the comet passed near the planet Jupiter and thus had its orbit entirely changed. It is possible that in other cases the apparent periodicity is due to the unavoidable errors of observation to which, owing to their diffused outline, the nuclei of comets are liable. (S. N.)

COMET-SEEKER, a small telescope (q.v.) adapted especially to searching for comets: commonly of short focal length and large aperture, in order to secure the greatest brilliancy of light.

COMILLA, or KUMILLA, a town of British India, headquarters of Tippera district in Eastern Bengal and Assam, situated on the river Gumti, with a station on the Assam-Bengal railway, 96 m. from the coast terminus at Chittagong. Pop. (1901) 19,169. The town has many large tanks and an English church, built in 1875.

COMINES, or COMMINES (Flem. _Komen_), a town of western Flanders, 13 m. N.N.W. of Lille by rail. It is divided by the river Lys, leaving one part on French (department of Nord), the other on Belgian territory (province of West Flanders). Pop. of the French town 6359 (1906); of the Belgian town, 6453 (1904). The former has a belfry of the 14th century, restored in the 17th and 19th centuries, and remains of a chateau. Comines carries on the spinning of flax, wool and cotton.

COMITIA, the name applied, always in technical and generally in popular phraseology, to the most formal types of gathering of the sovereign people in ancient Rome. It is the plural of _comitium_, the old "meeting-place" (Lat. _cum_, together, _ire_, to go) on the north-west of the Forum. The Romans had three words for describing gatherings of the people. These were _concilium_, _comitia_ and _contio_. Of these concilium had the most general significance. It could be applied to any kind of meeting and is often used to describe assemblies in foreign states. It was, therefore, a word that might be employed to denote an organized gathering of a portion of the Roman people such as the plebs, and in this sense is contrasted with _comitia_, which when used strictly should signify an assembly of the whole people. Thus the Roman draughtsman who wishes to express the idea "magistrates of any kind as president of assemblies" writes "Magistratus queiquomque comitia conciliumve habebit" (_Lex Latina tabulae Bantinae_, l. 5), and formalism required that a magistrate who summoned only a portion of the people to meet him should, in his summons, use the word _concilium_. This view is expressed by Laelius Felix, a lawyer probably of the age of Hadrian, when he writes "Is qui non universum populum, sed partem aliquam adesse jubet, non comitia, sed concilium edicere debet" (Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_, xv. 27). But popular phraseology did not conform to this canon, and _comitia_, which gained in current Latin the sense of "elections" was sometimes used of the assemblies of the plebs (see the instances in Botsford, distinction between _Comitia_ and _Concilium_, p. 23). The distinction between _comitia_ and _contio_ was more clearly marked. Both were formal assemblies convened by a magistrate; but while, in the case of the _comitia_, the magistrate's purpose was to ask a question of the people and to elicit their binding response, his object in summoning a _contio_ was merely to bring the people together either for their instruction or for a declaration of his will as expressed in an edict ("contionem habere est verba facere ad populum sine ulla rogatione," Gell. op. cit. xiii. 6). The word comitia merely means "meetings."

The earliest _comitia_ was one organized on the basis of parishes (_curiae_) and known in later times as the _comitia curiata_. The _curia_ voted as a single unit and thus furnished the type for that system of group-voting which runs through all the later organization of the popular assemblies. This _comitia_ must originally have been composed exclusively of patricians (q.v.); but there is reason to believe that, at an early period of the Republic, it had, in imitation of the centuriate organization, come to include plebeians (see CURIA). The organization which gave rise to the _comitia centuriata_ was the result of the earliest steps in the political emancipation of the plebs. Three stages in this process may be conjectured. In the first place the plebeians gained full rights of ownership and transfer, and could thus become freeholders of the land which they occupied and of the appurtenances of this land (_res mancipi_). This legal capacity rendered them liable to military service as heavy-armed fighting men, and as such they were enrolled in the military units called _centuriae_. When the enrolment was completed the whole host (_exercitus_) was the best organized and most representative gathering that Rome could show. It therefore either usurped, or became gradually invested with voting powers, and gained a range of power which for two centuries (508-287 B.C.) made it the dominant assembly in the state. But its aristocratic organization, based as this was on property qualifications which gave the greatest voting power to the richest men, prevented it from being a fitting channel for the expression of plebeian claims. Hence the plebs adopted a new political organization of their own. The tribunate called into existence a purely plebeian assembly, firstly, for the election of plebeian magistrates; secondly, for jurisdiction in cases where these magistrates had been injured; thirdly, for presenting petitions on behalf of the plebs through the consuls to the _comitia centuriata_. This right of petitioning developed into a power of legislation. The stages of the process (marked by the Valerio-Horatian laws of 449 B.C., the Publilian law of 339 B.C., and the Hortensian law of 287 B.C.) are unknown; but it is probable that the two first of the laws progressively weakened the discretionary power of senate and consuls in admitting such petitions; and that the Hortensian law fully recognized the right of resolutions of the plebs (_plebiscita_) to bind the whole community. The plebeian assembly, which had perhaps originally met by _curiae_, was organized on the basis of the territorial tribes in 471 B.C. This change suggested a renewed organization of the whole people for comitial purposes. The _comitia tributa populi_ was the result. This assembly seems to have been already in existence at the epoch of the Twelve Tables in 451 B.C., its electoral activity is perhaps attested in 447 B.C., and it appears as a legislative body in 357 B.C.

In spite of the formal differences of these four assemblies and the real distinction springing from the fact that patricians were not members of the plebeian bodies, the view which is appropriate to the developed Roman constitution is that the people expressed its will equally through all, although the mode of expression varied with the channel. This will was in theory unlimited. It was restricted only by the conservatism of the Roman, by the condition that the initiative must always be taken by a magistrate, by the _de facto_ authority of the senate, and by the magisterial veto which the senate often had at its command (see SENATE). There were no limitations on the legislative powers of the _comitia_ except such as they chose to respect or which they themselves created and might repeal. They never during the Republican period lost the right of criminal jurisdiction, in spite of the fact that so many spheres of this jurisdiction had been assigned in perpetuity to standing commissions (_quaestiones perpetuae_). This power of judging exercised by the assemblies had in the main developed from the use of the right of appeal (_provocatio_) against the judgments of the magistrates. But it is probable that, in the developed procedure, where it was known that the judgment pronounced might legally give rise to the appeal, the magistrate pronounced no sentence, but brought the case at once before the people. The case was then heard in four separate _contiones_. After these hearings the _comitia_ gave its verdict. Finally, the people elected to every magistracy with the exception of the occasional offices of Dictator and Interrex. The distribution of these functions amongst the various _comitia_, and the differences in their organization, were as follows:--

The _comitia curiata_ had in the later Republic become a merely formal assembly. Its main function was that of passing the _lex curiata_ which was necessary for the ratification both of the _imperium_ of the higher magistracies of the people, and of the _potestas_ of those of lower rank. This assembly also met, under the name of the _comitia calata_ and under the presidency of the pontifex maximus, for certain religious acts. These were the inauguration of the rex sacrorum and the flamens, and that abjuration of hereditary worship (_detestatio sacrorum_) which was made by a man who passed from his clan (_gens_) either by an act of adrogation (see ROMAN LAW and ADOPTION) or by transition from the patrician to the plebeian order. For the purpose of passing the _lex curiata_, and probably for its other purposes as well, this _comitia_ was in Cicero's day represented by but thirty lictors (Cic. _de Lege Agraria_, ii. 12, 31).

The _comitia centuriata_ could be summoned and presided over only by the magistrates with _imperium_. The consuls were its usual presidents for elections and for legislation, but the praetors summoned it for purposes of jurisdiction. It elected the magistrates with _imperium_ and the censors, and alone had the power of declaring war. According to the principle laid down in the Twelve Tables (Cicero, _de Legibus_, iii. 4. 11) capital cases were reserved for this assembly. It was not frequently employed as a legislative body after the two assemblies of the tribes, which were easier to summon and organize, had been recognized as possessing sovereign rights. The internal structure of the _comitia centuriata_ underwent a great change during the Republic--a change which has been conjecturally attributed to the censorship of Flaminius in 220 B.C. (Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, iii. p. 270). In the early scheme, at a time when a pecuniary valuation had replaced land and its appurtenances (_res mancipi_) as the basis of qualification, five divisions (_classes_) were recognized whose property was assessed respectively at 100,000, 75,000, 50,000, 25,000 and 11,000 (or 12,500) asses. The first class contained 80 centuries; the second, third and fourth 20 each; the fifth 30. Added to these were the 18 centuries of knights (see EQUITES). The combined vote of the first class and the knights was thus represented by 98 centuries; that of the whole of the other _classes_ (including 4 or 5 centuries of professional corporations connected with the army, such as the _fabri_ and 1 century of _proletarii_, i.e. of all persons below the minimum census) was represented by 95 or 96 centuries. Thus the upper classes in the community possessed more than half the votes in the assembly. The newer scheme aimed at a greater equality of voting power; but it has been differently interpreted. The interpretation most usually accepted, which was first suggested by Pantagathus, a 17th-century scholar, is based on the view that the five _classes_ were distributed over the tribes in such a manner that there were 2 centuries of each class in a single tribe. As the number of the tribes was 35, the total number of centuries would be 350. To these we must add 18 centuries of knights, 4 of _fabri_, &c., and 1 of _proletarii_. Here the first class and the knights command but 88 votes out of a total of 373. Mommsen's interpretation (_Staatsrecht_, iii. p. 275) was different. He allowed the 70 votes for the 70 centuries of the first class, but thought that the 280 centuries of the other classes were so combined as to form only 100 votes. The total votes in the comitia would thus be 70 + 100 + 5 (_fabri_, &c.) + 18 (knights), i.e. 193, as in the earlier arrangement. In 88 B.C. a return was made to the original and more aristocratic system by a law passed by the consuls Sulla and Pompeius. At least this seems to be the meaning of Appian (_Bellum Civile_, i. 59) when he says [Greek: esêgounto ... tas cheirotonias mê kata phylas alla kata lochous ... gignesthai]. But this change was not permanent as the more liberal system prevails in the Ciceronian period.

The _comitia tributa_ was in the later Republic the usual organ for laws passed by the whole people. Its presidents were the magistrates of the people, usually the consuls and praetors, and, for purposes of jurisdiction, the curule aediles. It elected these aediles and other lower magistrates of the people. Its jurisdiction was limited to monetary penalties.

The _concilium plebis_, although voting, like this last assembly, by tribes, could be summoned and presided over only by plebeian magistrates, and never included the patricians. Its utterances (_plebiscita_) had the full force of law; it elected the tribunes of the plebs and the plebeian aediles, and it pronounced judgment on the penalties which they proposed. The right of this assembly to exercise capital jurisdiction was questioned; but it possessed the undisputed right of pronouncing outlawry (_aquae et ignis interdictio_) against any one already in exile (Livy xxv. 4, and xxvi. 3).

When the tenure of the religious colleges--formerly filled up by co-optation--was submitted to popular election, a change effected by a _lex Domitia_ of 104 B.C., a new type of _comitia_ was devised for this purpose. The electoral body was composed of 17 tribes selected by lot from the whole body of 35.

There was a body of rules governing the _comitia_ which were concerned with the time and place of meeting, the forms of promulgation and the methods of voting. Valid meetings might be held on any of the 194 "comitial" days of the year which were not market or festal days (_nundinae, feriae_). The _comitia curiata_ and the two assemblies of the tribes met within the walls, the former usually in the Comitium, the latter in the Forum or on the Area Capitolii; but the elections at these assemblies were in the later Republic held in the Campus Martius outside the walls. The _comitia centuriata_ was by law compelled to meet outside the city and its gathering place was usually the Campus. Promulgation was required for the space of 3 _nundinae_ (i.e. 24 days) before a matter was submitted to the people. The voting was preceded by a _contio_ at which a limited debate was permitted by the magistrate. In the assemblies of the _curiae_ and the tribes the voting of the groups took place simultaneously, in that of the centuries in a fixed order. In elections as well as in legislative acts an absolute majority was required, and hence the candidate who gained a mere relative majority was not returned.

The _comitia_ survived the Republic. The last known act of comitial legislation belongs to the reign of Nerva (A.D. 96-98). After the essential elements in the election of magistrates had passed to the senate in A.D. 14, the formal announcement of the successful candidates (_renuntiatio_) still continued to be made to the popular assemblies. Early in the 3rd century Dio Cassius still saw the _comitia centuriata_ meeting with all its old solemnities (Dio Cassius lviii. 20).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Mommsen, _Römisches Staatsrecht_, iii. p. 300 foll. (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1887), and _Römische Forschungen_, Bd. i. (Berlin, 1879); Soltau, _Entstehung und Zusammensetzung der altrömischen Volksversammlungen_, and _Die Gültigkeit der Plebiscite_ (Berlin, 1884); Huschke, _Die Verfassung des Königs Servius Tullius als Grundlage zu einer römischen Verfassungsgeschichte_ (Heidelberg, 1838); Borgeaud, _Le Plébiscite dans l'antiquité. Grèce et Rome_ (Geneva, 1838); Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, p. 65 foll., 102, 238 foll. and App. i. (1901); G. W. Botsford, _Roman Assemblies_ (1909). (A. H. J. G.)

COMITY (from the Lat. _comitas_, courtesy, from _cemis_, friendly, courteous), friendly or courteous behaviour; a term particularly used in international law, in the phrase "comity of nations," for the courtesy of nations towards each other. This has been held by some authorities to be the basis for the recognition by courts of law of the judgments and rules of law of foreign tribunals (see INTERNATIONAL LAW, PRIVATE). "Comity of nations" is sometimes wrongly used, from a confusion with the Latin _comes_, a companion, for the whole body or company of nations practising such international courtesy.

COMMA (Gr. [Greek: komma], a thing stamped or cut off, from [Greek: koptein], to strike), originally, in Greek rhetoric, a short clause, something less than the "colon"; hence a mark (,), in punctuation, to show the smallest break in the construction of a sentence. The mark is also used to separate numerals, mathematical symbols and the like. Inverted commas, or "quotation-marks," i.e. pairs of commas, the first inverted, and the last upright, are placed at the beginning and end of a sentence or word quoted, or of a word used in a technical or conventional sense; single commas are similarly used for quotations within quotations. The word is also applied to comma-shaped objects, such as the "comma-bacillus," the causal agent in cholera.

COMMANDEER (from the South African Dutch _kommanderen_, to command), properly, to compel the performance of military duty in the field, especially of the military service of the Boer republics (see COMMANDO); also to seize property for military purposes; hence used of any peremptory seizure for other than military purposes.

COMMANDER, in the British navy, the title of the second grade of captains. He commands a small vessel, or is second in command of a large one. A staff commander is entrusted with the navigation of a large ship, and ranks above a navigating lieutenant. Since 1838 the officer next in rank to a captain in the U.S. navy has been called commander.

COMMANDERY (through the Fr. _commanderie_, from med. Lat. _commendaria_, a trust or charge), a division of the landed property in Europe of the Knights Hospitallers (see St John of Jerusalem). The property of the order was divided into "priorates," subdivided into "bailiwicks," which in turn were divided into "commanderies"; these were placed in charge of a "commendator" or commander. The word is also applied to the emoluments granted to a commander of a military order of knights.

COMMANDO, a Portuguese word meaning "command," adopted by the Boers in South Africa through whom it has come into English use, for military and semi-military expeditions against the natives. More particularly a "commando" was the administrative and tactical unit of the forces of the former Boer republics, "commandeered" under the law of the constitutions which made military service obligatory on all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Each "commando" was formed from the burghers of military age of an electoral district.

COMMEMORATION, a general term for celebrating some past event. It is also the name for the annual act, or _Encaenia_, the ceremonial closing of the academic year at Oxford University. It consists of a Latin oration in commemoration of benefactors and founders; of the recitation of prize compositions in prose and verse, and the conferring of honorary degrees upon English or foreign celebrities. The ceremony, which is usually on the third Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, is held in the Sheldonian Theatre, in Broad St., Oxford. "Commencement" is the term for the equivalent ceremony at Cambridge, and this is also used in the case of American universities.

COMMENDATION (from the Lat. _commendare_, to entrust to the charge of, or to procure a favour for), approval, especially when expressed to one person on behalf of another, a recommendation. The word is used in a liturgical sense for an office commending the souls of the dying and dead to the mercies of God. In feudal law the term is applied to the practice of a freeman placing himself under the protection of a lord (see FEUDALISM), and in ecclesiastical law to the granting of benefices _in commendam_. A benefice was held _in commendam_ when granted either temporarily until a vacancy was filled up, or to a layman, or, in case of a monastery or abbey, to a secular cleric to enjoy the revenues and privileges for life (see ABBOT), or to a bishop to hold together with his see. An act of 1836 prohibited the holding of benefices _in commendam_ in England.

COMMENTARII (Lat. = Gr. [Greek: hypomnêmata]), notes to assist the memory, memoranda. This original idea of the word gave rise to a variety of meanings: notes and abstracts of speeches for the assistance of orators; family memorials, the origin of many of the legends introduced into early Roman history from a desire to glorify a particular family; diaries of events occurring in their own circle kept by private individuals,--the day-book, drawn up for Trimalchio in Petronius (_Satyricon_, 53) by his _actuarius_ (a slave to whom the duty was specially assigned) is quoted as an example; memoirs of events in which they had taken part drawn up by public men,--such were the "Commentaries" of Caesar on the Gallic and Civil wars, and of Cicero on his consulship. Different departments of the imperial administration and certain high functionaries kept records, which were under the charge of an official known as a _commentariis_ (cf. _a secretis_, _ab epistulis_). Municipal authorities also kept a register of their official acts.

The _Commentarii Principis_ were the register of the official acts of the emperor. They contained the decisions, favourable or unfavourable, in regard to certain citizens; accusations brought before him or ordered by him; lists of persons in receipt of special privileges. These must be distinguished from the _commentarii diurni_, a daily court-journal. At a later period records called _ephemerides_ were kept by order of the emperor; these were much used by the Scriptores Historiae Augustae (see AUGUSTAN HISTORY). The _Commentarii Senatus_, only once mentioned (Tacitus, _Annals_, xv. 74) are probably identical with the Acta Senatus (q.v.). There were also Commentarii of the priestly colleges: (a) _Pontificum_, collections of their decrees and responses for future reference, to be distinguished from their _Annales_, which were historical records, and from their _Acta_, minutes of their meetings; (b) _Augurum_, similar collections of augural decrees and responses; (c) _Decemvirorum_; (d) _Fratrum Arvalium_. Like the priests, the magistrates also had similar notes, partly written by themselves, and partly records of which they formed the subject. But practically nothing is known of these _Commentarii Magistratuum_. Mention should also be made of the _Commentarii Regum_, containing decrees concerning the functions and privileges of the kings, and forming a record of the acts of the king in his capacity of priest. They were drawn up in historical times like the so-called _leges regiae_ (_jus Papirianum_), supposed to contain the decrees and decisions of the Roman kings.

See the exhaustive article by A. von Premerstein in Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopädie_ (1901); Teuffel-Schwabe, _Hist. of Roman Lit._ (Eng. trans.), pp. 72, 77-79; and the concise account by H. Thédenat in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités_.

COMMENTRY, a town of central France, in the department of Allier, 42 m. S.W. of Moulins by the Orléans railway. Pop. (1906) 7581. Commentry gives its name to a coalfield over 5000 acres in extent, and has important foundries and forges.

COMMERCE (Lat. _commercium_, from _cum_, together, and _merx_, merchandise), in its general acceptation, the international traffic in goods, or what constitutes the foreign trade of all countries as distinct from their domestic trade.

In tracing the history of such dealings we may go back to the early records found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Such a transaction as that of Abraham, for example, weighing down "four hundred shekels of silver, _current with the merchant_," for the field of Ephron, is suggestive of a group of facts and ideas indicating an advanced condition of commercial intercourse,--property in land, sale of land, arts of mining and purifying metals, the use of silver of recognized purity as a common medium of exchange, and merchandise an established profession, or division of labour. That other passage in which we read of Joseph being sold by his brethren for twenty pieces of silver to "a company of Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh to Egypt," extends our vision still farther, and shows us the populous and fertile Egypt in commercial relationship with Chaldaea, and Arabians, foreign to both, as intermediaries in their traffic, generations before the Hebrew commonwealth was founded.

The first foreign merchants of whom we read, carrying goods and bags of silver from one distant region to another, were the southern Arabs, reputed descendants of Ishmael and Esau. The first notable navigators and maritime carriers of goods were the Phoenicians. In the commerce of the ante-Christian ages the Jews do not appear to have performed any conspicuous part. Both the agricultural and the theocratic constitution of their society were unfavourable to a vigorous prosecution of foreign trade. In such traffic as they had with other nations they were served on their eastern borders by Arabian merchants, and on the west and south by the Phoenician shippers. The abundance of gold, silver and other precious commodities gathered from distant parts, of which we read in the days of greatest Hebrew prosperity, has more the character of spoils of war and tributes of dependent states than the conquest by free exchange of their domestic produce and manufacture. It was not until the Jews were scattered by foreign invasions, and finally cast into the world by the destruction of Jerusalem, that they began to develop those commercial qualities for which they have since been famous.

Primary conditions of commerce.

There are three conditions as essential to extensive international traffic as diversity of natural resources, division of labour, accumulation of stock, or any other primal element--(1) means of transport, (2) freedom of labour and exchange, and (3) security; and in all these conditions the ancient world was signally deficient.

The great rivers, which became the first seats of population and empire, must have been of much utility as channels of transport, and hence the course of human power of which they are the geographical delineation, and probably the idolatry with which they were sometimes honoured. Nor were the ancient rulers insensible of the importance of opening roads through their dominions, and establishing post and lines of communication, which, though primarily for official and military purposes, must have been useful to traffickers and to the general population. But the free navigable area of great rivers is limited, and when diversion of traffic had to be made to roads and tracks through deserts, there remained the slow and costly carriage of beasts of burden, by which only articles of small bulk and the rarest value could be conveyed with any hope of profit. Corn, though of the first necessity, could only be thus transported in famines, when beyond price to those who were in want, and under this extreme pressure could only be drawn from within a narrow sphere, and in quantity sufficient to the sustenance of but a small number of people. The routes of ancient commerce were thus interrupted and cut asunder by barriers of transport, and the farther they were extended became the more impassable to any considerable quantity or weight of commodities. As long as navigation was confined to rivers and the shores of inland gulfs and seas, the oceans were a _terra incognita_, contributing nothing to the facility or security of transport from one part of the world to another, and leaving even one populous part of Asia as unapproachable from another as if they had been in different hemispheres. The various routes of trade from Europe and north-western Asia to India, which have been often referred to, are to be regarded more as speculations of future development than as realities of ancient history. It is not improbable that the ancient traffic of the Red Sea may have been extended along the shores of the Arabian Sea to some parts of Hindustan, but that vessels braved the Indian Ocean and passed round Cape Comorin into the Bay of Bengal, 2000 or even 1000 years before mariners had learned to double the Cape of Good Hope, is scarcely to be believed. The route by the Euxine and the Caspian Sea has probably never in any age reached India. That by the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf is shorter, and was besides the more likely from passing through tracts of country which in the most remote times were seats of great population. There may have been many merchants who traded on all these various routes, but that commodities were passed in bulk over great distances is inconceivable. It may be doubted whether in the ante-Christian ages there was any heavy transport over even 500 m., save for warlike or other purposes, which engaged the public resources of imperial states, and in which the idea of commerce, as now understood, is in a great measure lost.

The advantage which absolute power gave to ancient nations in their warlike enterprises, and in the execution of public works of more or less utility, or of mere ostentation and monumental magnificence, was dearly purchased by the sacrifice of individual freedom, the right to labour, produce and exchange under the steady operation of natural economic principles, which more than any other cause vitalizes the individual and social energies, and multiplies the commercial resource of communities. Commerce in all periods and countries has obtained a certain freedom and hospitality from the fact that the foreign merchant has something desirable to offer; but the action of trading is reciprocal, and requires multitudes of producers and merchants, as free agents, on both sides, searching out by patient experiment wants more advantageously supplied by exchange than by direct production, before it can attain either permanence or magnitude, or can become a vital element of national life. The ancient polities offered much resistance to this development, and in their absolute power over the liberty, industry and property of the masses of their subjects raised barriers to the extension of commerce scarcely less formidable than the want of means of communication itself. The conditions of security under which foreign trade can alone flourish equally exceeded the resources of ancient civilization. Such roads as exist must be protected from robbers, the rivers and seas from pirates; goods must have safe passage and safe storage, must be held in a manner sacred in the territories through which they pass, be insured against accidents, be respected even in the madness of hostilities; the laws of nations must give a guarantee on which traders can proceed in their operations with reasonable confidence; and the governments, while protecting the commerce of their subjects with foreigners as if it were their own enterprise, must in their fiscal policy, and in all their acts, be endued with the highest spirit of commercial honour. Every great breach of this security stops the continuous circulation, which is the life of traffic and of the industries to which it ministers. But in the ancient records we see commerce exposed to great risks, subject to constant pillage, hunted down in peace and utterly extinguished in war. Hence it became necessary that foreign trade should itself be an armed force in the world; and though the states of purely commercial origin soon fell into the same arts and wiles as the powers to which they were opposed, yet their history exhibits clearly enough the necessity out of which they arose. Once organized, it was inevitable that they should meet intrigue with intrigue, and force with force. The political empires, while but imperfectly developing industry and traffic within their own territories, had little sympathy with any means of prosperity from without. Their sole policy was either to absorb under their own spirit and conditions of rule, or to destroy, whatever was rich or great beyond their borders. Nothing is more marked in the past history of the world than this struggle of commerce to establish conditions of security and means of communication with distant parts. When almost driven from the land, it often found both on the sea; and often, when its success had become brilliant and renowned, it perished under the assault of stronger powers, only to rise again in new centres and to find new channels of intercourse.

Carthage.

Roman conquests.

Palmyra.

While Rome was giving laws and order to the half-civilized tribes of Italy, Carthage, operating on a different base, and by other methods, was opening trade with less accessible parts of Europe. The strength of Rome was in her legions, that of Carthage in her ships; and her ships could cover ground where the legions were powerless. Her mariners had passed the mythical straits into the Atlantic, and established the port of Cadiz. Within the Mediterranean itself they founded Carthagena and Barcelona on the same Iberian peninsula, and ahead of the Roman legions had depots and traders on the shores of Gaul. After the destruction of Tyre, Carthage became the greatest power in the Mediterranean, and inherited the trade of her Phoenician ancestors with Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor, as well as her own settlements in Sicily and on the European coasts. An antagonism between the great naval and the great military power, whose interests crossed each other at so many points, was sure to occur; and in the three Punic wars Carthage measured her strength with that of Rome both on sea and on land with no unequal success. But a commercial state impelled into a series of great wars has departed from its own proper base; and in the year 146 B.C. Carthage was so totally destroyed by the Romans that of the great city, more than 20 m. in circumference, and containing at one period near a million of inhabitants, only a few thousands were found within its ruined walls. In the same year Corinth, one of the greatest of the Greek capitals and seaports, was captured, plundered of vast wealth and given to the flames by a Roman consul. Athens and her magnificent harbour of the Piraeus fell into the same hands 60 years later. It may be presumed that trade went on under the Roman conquests in some degree as before; but these were grave events to occur within a brief period, and the spirit of the seat of trade in every case having been broken, and its means and resources more or less plundered and dissipated--in some cases, as in that of Carthage, irreparably--the most necessary commerce could only proceed with feeble and languid interest under the military, consular and proconsular licence of Rome at that period. Tyre, the great seaport of Palestine, having been destroyed by Alexander the Great, Palmyra, the great inland centre of Syrian trade, was visited with a still more complete annihilation by the Roman Emperor Aurelian within little more than half a century after the capture and spoliation of Athens. The walls were razed to their foundations; the population--men, women, children and the rustics round the city--were all either massacred or dispersed; and the queen Zenobia was carried captive to Rome. Palmyra had for centuries, as a centre of commercial intercourse and transit, been of great service to her neighbours, east and west. In the wars of the Romans and Parthians she was respected by both as an asylum of common interests which it would have been simple barbarity to invade or injure; and when the Parthians were subdued, and Palmyra became a Roman _annexe_, she continued to flourish as before. Her relations with Rome were more than friendly; they became enthusiastic and heroic; and her citizens having inflicted signal chastisement on the king of Persia for the imprisonment of the emperor Valerian, the admiration of this conduct at Rome was so great that their spirited leader Odaenathus, the husband of Zenobia, was proclaimed Augustus, and became co-emperor with Gallienus. It is obvious that the destruction of Palmyra must not only have doomed Palestine, already bereft of her seaports, to greater poverty and commercial isolation than had been known in long preceding ages, but have also rendered it more difficult to Rome herself to hold or turn to any profitable account her conquests in Asia; and, being an example of the policy of Rome to the seats of trade over nearly the whole ancient world, it may be said to contain in graphic characters a presage of what came to be the actual event--the collapse and fall of the Roman empire itself.

Venice.

The repeated invasions of Italy by the Goths and Huns gave rise to a seat of trade in the Adriatic, which was to sustain during more than a thousand years a history of unusual splendour. The Veneti cultivated fertile lands on the Po, and built several towns, of which Padua was the chief. They appear from the earliest note of them in history to have been both an agricultural and trading people; and they offered a rich prey to the barbarian hordes when these broke through every barrier into the plains of Italy. Thirty years before Attila razed the neighbouring city of Aquileia, the consuls and senate of Padua, oppressed and terrified by the prior ravages of Alaric, passed a decree for erecting Rialto, the largest of the numerous islets at the mouth of the Po, into a chief town and port, not more as a convenience to the islanders than as a security for themselves and their goods. But every fresh incursion, every new act of spoliation by the dreaded enemies, increased the flight of the rich and the industrious to the islands, and thus gradually arose the second Venice, whose glory was so greatly to exceed that of the first. Approachable from the mainland only by boats, through river passes easily defended by practised sailors against barbarians who had never plied an oar, the Venetian refugees could look in peace on the desolation which swept over Italy; their warehouses, their markets, their treasures were safe from plunder; and stretching their hands over the sea, they found in it fish and salt, and in the rich possessions of trade and territory which it opened to them more than compensation for the fat lands and inland towns which had long been their home. The Venetians traded with Constantinople, Greece, Syria and Egypt. They became lords of the Morea, and of Candia, Cyprus and other islands of the Levant. The trade of Venice with India, though spoken of, was probably never great. But the crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries against the Saracens in Palestine extended her repute more widely east and west, and increased both her naval and her commercial resources. It is enough, indeed, to account for the grandeur of Venice that in course of centuries, from the security of her position, the growth and energy of her population, and the regularity of her government at a period when these sources of prosperity were rare, she became the great emporium of the Mediterranean--all that Carthage, Corinth and Athens had been in a former age on a scene the most remarkable in the world for its fertility and facilities of traffic,--and that as Italy and other parts of the Western empire became again more settled her commerce found always a wider range. The bridge built from the largest of the islands to the opposite bank became the "Rialto," or famous exchange of Venice, whose transactions reached farther, and assumed a more consolidated form, than had been known before. There it was where the first public bank was organized; that bills of exchange were first negotiated, and funded debt became transferable; that finance became a science and book-keeping an art. Nor must the effect of the example of Venice on other cities of Italy be left out of account. Genoa, following her steps, rose into great prosperity and power at the foot of the Maritime Alps, and became her rival, and finally her enemy. Naples, Gaeta, Florence, many other towns of Italy, and Rome herself, long after her fall, were encouraged to struggle for the preservation of their municipal freedom, and to foster trade, arts and navigation, by the brilliant success set before them on the Adriatic; but Venice, from the early start she had made, and her command of the sea, had the commercial pre-eminence.

The middle ages.

The state of things which arose on the collapse of the Roman empire presents two concurrent facts, deeply affecting the course of trade--(1) the ancient seats of industry and civilization were undergoing constant decay, while (2) the energetic races of Europe were rising into more civilized forms and manifold vigour and copiousness of life. The fall of the Eastern division of the empire prolonged the effect of the fall of the Western empire; and the advance of the Saracens over Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, Egypt, over Cyprus and other possessions of Venice in the Mediterranean, over the richest provinces of Spain, and finally across the Hellespont into the Danubian provinces of Europe, was a new irruption of barbarians from another point of the compass, and revived the calamities and disorders inflicted by the successive invasions of Goths, Huns and other Northern tribes. For more than ten centuries the naked power of the sword was vivid and terrible as flashes of lightning over all the seats of commerce, whether of ancient or more modern origin. The feudal system of Europe, in organizing the open country under military leaders and defenders subordinated in possession and service under a legal system to each other and to the sovereign power, must have been well adapted to the necessity of the times in which it spread so rapidly; but it would be impossible to say that the feudal system was favourable to trade, or the extension of trade. The commercial spirit in the feudal, as in preceding ages, had to find for itself places of security, and it could only find them in towns, armed with powers of self-regulation and defence, and prepared, like the feudal barons themselves, to resist violence from whatever quarter it might come. Rome, in her best days, had founded the municipal system, and when this system was more than ever necessary as the bulwark of arts and manufactures, its extension became an essential element of the whole European civilization. Towns formed themselves into leagues for mutual protection, and out of leagues not infrequently arose commercial republics. The Hanseatic League, founded as early as 1241, gave the first note of an increasing traffic between countries on the Baltic and in northern Germany, which a century or two before were sunk in isolated barbarism. From Lübeck and Hamburg, commanding the navigation of the Elbe, it gradually spread over 85 towns, including Amsterdam, Cologne and Frankfort in the south, and Danzig, Königsberg and Riga in the north. The last trace of this league, long of much service in protecting trade, and as a means of political mediation, passed away in the erection of the German empire (1870), but only from the same cause that had brought about its gradual dissolution--the formation of powerful and legal governments--which, while leaving to the free cities their municipal rights, were well capable of protecting their mercantile interests. The towns of Holland found lasting strength and security from other causes. Their foundations were laid as literally in the sea as those of Venice had been. They were not easily attacked whether by sea or land, and if attacked had formidable means of defence. The Zuyder Zee, which had been opened to the German Ocean in 1282, carried into the docks and canals of Amsterdam the traffic of the ports of the Baltic, of the English Channel and of the south of Europe, and what the seas did for Amsterdam from without the Rhine and the Maese did for Dort and Rotterdam from the interior. By the Union of Utrecht in 1579 Holland became an independent republic, and for long after, as it had been for some time before, was the greatest centre of maritime traffic in Europe. The rise of the Dutch power in a low country, exposed to the most destructive inundations, difficult to cultivate or even to inhabit, affords a striking illustration of those conditions which in all times have been found specially favourable to commercial development, and which are not indistinctly reflected in the mercantile history of England, preserved by its insular position from hostile invasions, and capable by its fleets and arms to protect its goods on the seas and the rights of its subjects in foreign lands.

The progress of trade and productive arts in the middle ages, though not rising to much international exchange, was very considerable both in quality and extent. The republics of Italy, which had no claim to rival Venice or Genoa in maritime power or traffic, developed a degree of art, opulence and refinement commanding the admiration of modern times; and if any historian of trans-Alpine Europe, when Venice had already attained some greatness, could have seen it five hundred years afterwards, the many strong towns of France, Germany and the Low Countries, the great number of their artizans, the products of their looms and anvils, and their various cunning workmanship, might have added many a brilliant page to his annals. Two centuries before England had discovered any manufacturing quality, or knew even how to utilize her most valuable raw materials, and was importing goods from the continent for the production of which she was soon to be found to have special resources, the Flemings were selling their woollen and linen fabrics, and the French their wines, silks and laces in all the richer parts of the British Islands. The middle ages placed the barbarous populations of Europe under a severe discipline, trained them in the most varied branches of industry, and developed an amount of handicraft and ingenuity which became a solid basis for the future. But trade was too walled in, too much clad in armour, and too incessantly disturbed by wars and tumults, and violations of common right and interest, to exert its full influence over the general society, or even to realize its most direct advantages. It wanted especially the freedom and mobility essential to much international increase, and these it was now to receive from a series of the most pregnant events.

Opening of a new era.

The mariner's compass had become familiar in the European ports about the beginning of the 14th century, and the seamen of Italy, Portugal, France, Holland and England entered upon a more enlightened and adventurous course of navigation. The Canary Islands were sighted by a French vessel in 1330, and colonized in 1418 by the Portuguese, who two years later landed on Madeira. In 1431 the Azores were discovered by a shipmaster of Bruges. The Atlantic was being gradually explored. In 1486, Diaz, a Portuguese, steering his course almost unwittingly along the coast of Africa, came upon the land's-end of that continent; and eleven years afterwards Vasco da Gama, of the same nation, not only doubled the Cape of Good Hope, but reached India. About the same period Portuguese travellers penetrated to India by the old time-honoured way of Suez; and a land which tradition and imagination had invested with almost fabulous wealth and splendour was becoming more real to the European world at the moment when the expedition of Vasco da Gama had made an oceanic route to its shores distinctly visible. One can hardly now realize the impression made by these discoveries in an age when the minds of men were awakening out of a long sleep, when the printing press was disseminating the ancient classical and sacred literature, and when geography and astronomy were subjects of eager study in the seats both of traffic and of learning. But their practical effect was seen in swiftly-succeeding events. Before the end of the century Columbus had thrice crossed the Atlantic, touched at San Salvador, discovered Jamaica, Porto Rico and the Isthmus of Darien, and had seen the waters of the Orinoco in South America. Meanwhile Cabot, sent out by England, had discovered Newfoundland, planted the English flag on Labrador, Nova Scotia and Virginia, and made known the existence of an expanse of land now known as Canada. This tide of discovery by navigators flowed on without intermission. But the opening of a maritime route to India and the discovery of America, surprising as these events must have been at the time, were slow in producing the results of which they were a sure prognostic. The Portuguese established in Cochin the first European factory in India a few years after Vasco da Gama's expedition, and other maritime nations of Europe traced a similar course. But it was not till 1600 that the English East India Company was established, and the opening of the first factory of the Company in India must be dated some ten or eleven years later. So also it was one thing to discover the two Americas, and another, in any real sense, to possess or colonize them, or to bring their productions into the general traffic and use of the world. Spain, following the stroke of the valiant oar of Columbus, found in Mexico and Peru remarkable remains of an ancient though feeble civilization, and a wealth of gold and silver mines, which to Europeans of that period was fascinating from the rarity of the precious metals in their own realms, and consequently gave to the Spanish colonizations and conquests in South America an extraordinary but unsolid prosperity. The value of the precious metals in Europe was found to fall as soon as they began to be more widely distributed, a process in itself at that period of no small tediousness; and it was discovered further, after a century or two, that the production of gold and silver is limited like the production of other commodities for which they exchange, and only increased in quantity at a heavier cost, that is only reduced again by greater art and science in the process of production. Many difficulties, in short, had to be overcome, many wars to be waged, and many deplorable errors to be committed, in turning the new advantages to account. But given a maritime route to India and the discovery of a new world of continent and islands in the richest tropical and sub-tropical latitudes, it could not be difficult to foresee that the course of trade was to be wholly changed as well as vastly extended.

Maritime route to India.

The substantial advantage of the oceanic passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, as seen at the time, was to enable European trade with the East to escape from the Moors, Algerines and Turks who now swarmed round the shores of the Mediterranean, and waged a predatory war on ships and cargoes which would have been a formidable obstacle even if traffic, after running this danger, had not to be further lost, or filtered into the smallest proportions, in the sands of the Isthmus, and among the Arabs who commanded the navigation of the Red and Arabian Seas. Venice had already begun to decline in her wars with the Turks, and could inadequately protect her own trade in the Mediterranean. Armed vessels sent out in strength from the Western ports often fared badly at the hands of the pirates. European trade with India can scarcely be said, indeed, to have yet come into existence. The maritime route was round about, and it lay on the hitherto almost untrodden ocean, but the ocean was a safer element than inland seas and deserts infested by the lawlessness and ferocity of hostile tribes of men. In short, the maritime route enabled European traders to see India for themselves, to examine what were its products and its wants, and by what means a profitable exchange on both sides could be established; and on this basis of knowledge, ships could leave the ports of their owners in Europe with a reasonable hope, via the Cape, of reaching the places to which they were destined without transhipment or other intermediary obstacle. This is the explanation to be given of the joy with which the Cape of Good Hope route was received, as well as the immense influence it exerted on the future course and extension of trade, and of the no less apparent satisfaction with which it was to some extent discarded in favour of the ancient line, via the Mediterranean, Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea.

Discovery of America.

The maritime route to India was the discovery to the European nations of a "new world" quite as much as the discovery of North and South America and their central isthmus and islands. The one was the far, populous Eastern world, heard of from time immemorial, but with which there had been no patent lines of communication. The other was a vast and comparatively unpeopled solitude, yet full of material resources, and capable in a high degree of European colonization. America offered less resistance to the action of Europe than India, China and Japan; but on the other hand this new populous Eastern world held out much attraction to trade. These two great terrestrial discoveries were contemporaneous; and it would be difficult to name any conjuncture of material events bearing with such importance on the history of the world. The Atlantic Ocean was the medium of both; and the waves of the Atlantic beat into all the bays and tidal rivers of western Europe. The centre of commercial activity was thus physically changed; and the formative power of trade over human affairs was seen in the subsequent phenomena--the rise of great seaports on the Atlantic seaboard, and the ceaseless activity of geographical exploration, manufactures, shipping and emigration, of which they became the outlets.

Increase of trading settlements and colonies.

The Portuguese are entitled to the first place in utilizing the new sources of wealth and commerce. They obtained Macao as a settlement from the Chinese as early as 1537, and their trading operations followed close on the discoveries of their navigators on the coast of Africa, in India and in the Indian Archipelago. Spain spread her dominion over Central and South America, and forced the labour of the subject natives into the gold and silver mines, which seemed in that age the chief prize of her conquests. France introduced her trade in both the East and West Indies, and was the first to colonize Canada and the Lower Mississippi. The Dutch founded New York in 1621; and England, which in boldness of naval and commercial enterprize had attained high rank in the reign of Elizabeth, established the thirteen colonies which became the United States, and otherwise had a full share in all the operations which were transforming the state of the world. The original disposition of affairs was destined to be much changed by the fortune of war; and success in foreign trade and colonization, indeed, called into play other qualities besides those of naval and military prowess. The products of so many new countries--tissues, dyes, metals, articles of food, chemical substances--greatly extended the range of European manufacture. But in addition to the mercantile faculty of discovering how they were to be exchanged and wrought into a profitable trade, their use in arts and manufactures required skill, invention and aptitude for manufacturing labour, and those again, in many cases, were found to depend on abundant possession of natural materials, such as coal and iron. In old and populous countries, like India and China, modern manufacture had to meet and contend with ancient manufacture, and had at once to learn from and improve economically on the established models, before an opening could be made for its extension. In many parts of the New World there were vast tracts of country, without population or with native races too wild and savage to be reclaimed to habits of industry, whose resources could only be developed by the introduction of colonies of Europeans; and innumerable experiments disclosed great variety of qualification among the European nations for the adventure, hardship and perseverance of colonial life. There were countries which, whatever their fertility of soil or favour of climate, produced nothing for which a market could be found; and products such as the sugar-cane and the seed of the cotton plant had to be carried from regions where they were indigenous to other regions where they might be successfully cultivated, and the art of planting had to pass through an ordeal of risk and speculation. There were also countries where no European could labour; and the ominous work of transporting African negroes as slaves into the colonies--begun by Spain in the first decade of the 16th century, followed up by Portugal, and introduced by England in 1562 into the West Indies, at a later period into New England and the Southern States, and finally domiciled by royal privilege of trade in the Thames and three or more outports of the kingdom,--after being done on an elaborate scale, and made the basis of an immense superstructure of labour, property and mercantile interest over nearly three centuries, had, under a more just and ennobling view of humanity, to be as elaborately undone at a future time.

These are some of the difficulties that had to be encountered in utilizing the great maritime and geographical conquests of the new epoch. But one cannot leave out of view the obstacles, arising from other sources, to what might be expected to be the regular and easy course of affairs. Commerce, though an undying and prevailing interest of civilized countries, is but one of the forces acting on the policy of states, and has often to yield the pace to other elements of national life. It were needless to say what injury the great but vain and purposeless wars of Louis XIV. of France inflicted in that country, or how largely the fruitful and heroic energies of England were absorbed in the civil wars between Charles and the Parliament, to what poverty Scotland was reduced, or in what distraction and savagery Ireland was kept by the same course of events. The grandeur of Spain in the preceding century was due partly to the claim of her kings to be Holy Roman emperors, in which imperial capacity they entailed intolerable mischief on the Low Countries and on the commercial civilization of Europe, and partly to their command of the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru, in an eager lust of whose produce they brought cruel calamities on a newly-discovered continent where there were many traces of antique life, the records of which perished in their hands or under their feet. These ephemeral causes of greatness removed, the hollowness of the situation was exposed; and Spain, though rich in her own natural resources, was found to be actually poor--poor in number of people, poor in roads, in industrial art, and in all the primary conditions of interior development. An examination of the foreign trade of Europe two centuries after the opening of the maritime route to India and the discovery of America would probably give more reason to be surprised at the smallness than the magnitude of the use that had been made of these events.

19th century.

By the beginning of the 19th century the world had been well explored. Colonies had been planted on every coast; great nations had sprung up in vast solitudes or in countries inhabited only by savage or decadent races of men; the most haughty and exclusive of ancient nations had opened their ports to foreign merchantmen; and all parts of the world been brought into habitual commercial intercourse. The seas, subdued by the progress of navigation to the service of man, had begun to yield their own riches in great abundance and the whale, seal, herring, cod and other fisheries, prosecuted with ample capital and hardy seamanship, had become the source of no small traffic in themselves. The lists of imports and exports and of the places from which they flowed to and from the centres of trade, as they swelled in bulk from time to time, show how busily and steadily the threads of commerce had been weaving together the labour and interests of mankind, and extending a security and bounty of existence unknown in former ages. The 19th century witnessed an extension of the commercial relations of mankind of which there was no parallel in previous history. The heavy debts and taxes, and the currency complications in which the close of the Napoleonic wars left the European nations, as well as the fall of prices which was the necessary effect of the sudden closure of a vast war expenditure and absorption of labour, had a crippling effect for many years on trading energies. Yet even under such circumstances commerce is usually found, on its well-established modern basis, to make steady progress from one series of years to another. The powers of production had been greatly increased by a brilliant development of mechanical arts and inventions. The United States had grown into a commercial nation of the first rank. The European colonies and settlements were being extended, and assiduously cultivated, and were opening larger and more varied markets for manufactures. In 1819 the first steamboat crossed the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool, and a similar adventure was accomplished from England to India in 1825--events in themselves the harbingers of a new era in trade. China, after many efforts, was opened under treaty to an intercourse with foreign nations which was soon to attain surprising dimensions. These various causes supported the activity of commerce in the first four decades; but the great movement which made the 19th century so remarkable was chiefly disclosed in practical results from about 1840. The outstanding characteristics of the 19th century were the many remarkable inventions which so widened the field of commerce by the discovery of new and improved methods of production, the highly organized division of labour which tended to the same end, and, above all, the powerful forces of steam navigation, railways and telegraphs.

Commerce has thus acquired a security and extension, in all its most essential conditions, of which it was void in any previous age. It can hardly ever again exhibit that wandering course from route to route, and from one solitary centre to another, which is so characteristic of its ancient history, because it is established in every quarter of the globe, and all the seas and ways are open to it on terms fair and equal to every nation. Wherever there is population, industry, resource, art and skill, there will be international trade. Commerce will have many centres, and one may relatively rise or relatively fall; but such decay and ruin as have smitten many once proud seats of wealth into dust cannot again occur without such cataclysms of war, violence and disorder as the growing civilization and reason of mankind, and the power of law, right and common interest forbid us to anticipate. But the present magnitude of commerce devolves serious work on all who are engaged in it. If in the older times it was thought that a foreign merchant required to be not only a good man of business, but even a statesman, it is evident that all the higher faculties of the mercantile profession must still more be called into request when imports and exports are reckoned by hundreds instead of fives or tens of millions, when the markets are so much larger and more numerous, the competition so much more keen and varied, the problems to be solved in every course of transaction so much more complex, the whole range of affairs to be overseen so immensely widened. It is not a company of merchants, having a monopoly, and doing whatever they please, whether right or wrong, that now hold the commerce of the world in their hands, but large communities of free merchants in all parts of the world, affiliated to manufacturers and producers equally free, each under strong temptation to do what may be wrong in the pursuit of his own interest, and the only security of doing right being to follow steady lights of information and economic science common to all. Easy transport of goods by land and sea, prompt intelligence from every point of the compass, general prevalence of mercantile law and safety, have all been accomplished; and the world is opened to trade. But intellectual grasp of principles and details, and the moral integrity which is the root of all commercial success, are severely tested in this vaster sphere.

See TRADE ORGANIZATION; ECONOMICS; COMMERCIAL TREATIES, and the sections under the headings of countries.

COMMERCE, the name of a card-game. Any number can play with an ordinary pack. There are several variations of the game, but the following is a common one. Each player receives three cards, and three more are turned up as a "pool." The first player may exchange one or two of his cards for one or two of the exposed cards, putting his own, face upwards, in their place. His object is to "make his hand" (see below), but if he changes all three cards at once he cannot change again. The next player can do likewise, and so on. Usually there are as many rounds as there are players, and a fresh card is added to the pool at the beginning of each. If a player passes once he cannot exchange afterwards. When the rounds are finished the hands are shown, the holder of the best either receiving a stake from all the others, or, supposing each has started with three "lives," taking one life from the lowest. The hands, in order of merit, are: (i.) _Tricon_--three similar cards, three aces ranking above three kings, and so on. (ii.) _Sequence_--three cards of the same suit in consecutive order; the highest sequence is the best. (iii.) _Flush_--three cards of the same suit, the highest "point" wins, i.e. the highest number of pips, ace counting eleven and court-cards ten. (iv.) _Pair_--two similar cards, the highest pair winning. (v.) _Point_--the largest number of pips winning, as in "flush," but there is no restriction as to suit. Sometimes "pair" and "point" are not recognized. A popular variation of Commerce is _Pounce Commerce_. In this, if a player has already three similar cards, e.g. three nines, and the fourth nine comes into the pool, he says "Pounce!" and takes it, thus obtaining a hand of four, which is higher than any hand of three: whenever a pounce occurs, a new card is turned up from the pack.

COMMERCIAL COURT, in England, a court presided over by a single judge of the king's bench division, for the trial, as expeditiously as may be, of commercial cases. By the Rules of the Supreme Court, Order xviii. a (made in November 1893), a plaintiff was allowed to dispense with pleadings altogether, provided that the indorsement of his writ of summons contained a statement sufficient to give notice of his claim, or of the relief or remedy required in the action, and stating that the plaintiff intended to proceed to trial without pleadings. The judge might, on the application of the defendant, order a statement of claim to be delivered, or the action to proceed to trial without pleadings, and if necessary particulars of the claim or defence to be delivered. Out of this order grew the commercial court. It is not a distinct court or division or branch of the High Court, and is not regulated by any special rules of court made by the rule committee. It originated in a notice issued by the judges of the queen's bench division, in February 1895 (see W.N., 2nd of March 1895), the provisions contained in which represent only "a practice agreed on by the judges, who have the right to deal by convention among themselves with this mode of disposing of the business in their courts" (per Lord Esher in _Barry_ v. _Peruvian Corporation_, 1896, 1 Q. B. p. 209). A separate list of causes of a commercial character is made and assigned to a particular judge, charged with commercial business, to whom all applications before the trial are made. The 8th paragraph is as follows:--

Such judge may at any time after appearance and without pleadings make such order as he thinks fit for the speedy determination, in accordance with existing rules, of the questions really in controversy between the parties.

Practitioners before Sir George Jessel, at the rolls, in the years 1873 to 1880, will be reminded of his mode of ascertaining the point in controversy and bringing it to a speedy determination. Obviously the scheme is only applicable to cases in which there is some single issue of law or fact, or the case depends on the construction of some contract or other instrument or section of an act of parliament, and such issue or question is either agreed upon by the parties or at once ascertainable by the judge. The success of the scheme also depends largely on the personal qualities of the judge to whom the list is assigned. Under the able guidance of Mr (afterwards Lord) Justice Mathew (d. 1908), the commercial court became very successful in bringing cases to a speedy and satisfactory determination without any technicality or unnecessary expense.

COMMERCIAL LAW, a term used rather indefinitely to include those main rules and principles which, with more or less minor differences, characterize the commercial transactions and customs of most European countries. It includes within its compass such titles as principal and agent; carriage by land and sea; merchant shipping; guarantee; marine, fire, life and accident insurance; bills of exchange, partnership, &c.

COMMERCIAL TREATIES. A commercial treaty is a contract between states relative to trade. It is a bilateral act whereby definite arrangements are entered into by each contracting party towards the other--not mere concessions. As regards technical distinctions, an "agreement," an "exchange of notes," or a "convention" properly applies to one specific subject; whereas a "treaty" usually comprises several matters, whether commercial or political.

In ancient times foreign intercourse, trade and navigation were in many instances regulated by international arrangements. The text is extant of treaties of commerce and navigation concluded between Carthage and Rome in 509 and 348 B.C. Aristotle mentions that nations were connected by commercial treaties; and other classical writers advert to these engagements. Under the Roman empire the matters thus dealt with became regulated by law, or by usages sometimes styled laws. When the territories of the empire were contracted, and the imperial authority was weakened, some kind of international agreements again became necessary. At Constantinople in the 10th century treaties cited by Gibbon protected "the person, effects and privileges of the Russian merchant"; and, in western Europe, intercourse, trade and navigation were carried on, at first tacitly by usage derived from Roman times, or under verbal permission given to merchants by the ruler to whose court they resorted. Afterwards, security in these transactions was afforded by means of formal documents, such as royal letters, charters, laws and other instruments possessing the force of government measures. Instances affecting English commercial relations are the letter of Charlemagne in 796, the Brabant Charter of 1305, and the Russian ukase of 1569. Medieval treaties of truce or peace often contained a clause permitting in general terms the renewal of personal and commercial communication as it subsisted before the war. This custom is still followed. But these medieval arrangements were precarious: they were often of temporary duration, and were usually only effective during the lifetime of the contracting sovereigns.

Passing over trade agreements affecting the Eastern empire, the modern commercial treaty system came into existence in the 12th century. Genoa, Pisa and Venice were then well-organized communities, and were in keen rivalry. Whenever their position in a foreign country was strong, a trading centre was established, and few or no specific engagements were made on their part. But in serious competition or difficulty another course was adopted: a formal agreement was concluded for the better security of their commerce and navigation. The arrangements of 1140 between Venice and Sicily; the Genoese conventions of 1149 with Valencia, of 1161 with Morocco, and of 1181 with the Balearic Islands; the Pisan conventions of 1173 with Sultan Saladin, and of 1184 with the Balearic Islands, were the earliest Western commercial treaties. Such definite arrangements, although still of a personal character, were soon perceived to be preferable to general provisions in a treaty of truce or peace. They afforded also greater security than privileges enjoyed under usage; or under grants of various kinds, whether local or royal. The policy thus inaugurated was adopted gradually throughout Europe. The first treaties relative to the trade of the Netherlands were between Brabant and Holland in 1203, Holland and Utrecht in 1204, and Brabant and Cologne in 1251. Early northern commercial treaties are those between Riga and Smolensk 1229, and between Lübeck and Sweden 1269. The first commercial relations between the Hanse Towns and foreign countries were arrangements made by gilds of merchants, not by public authorities as a governing body. For a long period the treaty system did not entirely supersede conditions of intercourse between nations dependent on permission.

The earliest English commercial treaty is that with Norway in 1217. It provides "ut mercatores et homines qui sunt de potestate vestra liberè et sine impedimento terram nostram adire possint, et homines et mercatores nostri similiter vestram." These stipulations are in due treaty form. The next early English treaties are:--with Flanders, 1274 and 1314; Portugal, 1308, 1352 and 1386; Baltic Cities, 1319 and 1388; Biscay and Castile, 1351; Burgundy, 1417 and 1496; France, 1471, 1497 and 1510; Florence, 1490. The commercial treaty policy in England was carried out systematically under Henry IV. and Henry VII. It was continued under James I. to extend to Scotland English trading privileges. The results attained in the 17th century were--regularity in treaty arrangements; their durable instead of personal nature; the conversion of permissive into perfect rights; questions as to contraband and neutral trade stated in definite terms. Treaties were at first limited to exclusive and distinct engagements between the contracting states; each treaty differing more or less in its terms from other similar compacts. Afterwards by extending to a third nation privileges granted to particular countries, the _most favoured nation article_ began to be framed, as a unilateral engagement by a particular state. The Turkish capitulations afford the earliest instances; and the treaty of 1641 between the Netherlands and Portugal contains the first European formula. Cromwell continued the commercial treaty policy partly in order to obtain a formal recognition of the commonwealth from foreign powers. His treaty of 1654 with Sweden contains the first reciprocal "most favoured nation clause":--Article IV. provides that the people, subjects and inhabitants of either confederate "shall have and possess in the countries, lands, dominions and kingdoms of the other as full and ample privileges, and as many exemptions, immunities and liberties, as any foreigner doth or shall possess in the dominions and kingdoms of the said confederate." The government of the Restoration replaced and enlarged the Protectorate arrangements by fresh agreements. The general policy of the commonwealth was maintained, with further provisions on behalf of colonial trade. In the new treaty of 1661 with Sweden the privileges secured were those which "any foreigner whatsoever doth or shall enjoy in the said dominions and kingdoms on both sides."

In contemporary treaties France obtained from Spain (1659) that French subjects should enjoy the same liberties as had been granted to the English; and England obtained from Denmark (1661) that the English should not pay more or greater customs than the people of the United Provinces and other foreigners, the Swedes only excepted. The colonial and navigation policy of the 17th century, and the proceedings of Louis XIV., provoked animosities and retaliatory tariffs. During the War of the Spanish Succession the Methuen Treaty of 1703 was concluded. Portugal removed prohibitions against the importation of British woollens; Great Britain engaged that Portuguese wines should pay one-third less duty than the rate levied on French wines. At the peace of Utrecht in 1713 political and commercial treaties were concluded. England agreed to remove prohibitions on the importation of French goods, and to grant most favoured nation treatment in relation to goods and merchandise of the like nature from any other country in Europe; the French general tariff of the 18th of September 1664, was to be again put in force for English trade. The English provision was at variance with the Methuen Treaty. A violent controversy arose as to the relative importance in 1713 of Anglo-Portuguese or Anglo-French trade. In the end the House of Commons, by a majority of 9, rejected the bill to give effect to the commercial treaty of 1713; and trade with France remained on an unsatisfactory footing until 1786. The other commercial treaties of Utrecht were very complete in their provisions, equal to those of the present time; and contained most favoured nation articles--England secured in 1715 reduction of duties on woollens imported into the Austrian Netherlands; and trading privileges in Spanish America. Moderate import duties for woollens were obtained in Russia by the commercial treaty of 1766. In the meanwhile the Bourbon family compact of the 15th of August 1761 assured national treatment for the subjects of France, Spain and the Two Sicilies, and for their trade in the European territories of the other two states; and most favoured nation treatment as regards any special terms granted to any foreign country. The first commercial treaties concluded by the United States with European countries contained most favoured nation clauses: this policy has been continued by the United States, but the wording of the clause has often varied.

In 1786 France began to effect tariff reform by means of commercial treaties. The first was with Great Britain, and it terminated the long-continued tariff warfare. But the wars of the French Revolution swept away these reforms, and brought about a renewal of hostile tariffs. Prohibitions and differential duties were renewed, and prevailed on the continent until the sixth decade of the 19th century. In 1860 a government existed in France sufficiently strong and liberal to revert to the policy of 1786. The bases of the Anglo-French treaty of 1860, beyond its most favoured nation provisions, were in France a general transition from prohibition or high customs duties to a moderate tariff; in the United Kingdom abandonment of all protective imposts, and reduction of duties maintained for fiscal purposes to the lowest rates compatible with these exigencies. Other European countries were obliged to obtain for their trade the benefit of the conventional tariff thus established in France, as an alternative to the high rates inscribed in the general tariff. A series of commercial treaties was accordingly concluded by different European states between 1861 and 1866, which effected further reductions of customs duties in the several countries that came within this treaty system. In 1871 the Republican government sought to terminate the treaties of the empire. The British negotiators nevertheless obtained the relinquishment of the attempt to levy protective duties under the guise of compensation for imposts on raw materials; the duration of the treaty of 1860 was prolonged; and stipulations better worded than those before in force were agreed to for shipping and most favoured nation treatment. In 1882, however, France terminated her existing European tariff treaties. Belgium and some other countries concluded fresh treaties, less liberal than those of the system of 1860, yet much better than anterior arrangements. Great Britain did not formally accept these higher duties; the treaty of the 28th of February 1882, with France, which secured most favoured nation treatment in other matters, provided that customs duties should be "henceforth regulated by the internal legislation of each of the two states." In 1892 France also fell out of international tariff arrangements; and adopted the system of double columns of customs duties--one, of lower rates, to be applied to the goods of all nations receiving most favoured treatment; and the other, of higher rates, for countries not on this footing. Germany then took up the treaty tariff policy; and between 1891 and 1894 concluded several commercial treaties.

International trade in Europe in 1909 was regulated by a series of tariffs which came into operation, mainly on the initiative of Germany in 1906. Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Rumania, Russia, Servia and Switzerland, were parties to them. Their object and effect was protectionist. The British policy then became one of obtaining modifications to remedy disadvantages to British trade, as was done in the case of Bulgaria and Rumania. An important series of commercial arrangements had been concluded between 1884 and 1900 respecting the territories and spheres of interest of European powers in western, central and eastern Africa. In these regions exclusive privileges were not claimed; most favoured nation treatment was recognized, and there was a disposition to extend national treatment to all Europeans and their trade.

The Turkish _Capitulations_ (q.v.) are grants made by successive sultans to Christian nations, conferring rights and privileges in favour of their subjects resident or trading in the Ottoman dominions, following the policy towards European states of the Eastern empire. In the first instance capitulations were granted separately to each Christian state, beginning with the Genoese in 1453, which entered into pacific relations with Turkey. Afterwards new capitulations were obtained which summed up in one document earlier concessions, and added to them in general terms whatever had been conceded to one or more other states; a stipulation which became a most favoured nation article. The English capitulations date from 1569, and then secured the same treatment as the Venetians, French, Poles and the subjects of the emperor of Germany; they were revised in 1675, and as then settled were confirmed by treaties of subsequent date "now and for ever." Capitulations signify that which is arranged under distinct "headings"; the Turkish phrase is "ahid nameh," whereas a treaty is "mouahedé"--the latter does, and the former does not, signify a reciprocal engagement. Thus, although the Turkish capitulations are not in themselves treaties, yet by subsequent confirmation they have acquired the force of commercial treaties of perpetual duration as regards substance and principles, while details, such as rates of customs duties, may, by mutual consent, be varied from time to time.

The _most favoured nation_ article already referred to concedes to the state in the treaty with which it is concluded whatever advantages in the matters comprised within its stipulations have been allowed to any foreign or third state. It does not in itself directly confer any particular rights, but sums up the whole of the rights in the matters therein mentioned which have been or may be granted to foreign countries. The value of the privileges under this article accordingly varies with the conditions as to these rights in each state which concedes this treatment.

The article is drafted in different form:

(1) That contracting states A. and B. agree to extend to each other whatever rights and privileges they concede to countries C. and D., or to C. and D. and any other country. The object in this instance is to ensure specifically to B. and A. whatever advantages C. and D. may possess. A recent instance is Article XI. of the treaty of May 10, 1871, between France and Germany, which binds them respectively to extend to each other whatever advantages they grant to Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia and Switzerland.

(2) The present general formula: A. and B. agree to extend to each other whatever advantages they concede to any third country; and engage that no other or higher duties shall be levied on the importation into A. and B. respectively of goods the produce or manufacture of B. and A. than are levied on the like goods the produce or manufacture of any third country the most favoured in this respect. There is a similar clause in regard to exportation.

(3) The conditional or reciprocity formula, often used in the 18th and in the early part of the 19th century, namely, that whenever A. and B. make special concessions in return for corresponding concessions, B. and A. respectively are either excluded from participation therein, or must make some additional equivalent concession in order to participate in those advantages.

It may further be observed that the word "like" relates to the goods themselves, to their material or quality, not to conditions of manufacture, mode of conveyance or anything beyond the fact of their precise description; small local facilities allowed to traffic between conterminous land districts are not at variance with this article.

A recent complete and concise English formula is that of Article 2 of the treaty of commerce and navigation of the 31st of October 1905, with Rumania. "The contracting parties agree that, in all matters relating to commerce, navigation and industry, any privilege, favour or immunity which either contracting party has actually granted, or may hereafter grant, to the subjects or citizens of any other foreign state, shall be extended immediately and unconditionally to the subjects of the other; it being their intention that the commerce, navigation and industry of each country shall be placed, in all respects, on the footing of the most favoured nation."

_Colonies._--The application of commercial treaties to colonies depends upon the wording of each treaty. The earlier colonial policy of European states was to subordinate colonial interests to those of the mother country, to reserve colonial trade for the mother country, and to abstain from engagements contrary to these general rules. France, Portugal and Spain have adhered in principle to this policy. Germany and Holland have been more liberal. The self-government enjoyed by the larger British colonies has led since 1886 to the insertion of an article in British commercial and other treaties whereby the assent of each of these colonies, and likewise of India, is reserved before they apply to each of these possessions. And further, the fact that certain other British colonies are now within the sphere of commercial intercourse controlled by the United States, has since 1891 induced the British government to enter into special agreements on behalf of colonies for whose products the United States is now the chief market. As regards the most favoured nation article, it is to be remembered that the mother country and colonies are not distinct--not foreign or third--countries with respect to each other. The most favoured nation article, therefore, does not preclude special arrangements between the mother country and colonies, nor between colonies.

_Termination._--Commercial treaties are usually concluded for a term of years, and either lapse at the end of this period, or are terminable then, or subsequently, if either state gives the required notice. When a portion of a country establishes its independence, for example the several American republics, according to present usage foreign trade is placed on a uniform most favoured nation footing, and fresh treaties are entered into to regulate the commercial relations of the new communities. In the case of former Turkish provinces, the capitulations remain in force in principle until they are replaced by new engagements. If one state is absorbed into another, for instance Texas into the United States, or when territory passes by conquest, for instance Alsace to Germany, the commercial treaties of the new supreme government take effect. In administered territories, as Cyprus and formerly Bosnia, and in protected territories, it depends on the policy of the administering power how far the previous fiscal system shall remain in force. When the separate Italian states were united into the kingdom of Italy in 1861, the commercial engagements of Sardinia superseded those of the other states, but fresh treaties were concluded by the new kingdom to place international relations on a regular footing. When the German empire was established under the king of Prussia in 1871, the commercial engagements of any state which were at variance with a Zollverein treaty were superseded by that treaty.

_Scope._--The scope of commercial treaties is well expressed by Calvo in his work on international law. They provide for the importation, exportation, transit, transhipment and bonding of merchandise; customs tariffs; navigation charges; quarantine; the admission of vessels to roadsteads, ports and docks; coasting trade; the admission of consuls and their rights; fisheries; they determine the local position of the subjects of each state in the other country in regard to residence, property, payment of taxes or exemptions, and military service; nationality; and a most favoured nation clause. They usually contain a termination, and sometimes a colonial article. Some of the matters enumerated by Calvo--consular privileges, fisheries and nationality--are now frequently dealt with by separate conventions. Contraband and neutral trade are not included as frequently as they were in the 18th century.

The preceding statement shows that commercial treaties afford to foreigners, personally, legal rights, and relief from technical disabilities: they afford security to trade and navigation, and regulate other matters comprised in their provisions. In Europe the general principles established by the series of treaties 1860-1866 hold good, namely, the substitution of uniform rates of customs duties for prohibitions or differential rates. The disadvantages urged are that these treaties involve government interference and bargaining, whereas each state should act independently as its interests require, that they are opposed to free trade, and restrict the fiscal freedom of the legislature. It may be observed that these objections imply some confusion of ideas. All contracts may be designated bargains, and some of the details of commercial treaties in Calvo's enumeration enter directly into the functions of government; moreover, countries cannot remain isolated. If two countries agree by simultaneous action to adopt fixed rates of duty, this agreement is favourable to commerce, and it is not apparent how it is contrary, even to free trade principles. Moreover, security in business transactions, a very important consideration, is provided.

Our conclusions are--

(1) that under the varying jurisprudence of nations commercial treaties are adopted by common consent;

(2) that their provisions depend upon the general and fiscal policy of each state;

(3) that tariff arrangements, if judiciously settled, benefit trade;

(4) that commercial treaties are now entered into by all states; and that they are necessary under present conditions of commercial intercourse between nations. (C. M. K.*)

See the British parliamentary _Return_ (Cd. 4080) of all commercial treaties between various countries in force on Jan. 1, 1908.

COMMERCY, a town of north-eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Meuse, on the left bank of the Meuse, 26 m. E. of Bar-le-Duc by rail. Pop. (1906) 5622. Commercy possesses a château of the 17th century, now used as cavalry barracks, a Benedictine convent occupied by a training-college for primary teachers, and a communal college for boys. A statue of Dom Calmet, the historian, born in the vicinity, stands in one of the squares. The industries include iron-working and the manufacture of nails, boots and shoes, embroidery and hosiery. The town has trade in cattle, grain and wood, and is well known for its cakes (_madeleines_). Commercy dates back to the 9th century, and at that time its lords were dependent on the bishop of Metz. In 1544 it was besieged by Charles V. in person. For some time the lordship was in the hands of François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz, who lived in the town for a number of years, and there composed his memoirs. From him it was purchased by Charles IV., duke of Lorraine. In 1744 it became the residence of Stanislas, king of Poland, who spent a great deal of care on the embellishment of the town, castle and neighbourhood.

COMMERS (from Lat. _commercium_), the German term for the German students' social gatherings held annually on occasions such as the breaking-up of term and the anniversary of the university's founding. A Commers consists of speeches and songs and the drinking of unlimited quantities of beer. The arrangements are governed by officials (_Chargierte_) elected by the students from among themselves. Strict rules as to drinking exist, and the chairman after each speech calls for what is called a salamander (_ad exercitium Salamandris bibite, tergite_). All rise and having emptied their glasses hammer three times on the table with them. On the death of a student, his memory is honoured with a salamander, the glasses being broken to atoms at the close.

COMMINES, PHILIPPE DE (c. 1445-c. 1511), French historian, called the father of modern history, was born at the castle of Renescure, near Hazebrouck in Flanders, a little earlier than 1447. He lost both father and mother in his earliest years. In 1463 his godfather, Philip V., duke of Burgundy, summoned him to his court, and soon after transferred him to the household of his son, afterwards known as Charles the Bold. He speedily acquired considerable influence over Charles, and in 1468 was appointed chamberlain and councillor; consequently when in the same year Louis XI. was entrapped at Péronne, Commines was able both to soften the passion of Charles and to give useful advice to the king, whose life he did much to save. Three years later he was charged with an embassy to Louis, who gained him over to himself by many brilliant promises, and in 1472 he left Burgundy for the court of France. He was at once made chamberlain and councillor; a pension of 6000 livres was bestowed on him; he received the principality of Talmont, the confiscated property of the Amboise family, over which the family of La Trémoille claimed to have rights. The king arranged his marriage with Hélène de Chambes, who brought him the fine lordship of Argenton, and Commines took the name d'Argenton from then (27th of January 1473). He was employed to carry out the intrigues of Louis in Burgundy, and spent several months as envoy in Italy. On his return he was received with the utmost favour, and in 1479 obtained a decree confirming him in possession of his principality.

On the death of Louis in 1483 a suit was commenced against Commines by the family of La Trémoille, and he was cast in heavy damages. He plotted against the regent, Anne of Beaujeu, and joined the party of the duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII. Having attempted to carry off the king, Charles VIII., and so free him from the tutelage of his sister, he was arrested, and put in one of his old master's iron cages at Loches. In 1489 he was banished to one of his own estates for ten years, and made to give bail to the amount of 10,000 crowns of gold for his good behaviour. Recalled to the council in 1492, he strenuously opposed the Italian expedition of Charles VIII., in which, however, he took part, notably as representing the king in the negotiations which resulted in the treaty of Vercelli. During the rest of his life, notwithstanding the accession of Louis XII., whom he had served as duke of Orleans, he held no position of importance; and his last days were disturbed by lawsuits. He died at Argenton on the 18th of October, probably in 1511. His wife Hélène de Chambes survived him till 1532; their tomb is now in the Louvre.

The _Memoirs_, to which Commines owes his reputation as a statesman and man of letters, were written during his latter years. The graphic style of his narrative and above all the keenness of his insight into the motives of his contemporaries, an insight undimmed by undue regard for principles of right and wrong, make this work one of the great classics of history. His portrait of Louis XI. remains unique, in that to such a writer was given such a subject. Scott in _Quentin Durward_ gives an interesting picture of Commines, from whom he largely draws. Sainte-Beuve, after speaking of Commines as being in date the first truly modern writer, and comparing him with Montaigne, says that his history remains the definitive history of his time, and that from it all political history took its rise. None of this applause is undeserved, for the pages of Commines abound with excellences. He analyses motives and pictures manners; he delineates men and describes events; his reflections are pregnant with suggestiveness, his conclusions strong with the logic of facts.

The _Memoirs_ divided themselves into two parts, the first from the reign of Louis XI., 1464-1483, the second on the Italian expedition and the negotiations at Venice leading to the Vercelli treaty, 1494-1495. The first part was written between 1489 and 1491, while Commines was at the château of Dreux, the second from 1495 to 1498. Seven MSS. are known, derived from a single holograph, and as this was undoubtedly badly written, the copies were inaccurate; the best is that which belonged to Anne de Polignac, niece of Commines, and it is the only one containing books vii. and viii.

The best edition of Commines is the one edited by B. de Mandrot and published at Paris in 1901-1903. For this edition the author used a manuscript hitherto unknown and more complete than the others, and in his introduction he gives an account of the life of Commines.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The _Memoirs_ remained in MS. till 1524, when part of them were printed by Galliot du Pré, the remainder first seeing light in 1525. Subsequent editions were put forth by Denys Sauvage in 1552, by Denys Godefroy in 1649, and by Lenglet Dufresnoy in 1747. Those of Mademoiselle Dupont (1841-1848) and of M. de Chantelauze (1881) have many merits, but the best was given by Bernard de Mandrot: _Memoirs de Philippe de Commynes_, from the MS. of Anne de Polignac (1901). Various translations of Commines into English have appeared, from that of T. Danett in 1596 to that, based on the Dupont edition, which was printed in Bohn's series in 1855. (C. B.*)

COMMISSARIAT, the department of an army charged with the provision of supplies, both food and forage, for the troops. The supply of military stores such as ammunition is not included in the duties of a commissariat. In almost every army the duties of transport and supply are performed by the same corps of departmental troops.

COMMISSARY (from Med. Lat. _commissarius_, one to whom a charge or trust is committed), generally, a representative; e.g., the emperor's representative who presided in his absence over the imperial diet; and especially, an ecclesiastical official who exercises in special circumstances the jurisdiction of a bishop (q.v.); in the Church of England this jurisdiction is exercised in a Consistory Court (q.v.), except in Canterbury, where the court of the diocesan as opposed to the metropolitan jurisdiction of the archbishop is called a commissary court, and the judge is the commissary general of the city and diocese of Canterbury. When a see is vacant the jurisdiction is exercised by a "special commissary" of the metropolitan. Commissary is also a general military term for an official charged with the duties of supply, transport and finance of an army. In the 17th and 18th centuries the _commissaire des guerres_, or _Kriegskommissär_ was an important official in continental armies, by whose agency the troops, in their relation to the civil inhabitants, were placed upon semi-political control. In French military law, _commissaires du gouvernement_ represent the ministry of war on military tribunals, and more or less correspond to the British judge-advocate (see COURT-MARTIAL).

COMMISSION (from Lat. _commissio_, _committere_), the action of committing or entrusting any charge or duty to a person, and the charge or trust thus committed, and so particularly an authority, or the document embodying such authority, given to some person to act in a particular capacity. The term is thus applied to the written authority to command troops, which the sovereign or president, as the ultimate commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces, grants to persons selected as officers, or to the similar authority issued to certain qualified persons to act as justices of the peace. For the various commissions of assize see ASSIZE. The word is also used of the order issued to a naval officer to take the command of a ship of war, and when manned, armed and fully equipped for active service she is said to be "put in commission."

In the law of evidence (q.v.) the presence of witnesses may, for certain necessary causes, be dispensed with by the order of the court, and the evidence be taken by a commissioner. Such evidence in England is said to be "on commission" (see R.S.C. Order XXXVII.). Such causes may be illness, the intention of the witness to leave the country before the trial, residence out of the country or the like. Where the witness is out of the jurisdiction of the court, and his place of residence is a foreign country where objection is taken to the execution of a commission, or is a British colony or India, "letters of request" for the examination of the witness are issued, addressed to the head of the tribunal in the foreign country, or to the secretary of state for the colonies or for India.

Where the functions of an office are transferred from an individual to a body of persons, the body exercising these delegated functions is generally known as a commission and the members as commissioners; thus the office of lord high admiral of Great Britain is administered by a permanent board, the lords of the admiralty. Such a delegation may be also temporary, as where the authority under the great seal to give the royal assent to legislation is issued to lords commissioners. Similarly bodies of persons or single individuals may be specially charged with carrying out particular duties; these may be permanent, such as the Charity Commission or the Ecclesiastical and Church Estates Commission, or may be temporary, such as various international bodies of inquiry, like the commission which met in Paris in 1905 to inquire into the North Sea incident (see DOGGER BANK), or such as the various commissions of inquiry, royal, statutory or departmental, of which an account is given below.

A commission may be granted by one person to another to act as his agent, and particularly in business; thus the term is applied to that method of business in which goods are entrusted to an agent for sale, the remuneration being a percentage on the sales. This percentage is known as the "commission," and hence the word is extended to all remuneration which is based on a percentage on the value of the work done. The right of an agent to remuneration in the form of a "commission" is always founded upon an express or implied contract between himself and his principal. Such a contract may be implied from custom or usage, from the conduct of the principal or from the circumstances of the particular case. Such commissions are only payable on transactions directly resulting from agency and may be payable though the principal acquires no benefit. In order to claim remuneration an agent must be legally qualified to act in the capacity in which he claims remuneration. He cannot recover in respect of unlawful or wagering transactions, or in cases of misconduct or breach of duty.

_Secret Commissions._--The giving of a commission, in the sense of a bribe or unlawful payment to an agent or employé in order to influence him in relation to his principal's or employer's affairs, has grown to considerable proportions in modern times; it has been rightly regarded as a gross breach of trust upon the part of employés and agents, inasmuch as it leads them to look to their own interests rather than to those of their employers. In order to suppress this bribing of employés the English legislature in 1906 passed the Prevention of Corruption Act, which enacts that if an agent corruptly accepts or obtains for himself or for any other person any gift or consideration as an inducement or reward for doing or forbearing to do any act or business, or for showing or forbearing to show favour or disfavour to any person in relation to his principal's affairs, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and shall be liable on conviction or indictment to imprisonment with or without hard labour for a term not exceeding two years, or to a fine not exceeding £500, or to both, or on summary conviction to imprisonment not exceeding four months with or without hard labour or to a fine not exceeding £50, or both. The act also applies the same punishment to any person who corruptly gives or offers any gift or consideration to an agent. Also if a person knowingly gives an agent, or if an agent knowingly uses, any receipt, account or document with intent to mislead the principal, they are guilty of a misdemeanour and liable to the punishment already mentioned. For the purposes of the act "consideration" includes valuable consideration of any kind, and "agent" includes any person employed by or acting for another. No prosecution can be instituted without the consent of the attorney-general, and every information must be upon oath.

Legislation to the same effect has been adopted in Australia. A federal act was passed in 1905 dealing with secret commissions, and in the same year both Victoria and Western Australia passed drastic measures to prevent the giving or receiving corruptly of commissions. The Victorian act applies to trustees, executors, administrators and liquidators as well as to agents. Both the Victorian and the Western Australian acts enact that gifts to the parent, wife, child, partner or employer of an agent are to be deemed gifts to the agent unless the contrary is proved; also that the custom of any trade or calling is not in itself a defence to a prosecution.

_Commissions of Inquiry_, i.e. commissions for the purpose of eliciting information as to the operation of laws, or investigating particular matters, social, educational, &c., are distinguished, according to the terms of their appointment, as _royal_, _statutory_ and _departmental_. A royal commission in England is appointed by the crown, and the commissions usually issue from the office of the executive government which they specially concern. The objects of the inquiry are carefully defined in the warrant constituting the commission, which is termed the "reference." The commissioners give their services gratuitously, but where they involve any great degree of professional skill compensation is allowed for time and labour. The expenses incurred are provided out of money annually voted for the purpose. Unless expressly empowered by act of parliament, a commission cannot compel the production of documents or the giving of evidence, nor can it administer an oath. A commission may hold its sittings in any part of the United Kingdom, or may institute and conduct experiments for the purpose of testing the utility of invention, &c. When the inquiry or any particular portion of it is concluded, a report is presented to the crown through the home department. All the commissioners, if unanimous, sign the report, but those who are unable to agree with the majority can record their dissent, and express their individual opinions, either in paragraphs appended to the report or in separately signed memoranda.

Statutory commissions are created by acts of parliament, and, with the exception that they are liable to have their proceedings questioned in parliament, have absolute powers within the limits of their prescribed functions and subject to the provisions of the act defining the same. Departmental commissions or committees are appointed either by a treasury minute or by the authority of a secretary of state, for the purpose of instituting inquiries into matters of official concern or examining into proposed changes in administrative arrangements. They are generally composed of two or more permanent officials of the department concerned in the investigation, along with a subordinate member of the administration. Reports of such committees are usually regarded as confidential documents.

A full account of the procedure in royal commissions will be found in A. Todd's _Parliamentary Government in England_, vol. ii.

COMMISSIONAIRE, the designation of an attendant, messenger or subordinate employé in hotels on the continent of Europe, whose chief duty is to attend at railway stations, secure customers, take charge of their luggage, carry out the necessary formalities with respect to it and have it sent on to the hotel. They are also employed in Paris as street messengers, light porters, &c. The Corps of Commissionaires, in England, is an association of pensioned soldiers of trustworthy character, founded in 1859 by Captain Sir Edward Walter, K.C.B. (1823-1904). It was first started in a very small way, with the intention of providing occupation for none but wounded soldiers. The nucleus of the corps consisted of eight men, each of whom had lost a limb. The demand, however, for neat, uniformed, trusty men, to perform certain light duties, encouraged the founder to extend his idea, and the corps developed into a large self-supporting organization. In 1906 there were over 3000 members of the corps, more than 2000 of whom served in London. Out-stations were established in various large towns of the kingdom, and the corps extended its operations also to the colonies.

COMMISSIONER, in general an officer appointed to carry out some particular work, or to discharge the duty of a particular office; one who is a member of a commission (q.v.). In this sense the word is applied to members of a permanently constituted department of the administration, as civil service commissioners, commissioners of income tax, commissioners in lunacy, &c. It is also the title given to the heads of or important officials in various governmental departments, as commissioner of customs. In some British possessions in Africa and the Pacific the head of the government is styled high commissioner. In India a commissioner is the chief administrative official of a division which includes several districts. The office does not exist in Madras, where the same duties are discharged by a board of revenue, but is found in most of the other provinces. The commissioner comes midway between the local government and the district officer. In the regulation provinces the district officer is called a collector (q.v.), and in the non-regulation provinces a deputy-commissioner. In the former he must always be a member of the covenanted civil service, but in the latter he may be a military officer.

A chief commissioner is a high Indian official, governing a province inferior in status to a lieutenant-governorship, but in direct subordination to the governor-general in council. The provinces which have chief commissioners are the Central Provinces and Berar, the North-West Frontier Province and Coorg. The agent to the governor-general of Baluchistan is also chief commissioner of British Baluchistan, the agent to the governor-general of Rajputana is also chief commissioner of the British district of Ajmere-Merwara, and there is a chief commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Several provinces, such as the Punjab, Oudh, Burma and Assam, were administered by chief commissioners before they were raised to the status of lieutenant-governorships (see LIEUTENANT).

A commissioner for oaths in England is a solicitor appointed by the lord chancellor to administer oaths to persons making affidavits for the purpose of any cause or matter. The Commissioner for Oaths Act 1889 (with an amending act 1891), amending and consolidating various other acts, regulates the appointment and powers of such commissioners. In most large towns the minimum qualification for appointment is six years' continuous practice, and the application must be supported by two barristers, two solicitors and at least six neighbours of the applicant. The charge made by commissioners for every oath, declaration, affirmation or attestation upon honour is one shilling and sixpence; for marking each exhibit (a document or other thing sworn to in an affidavit and shown to a deponent when being sworn), one shilling.

COMMITMENT, in English law, a precept or warrant _in writing_, made and issued by a court or judicial officer (including, in cases of treason, the privy council or a secretary of state), directing the conveyance of a person named or sufficiently described therein to a prison or other legal place of custody, and his detention therein for a time specified, or until the person to be detained has done a certain act specified in the warrant, e.g. paid a fine imposed upon him on conviction. Its character will be more easily grasped by reference to a form now in use under statutory authority:--

In the county of A, Petty Sessional Division of B.

To each and all of the constables of the county of A and the governor of His Majesty's Prison at C.

E. F. hereinafter called the defendant has this day been convicted before the court of summary jurisdiction sitting at D.

(Here the conviction and adjudication is stated.)

You the said constables are hereby commanded to convey the defendant to the said prison, and there deliver him to the governor thereof together with this warrant: and you the governor of the said prison to receive the defendant into your custody and keep him to hard labour for the space of three calendar months.

Dated Signature and seal of a justice of the peace.

A commitment as now understood differs from "committal," which is the decision of a court to send a person to prison, and not the document containing the directions to executive and ministerial officers of the law which are consequent on the decision. An interval must necessarily elapse between the decision to commit and the making out of the warrant of commitment, during which interval the detention in custody of the person committed is undoubtedly legal. A commitment differs also from a warrant of arrest (_mandat d'amener_), in that it is not made until after the person to be detained has actually appeared, or has been summoned, before the court which orders committal, to answer to some charge.

If not always, at any rate since 1679, a warrant of commitment has been necessary to justify officers of the law in conveying a prisoner to gaol and a gaoler in receiving and detaining him there. It is ordinarily essential to a valid commitment that it should contain a specific statement of the particular cause of the detention ordered. To this the chief, if not the only exception, is in the case of commitments by order of either House of Parliament (May, _Parl. Pr._, 11th ed., 63, 70, 90). Commitments by justices of the peace must be under their hands and seals. Commitments by a court of record if formally drawn up are under the seal of the court.

Every person in custody is entitled, under the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, to receive within six hours of demand from the officer in whose custody he is, a copy of any warrant of commitment under which he is detained, and may challenge its legality by application for a writ of habeas corpus.

So far as concerns the acts of justices and tribunals of limited jurisdiction, the stringency of the rules as to commitments is an important aid to the liberty of the subject.

In the case of superior courts no statutory forms of commitment exist, and the same formalities are not so strictly enforced. Committal of a person present in court for contempt of the court is enforced by his immediate arrest by the tipstaff as soon as committal is ordered, and he may be detained in prison on a memorandum of the clerk or registrar of the court while a formal order is being drawn up. And in the case of persons sentenced at assizes and quarter sessions the only written authority for enforcement is a calendar of the prisoners tried, on which the sentences are entered up, signed by the presiding judge.

Commitments are usually made by courts of criminal jurisdiction in respect of offences against the criminal law, but are also occasionally made as a punishment for disobedience to the orders made in a civil court, e.g. where a judgment debtor having means to pay refuses to satisfy the judgment debt, or in cases where the person committed has been guilty of a direct contempt of the court.

The expenses of executing a warrant of commitment, so far as not paid by the prisoner, are defrayed out of the parliamentary grants for the maintenance of prisons.

COMMITTEE (from _committé_, an Anglo-Fr. past participle of _commettre_, Lat. _committere_, to entrust; the modern Fr. equivalent _comité_ is derived from the Eng.), a person or body of persons to whom something is "committed" or entrusted. The term is used of a person or persons to whom the charge of the body ("committee of the person") or of the property and business affairs ("committee of the estate") of a lunatic is committed by the court (see INSANITY). In this sense the English usage is to pronounce the word _commi-ttee_. The more common meaning of "committee" (pronounced _commítt-y_) is that of a body of persons elected or appointed to consider and deal with certain matters of business, specially or generally referred to it.

COMMODIANUS, a Christian Latin poet, who flourished about A.D. 250. The only ancient writers who mention him are Gennadius, presbyter of Massilia (end of 5th century), in his _De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis_, and Pope Gelasius in _De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis_, in which his works are classed as _Apocryphi_, probably on account of certain heterodox statements contained in them. Commodianus is supposed to have been an African. As he himself tells us, he was originally a heathen, but was converted to Christianity when advanced in years, and felt called upon to instruct the ignorant in the truth. He was the author of two extant Latin poems, _Instructiones_ and _Carmen apologeticum_ (first published in 1852 by J. B. Pitra in the _Spicilegium Solesmense_, from a MS. in the Middlehill collection, now at Cheltenham, supposed to have been brought from the monastery of Bobbio). The _Instructiones_ consist of 80 poems, each of which is an acrostic (with the exception of 60, where the initial letters are in alphabetical order). The initials of 80, read backwards, give Commodianus Mendicus Christi. The _Apologeticum_, undoubtedly by Commodianus, although the name of the author (as well as the title) is absent from the MS., is free from the acrostic restriction. The first part of the _Instructiones_ is addressed to the heathens and Jews, and ridicules the divinities of classical mythology; the second contains reflections on Antichrist, the end of the world, the Resurrection, and advice to Christians, penitents and the clergy. In the _Apologeticum_ all mankind are exhorted to repent, in view of the approaching end of the world. The appearance of Antichrist, identified with Nero and the Man from the East, is expected at an early date. Although they display fiery dogmatic zeal, the poems cannot be considered quite orthodox. To the classical scholar the metre alone is of interest. Although they are professedly written in hexameters, the rules of quantity are sacrificed to accent. The first four lines of the _Instructiones_ may be quoted by way of illustration:

"Praefatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat, Respectumque bonum, cum venerit saeculi meta, Aeternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda: Ego similiter erravi tempore multo."

These _versus politici_ (as they are called) show that the change was already passing over Latin which resulted in the formation of the Romance languages. The use of cases and genders, the construction of verbs and prepositions, and the verbal forms exhibit striking irregularities. The author, however, shows an acquaintance with Latin poets--Horace, Virgil, Lucretius.

The best edition of the text is by B. Dombart (Vienna, 1887), and a good account of the poems will be found in M. Manitius, _Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Poesie_ (1891), with bibliography, to which may be added G. Boissier, "Commodien," in the _Mélanges Renier_ (1887); H. Brewer, _Kommodian von Gaza_ (Paderborn, 1906); L. Vernier, "La Versification latine populaire en Afrique," in _Revue de philologie_, xv. (1891); and C. E. Freppel, _Commodien, Arnobe, Lactance_ (1893). Teuffel-Schwabe, _Hist. of Roman Literature_ (Eng. trans., 384), should also be consulted.

COMMODORE (a form of "commander"; in the 17th century the term "commandore" is used), a temporary rank in the British navy for an officer in command of a squadron. There are two kinds, one with and the other without a captain below him in his ship, the first holding the temporary rank, pay, &c., of a rear-admiral, the other that of captain. It is also given as a courtesy title to the senior officer of a squadron of more than three vessels. In the United States navy "commodore" was a courtesy title given to captains who had been in command of a squadron. In 1862 it was made a commissioned rank, but was abolished in 1899. The name is given to the president of a yacht club, as of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and to the senior captain of a fleet of merchant vessels.

COMMODUS, LUCIUS AELIUS AURELIUS (161-192), also called Marcus Antoninus, emperor of Rome, son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina, was born at Lanuvium on the 31st of August 161. In spite of a careful education he soon showed a fondness for low society and amusement. At the age of fifteen he was associated by his father in the government. On the death of Aurelius, whom he had accompanied in the war against the Quadi and Marcomanni, he hastily concluded peace and hurried back to Rome (180). The first years of his reign were uneventful, but in 183 be was attacked by an assassin at the instigation of his sister Lucilla and many members of the senate, which felt deeply insulted by the contemptuous manner in which Commodus treated it. From this time he became tyrannical. Many distinguished Romans were put to death as implicated in the conspiracy, and others were executed for no reason at all. The treasury was exhausted by lavish expenditure on gladiatorial and wild beast combats and on the soldiery, and the property of the wealthy was confiscated. At the same time Commodus, proud of his bodily strength and dexterity, exhibited himself in the arena, slew wild animals and fought with gladiators, and commanded that he should be worshipped as the Roman Hercules. Plots against his life naturally began to spring up. That of his favourite Perennis, praefect of the praetorian guard, was discovered in time. The next danger was from the people, who were infuriated by the dearth of corn. The mob repelled the praetorian guard, but the execution of the hated minister Cleander quieted the tumult. The attempt also of the daring highwayman Maternus to seize the empire was betrayed; but at last Eclectus the emperor's chamberlain, Laetus the praefect of the praetorians, and his mistress Marcia, finding their names on the list of those doomed to death, united to destroy him. He was poisoned, and then strangled by a wrestler named Narcissus, on the 31st of December 192. During his reign unimportant wars were successfully carried on by his generals Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger and Ulpius Marcellus. The frontier of Dacia was successfully defended against the Scythians and Sarmatians, and a tract of territory reconquered in north Britain. In 1874 a statue of Commodus was dug up at Rome, in which he is represented as Hercules--a lion's skin on his head, a club in his right and the apples of the Hesperides in his left hand.

See Aelius Lampridius, Herodian, and fragments in Dio Cassius; H. Schiller, _Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit_; J. Zürcher, "Commodus" (1868, in Büdinger's _Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte_, a criticism of Herodian's account); Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopädie_, ii. 2464 ff. (von Rohden); Heer, "Der historische Wert des Vita Commodi" (_Philologus_, Supplementband ix.).

COMMON LAW, like "civil law," a phrase with many shades of meaning, and probably best defined with reference to the various things to which it is opposed. It is contrasted with statute law, as law not promulgated by the sovereign body; with equity, as the law prevailing between man and man, unless when the court of chancery assumed jurisdiction; and with local or customary law, as the general law for the whole realm, tolerating variations in certain districts and under certain conditions. It is also sometimes contrasted with civil, or canon, or international law, which are foreign systems recognized in certain special courts only and within limits defined by the common law. As against all these contrasted kinds of law, it may be described broadly as the universal law of the realm, which applies wherever they have not been introduced, and which is supposed to have a principle for every possible case. Occasionally, it would appear to be used in a sense which would exclude the law developed by at all events the more modern decisions of the courts.

Blackstone divides the civil law of England into _lex scripta_ or statute law, and _lex non scripta_ or common law. The latter, he says, consists of (1) general customs, which are the common law strictly so called, (2) particular customs prevailing in certain districts, and (3) laws used in particular courts. The first is the law by which "proceedings and determinations in the king's ordinary courts of justice are guided and directed." That the eldest son alone is heir to his ancestor, that a deed is of no validity unless sealed and delivered, that wills shall be construed more favourably and deeds more strictly, are examples of common law doctrines, "not set down in any written statute or ordinance, but depending on immemorial usage for their support." The validity of these usages is to be determined by the judges--"the depositaries of the law, the living oracles who must decide in all cases of doubt, and who are bound by an oath to decide according to the law of the land." Their judgments are preserved as records, and "it is an established rule to abide by former precedents where the same points come again in litigation." The extraordinary deference paid to precedents is the source of the most striking peculiarities of the English common law. There can be little doubt that it was the rigid adherence of the common law courts to established precedent which caused the rise of an independent tribunal administering justice on more equitable principles--the tribunal of the chancellor, the court of chancery. And the old common law courts--the king's bench, common pleas and exchequer--were always, as compared with the court of chancery, distinguished for a certain narrowness and technicality of reasoning. At the same time the common law was never a fixed or rigid system. In the application of old precedents to the changing circumstances of society, and in the development of new principles to meet new cases, the common law courts displayed an immense amount of subtlety and ingenuity, and a great deal of sound sense. The continuity of the system was not less remarkable than its elasticity. Two great defects of form long disfigured the English law. One was the separation of common law and equity. The Judicature Act of 1873 remedied this by merging the jurisdiction of all the courts in one supreme court, and causing equitable principles to prevail over those of the common law where they differ. The other is the overwhelming mass of precedents in which the law is embedded. This can only be removed by some well-conceived scheme of the nature of a code or digest; to some extent this difficulty has been overcome by such acts as the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, the Partnership Act 1890 and the Sale of Goods Act 1893.

The English common law may be described as a pre-eminently national system. Based on Saxon customs, moulded by Norman lawyers, and jealous of foreign systems, it is, as Bacon says, as mixed as the English language and as truly national. And like the language, it has been taken into other English-speaking countries, and is the foundation of the law in the United States.

COMMON LODGING-HOUSE, "a house, or part of a house, where persons of the poorer classes are received for gain, and in which they use one or more rooms in common with the rest of the inmates, who are not members of one family, whether for eating or sleeping" (_Langdon_ v. _Broadbent_, 1877, 37 L.T. 434; _Booth_ v. _Ferrett_, 1890, 25 Q.B.D. 87). There is no statutory definition of the class of houses in England intended to be included in the expression "common lodging-house," but the above definition is very generally accepted as embracing those houses which, under the Public Health and other Acts, must be registered and inspected. The provisions of the Public Health Act 1875 are that every urban and rural district council must keep registers showing the names and residences of the keepers of all common lodging-houses in their districts, the situation of every such house, and the number of lodgers authorized by them to be received therein. They may require the keeper to affix and keep undefaced and legible a notice with the words "registered common lodging-house" in some conspicuous place on the outside of the house, and may make by-laws fixing the number of lodgers, for the separation of the sexes, for promoting cleanliness and ventilation, for the giving of notices and the taking of precautions in case of any infectious disease, and generally for the well ordering of such houses. The keeper of a common lodging-house is required to limewash the walls and ceilings twice a year--in April and October--and to provide a proper water-supply. The whole of the house must be open at all times to the inspection of any officer of a council. The county of London (except the city) is under the Common Lodging Houses Acts 1851 and 1853, with the Sanitary Act 1866 and the Sanitary Law Amendment Act 1874. The administration of these acts was, from 1851 to 1894, in the hands of the chief commissioner of police, when it was transferred to the London County Council.

COMMON ORDER, BOOK OF, sometimes called _The Order of Geneva_ or _Knox's Liturgy_, a directory for public worship in the Reformed Church in Scotland. In 1557 the Scottish Protestant lords in council enjoined the use of the English Common Prayer, i.e. the Second Book of Edward VI. Meanwhile, at Frankfort, among British Protestant refugees, a controversy was going on between the upholders of the English liturgy and the French Reformed Order of Worship respectively. By way of compromise John Knox and other ministers drew up a new liturgy based upon earlier Continental Reformed Services, which was not deemed satisfactory, but which on his removal to Geneva he published in 1556 for the use of the English congregations in that city. The Geneva book made its way to Scotland, and was used here and there by Reformed congregations. Knox's return in 1559 strengthened its position, and in 1562 the General Assembly enjoined the uniform use of it as the "Book of Our Common Order" in "the administration of the Sacraments and solemnization of marriages and burials of the dead." In 1564 a new and enlarged edition was printed in Edinburgh, and the Assembly ordered that "every Minister, exhorter and reader" should have a copy and use the Order contained therein not only for marriage and the sacraments but also "in Prayer," thus ousting the hitherto permissible use of the Second Book of Edward VI. at ordinary service. "The rubrics as retained from the Book of Geneva made provision for an extempore prayer before the sermon, and allowed the minister some latitude in the other two prayers. The forms for the special services were more strictly imposed, but liberty was also given to vary some of the prayers in them. The rubrics of the Scottish portion of the book are somewhat stricter, and, indeed, one or two of the Geneva rubrics were made more absolute in the Scottish emendations; but no doubt the 'Book of Common Order' is best described as a discretionary liturgy."

It will be convenient here to give the contents of the edition printed by Andrew Hart at Edinburgh in 1611, and described (as was usually the case) as _The Psalmes of David in Meeter, with the Prose, whereunto is added Prayers commonly used in the Kirke, and private houses; with a perpetuall Kalendar and all the Changes of the Moone that shall happen for the space of Six Yeeres to come_. They are as follows:--

(i.) The Calendar; (ii.) The names of the Faires of Scotland; (iii.) The Confession of Faith used at Geneva and received by the Church of Scotland; (iv.-vii.) Concerning the election and duties of Ministers, Elders and Deacons, and Superintendent; (viii.) An order of Ecclesiastical Discipline; (ix.) The Order of Excommunication and of Public Repentance; (x.) The Visitation of the Sick; (xi.) The Manner of Burial; (xii.) The Order of Public Worship--Forms of Confession and Prayer after Sermon; (xiii.) Other Public Prayers; (xiv.) The Administration of the Lord's Supper; (xv.) The Form of Marriage; (xvi.) The Order of Baptism; (xvii.) A Treatise on Fasting with the order thereof; (xviii.) The Psalms of David; (xix.) Conclusions or Doxologies; (xx.) Hymns--metrical versions of the Decalogue, Magnificat, Apostles' Creed, &c.; (xxi.) Calvin's Catechism; (xxii. and xxiii.) Prayers for Private Houses and Miscellaneous Prayers, e.g. for a man before he begins his work.

The Psalms and Catechism together occupy more than half the book. The chapter on burial is significant. In place of the long office of the Catholic Church we have simply this statement:--"The corpse is reverently brought to the grave, accompanied with the Congregation, without any further ceremonies: which being buried, the Minister (if he be present and required) goeth to the Church, if it be not far off, and maketh some comfortable exhortation to the people, touching death and resurrection." This (with the exception of the bracketed words) was taken over from the Book of Geneva. The Westminster Directory which superseded the Book of Common Order also enjoins interment "without any ceremony," such being stigmatized as "no way beneficial to the dead and many ways hurtful to the living." Civil honours may, however, be rendered.

Revs. G. W. Sprott and Thomas Leishman, in the introduction to their edition of the Book of Common Order, and of the Westminster Directory published in 1868, collected a valuable series of notices as to the actual usage of the former book for the period (1564-1645) during which it was enjoined by ecclesiastical law. Where ministers were not available suitable persons (often old priests, sometimes schoolmasters) were selected as readers. Good contemporary accounts of Scottish worship are those of W. Cowper (1568-1619), bishop of Galloway, in his _Seven Days' Conference between a Catholic Christian and a Catholic Roman_ (_c._ 1615), and Alexander Henderson in _The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland_ (1641). There was doubtless a good deal of variety at different times and in different localities. Early in the 17th century under the twofold influence of the Dutch Church, with which the Scottish clergy were in close connexion, and of James I.'s endeavours to "justle out" a liturgy which gave the liberty of "conceiving" prayers, ministers began in prayer to read less and extemporize more.

Turning again to the legislative history, in 1567 the prayers were done into Gaelic; in 1579 parliament ordered all gentlemen and yeomen holding property of a certain value to possess copies. The assembly of 1601 declined to alter any of the existing prayers but expressed a willingness to admit new ones. Between 1606 and 1618 various attempts were made under English and Episcopal influence, by assemblies afterwards declared unlawful, to set aside the "Book of Common Order." The efforts of James I., Charles I. and Archbishop Laud proved fruitless; in 1637 the reading of Laud's draft of a new form of service based on the English prayer book led to riots in Edinburgh and to general discontent in the country. The General Assembly of Glasgow in 1638 abjured Laud's book and took its stand again by the Book of Common Order, an act repeated by the assembly of 1639, which also demurred against innovations proposed by the English separatists, who objected altogether to liturgical forms, and in particular to the Lord's Prayer, the _Gloria Patri_ and the minister kneeling for private devotion in the pulpit. An Aberdeen printer named Raban was publicly censured for having on his own authority shortened one of the prayers. The following years witnessed a counter attempt to introduce the Scottish liturgy into England, especially for those who in the southern kingdom were inclined to Presbyterianism. This effort culminated in the Westminster Assembly of divines which met in 1643, at which six commissioners from the Church of Scotland were present, and joined in the task of drawing up a Common Confession, Catechism and Directory for the three kingdoms. The commissioners reported to the General Assembly of 1644 that this Common Directory "is so begun ... that we could not think upon any particular Directory for our own Kirk." The General Assembly of 1645 after careful study approved the new order. An act of Assembly on the 3rd of February and an act of parliament on the 6th of February ordered its use in every church, and henceforth, though there was no act setting aside the "Book of Common Order," the Westminster Directory was of primary authority. The Directory was meant simply to make known "the general heads, the sense and scope of the Prayers and other parts of Public Worship," and if need be, "to give a help and furniture." The act of parliament recognizing the Directory was annulled at the Restoration and the book has never since been acknowledged by a civil authority in Scotland. But General Assemblies have frequently recommended its use, and worship in Presbyterian churches is largely conducted on the lines of the Westminster Assembly's Directory.

The modern _Book of Common Order_ or _Euchologion_ is a compilation drawn from various sources and issued by the Church Service Society, an organization which endeavours to promote liturgical usages within the Established Church of Scotland.

COMMONPLACE, a translation of the Gr. [Greek: koivòs tópos], i.e. a passage or argument appropriate to several cases; a "common-place book" is a collection of such passages or quotations arranged for reference under general heads either alphabetically or on some method of classification. To such a book the name _adversaria_ was given, which is an adaptation of the Latin _adversaria scripta_, notes written on one side, the side opposite (_adversus_), of a paper or book. From its original meaning the word came to be used as meaning something hackneyed, a platitude or truism, and so, as an adjective, equivalent to trivial or ordinary. It was first spelled as two words, then with a hyphen, and so still in the sense of a "common-place book."

COMMON PLEAS, COURT OF, formerly one of the three English common law courts at Westminster--the other two being the king's bench and exchequer. The court of common pleas was an offshoot of the Curia Regis or king's council. Previous to Magna Carta, the king's council, especially that portion of it which was charged with the management of judicial and revenue business, followed the king's person. This, as far as private litigation was concerned, caused great inconvenience to the unfortunate suitors whose plaints awaited the attention of the court, for they had, of necessity, also to follow the king from place to place, or lose the opportunity of having their causes tried. Accordingly, Magna Carta enacted that common pleas (_communia placita_) or causes between subject and subject, should be held in some fixed place and not follow the court. This place was fixed at Westminster. The court was presided over by a chief (_capitalis justiciarius de communi banco_) and four puisne judges. The jurisdiction of the common pleas was, by the Judicature Act 1873, vested in the king's bench division of the High Court of Justice.

COMMONS,[1]

Early history.

the term for the lands held in commonalty, a relic of the system on which the lands of England were for the most part cultivated during the middle ages. The country was divided into vills, or townships--often, though not necessarily, or always, coterminous with the parish. In each stood a cluster of houses, a village, in which dwelt the men of the township, and around the village lay the arable fields and other lands, which they worked as one common farm. Save for a few small inclosures near the village--for gardens, orchards or paddocks for young stock--the whole township was free from permanent fencing. The arable lands lay in large tracts divided into compartments or fields, usually three in number, to receive in constant rotation the triennial succession of wheat (or rye), spring crops (such as barley, oats, beans or peas), and fallow. Low-lying lands were used as meadows, and there were sometimes pastures fed according to fixed rules. The poorest land of the township was left waste--to supply feed for the cattle of the community, fuel, wood for repairs, and any other commodity of a renewable or practically inexhaustible character.[2] This waste land is the common of our own days.

It would seem likely that at one time there was no division, as between individual inhabitants or householders, of any of the lands of the township, but only of the products. But so far back as accurate information extends the arable land is found to be parcelled out, each householder owning strips in each field. These strips are always long and narrow, and lie in sets parallel with one another. The plough for cultivating the fields was maintained at the common expense of the village, and the draught oxen were furnished by the householders. From the time when the crop was carried till the next sowing, the field lay open to the cattle of the whole vill, which also had the free run of the fallow field throughout the year. But when two of the three fields were under crops, and the meadows laid up for hay, it is obvious that the cattle of the township required some other resort for pasturage. This was supplied by the waste or common. Upon it the householder turned out the oxen and horses which he contributed to the plough, and the cows and sheep, which were useful in manuring the common fields,--in the words of an old law case: "horses and oxen to plough the land, and cows and sheep to compester it." Thus the use of the common by each householder was naturally measured by the stock which he kept for the service of the common fields; and when, at a later period, questions arose as to the extent of the rights on the common, the necessary practice furnished the rule, that the commoner could turn out as many head of cattle as he could keep by means of the lands which were parcelled out to him,--the rule of levancy and couchancy, which has come down to the present day.

Status of township.

In the earliest post-conquest times the vill or township is found to be associated with an over-lord. There has been much controversy on the question, whether the vill originally owned its lands free from any control, and was subsequently reduced to a state of subjection and to a large extent deprived of its ownership, or whether its whole history has been one of gradual emancipation, the ownership of the waste, or common, now ascribed by the law to the lord being a remnant of his ownership of all the lands of the vill. (See MANOR.)

At whatever date the over-lord first appeared, and whatever may have been the personal relations of the villagers to him from time to time after his appearance, there can be hardly any doubt that the village lands, whether arable, meadow or waste, were substantially the property of the villagers for the purposes of use and enjoyment. They resorted freely to the common for such purposes as were incident to their system of agriculture, and regulated its use amongst themselves. The idea that the common was the "lord's waste," and that he had the power to do what he liked with it, subject to specific and limited qualifying rights in others, was, there is little doubt, the creation of the Norman lawyers.

Statutes of Merton and Westminster the Second.

One of the earliest assertions of the lord's proprietary interest in waste lands is contained in the Statute of Merton, a statute which, it is well to notice, was passed in one of the first assemblies of the barons of England, before the commons of the realm were summoned to parliament. This statute, which became law in the year 1235, provided "that the great men of England (which had enfeoffed knights and their freeholders of small tenements in their great manors)" might "make their profit of their lands, wastes, woods and pastures," if they left sufficient pasture for the service of the tenements they had granted. Some fifty years later, another statute, that of Westminster the Second, supplemented the Statute of Merton by enabling the lord of the soil to inclose common lands, not only against his own tenants, but against "neighbours" claiming pasture there. These two pieces of legislation undoubtedly mark the growth of the doctrine which converted the over-lord's territorial sway into property of the modern kind, and a corresponding loosening of the hold of the rural townships on the wastes of their neighbourhood. To what extent the two acts were used, it is very difficult to say. We know, from later controversies, that they made no very great change in the system on which the country was cultivated, a system to which, as we have seen, commons were essential. In some counties, indeed, inclosures had, by the Tudor period, made greater progress than in others. T. Tusser, in his eulogium on inclosed farming, cites Suffolk and Essex as inclosed counties by way of contrast to Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire, where the open or "champion" (champain) system prevailed. The Statutes of Merton and Westminster may have had something to do with the progress of inclosed farming; but it is probable that their chief operation lay in furnishing the lord of the manor with a farm on the new system, side by side with the common fields, or with a deer park.

The Black Death.

The first event which really endangered the village system was the coming of the Black Death. This scourge is said to have swept away half the population of the country. The disappearance, by no means uncommon, of a whole family gave the over-lord of the vill the opportunity of appropriating, by way of escheat, the holding of the household in the common fields. The land-holding population of the townships and the persons interested in the commons were thus sensibly diminished.

During the Wars of the Roses the small cultivator is thought to have again made headway. But his diminished numbers, and the larger interest which the lords had acquired in the lands of each vill, no doubt facilitated the determined attack on the common-field system which marked the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI.

The Tudor agrarian revolution.

This attack, which had for its chief object the conversion of arable land into pasture for the sake of sheep-breeding, was the outcome of many causes. It was no longer of importance to a territorial magnate to possess a large body of followers pledged to his interests by their connexion with the land. On the other hand, wool commanded a high price, and the growth of towns and of foreign commerce supplied abundant markets. At the same time the confiscation of the monastic possessions introduced a race of new over-lords--not bound to their territories by any family traditions, and also tended to spread the view that the strong hand was its own justification. In order to keep large flocks and send many bales of wool to market, each landowner strove to increase his range of pasture, and with this view to convert the arable fields of his vill into grass land. There is abundant evidence both from the complaints of writers such as Latimer and Sir Thomas More, and from the Statutes and royal commissions of the day, that large inclosures were made at this time, and that the process was effected with much injustice and accompanied by great hardship. "Where," says Bishop Latimer in one of his courageous and vigorous denunciations of "inclosers and rent-raisers," "there have been many householders and inhabitants, there is now but a shepherd and his dog." In the full tide of this movement, and despite Latimer's appeals, the Statutes of Merton and Westminster the Second were confirmed and re-enacted. Both common fields and commons no doubt disappeared in many places; and the country saw the first notable instalment of inclosure. But from the evidence of later years it is clear that a very large area of the country was still cultivated on the common-field system for another couple of centuries. When inclosure on any considerable scale again came into favour, it was effected on quite different principles; and before describing what was essentially a modern movement, it will be convenient to give a brief outline of the principles of law applicable to commons at the present day.

Rights of common.

_Law._--The distinguishing feature in law of common land is, that it is land the soil of which belongs to one person, and from which certain other persons take certain profits--for example, the bite of the grass by the mouth of cattle, or gorse, bushes or heather for fuel or litter. The right to take such a profit is a right of common; the right to feed cattle on common land is a right of common of pasture; while the right of cutting bushes, gorse or heather (more rarely of lopping trees) is known as a right of common of _estovers_ (_estouviers_) or _botes_ (respectively from the Norman-French _estouffer_, and the Saxon _botan_, to furnish). Another right of common is that of _turbary_, or the right to cut turf or peat for fuel. There are also rights of taking sand, gravel or loam for the repair and maintenance of land. The persons who enjoy any of these rights are called commoners.

From the sketch of the common-field system of agriculture which has been given, we shall readily infer that a large proportion of the commons of the country, and of the peculiarities of the law relating to commons, are traceable to that system. Thus, common rights are mostly attached to, or enjoyed with, certain lands or houses. A right of common of pasture usually consists of the right to turn out as many cattle as the farm or other private land of the commoner can support in winter; for, as we have seen, the enjoyment of the common, in the village system, belonged to the householders of the village, and was necessarily measured by their holdings in the common fields. The cattle thus commonable are said to be _levant_ and _couchant_, i.e. uprising and down-lying on the land. But it has now been decided that they need not in fact be so kept. At the present day a commoner may turn out any cattle belonging to him, wherever they are kept, provided they do not exceed in number the head of cattle which can be supported by the stored summer produce of the land in respect of which the right is claimed, together with any winter herbage it produces. The animals which a commoner may usually turn out are those which were employed in the village system--horses, oxen, cows and sheep. These animals are termed commonable animals. A right may be claimed for other animals, such as donkeys, pigs and geese; but they are termed non-commonable, and the right can only be established on proof of special usage. A right of pasture attached to land in the way we have described is said to be _appendant_ or _appurtenant_ to such land. Common of pasture appendant to land can only be claimed for commonable cattle; and it is held to have been originally attached only to arable land, though in claiming the right no proof that the land was originally arable is necessary. This species of common right is, in fact, the direct survival of the use by the village householder of the common of the township; while common of pasture appurtenant represents rights which grew up between neighbouring townships, or, in later times, by direct grant from the owner of the soil of the common to some other landowner, or (in the case of copyholders) by local custom.

The characteristic of connexion with house or land also marks other rights of common. Thus a right of taking gorse or bushes, or of lopping wood for fuel, called _fire-bote_, is limited to the taking of such fuel as may be necessary for the hearths of a particular house, and no more may be taken than is thus required. The same condition applies to common of _turbary_, which in its more usual form authorizes the commoner to cut the heather, which grows thickly upon poor soils, with the roots and adhering earth, to a depth of about 9 in. Similarly, wood taken for the repairs of buildings (_house-bote_), or of hedges (_hedge-bote_ or _hey-bote_), must be limited in quantity to the requirements of the house, farm buildings and hedges of the particular property to which the right is attached. And heather taken for litter cannot be taken in larger quantities than is necessary for manuring the lands in respect of which the right is enjoyed. It is illegal to take the wood or heather from the common, and to sell it to any one who has not himself a right to take it. So, also, a right of digging sand, gravel, clay or loam is usually appurtenant to land, and must be exercised with reference to the repair of the roads, or the improvement of the soil, of the particular property to which the right is attached.

We have already alluded to the fact that, in Norman and later days, every vill or township was associated with some over-lord,--some one responsible to the crown, either directly or through other superior lords, for the holding of the land and the performance of certain duties of defence and military support. To this lord the law has assigned the ownership of the soil of the common of the vill; and the common has for many centuries been styled the waste of the manor. The trees and bushes on the common belong to the lord, subject to any rights of lopping or cutting which the commoners may possess. The ground, sand and subsoil are his, and even the grass, though the commoners have the right to take it by the mouths of their cattle. To the over-lord, also, was assigned a seignory over all the other lands of the vill; and the vill came to be termed his manor. At the present day it is the manorial system which must be invoked in most cases as the foundation of the curiously conflicting rights which co-exist on a common. (See MANOR.)

Manorial commons.

Within the bounds of a manor, speaking generally, there are three classes of persons possessing an interest in the land, viz.:--

(a) Persons holding land freely of the manor, or freehold tenants.

(b) Persons holding land of the manor by copy of court roll, or copyhold tenants.

(c) Persons holding from the lord of the manor, by lease or agreement, or from year to year, land which was originally demesne, or which was once freehold or copyhold and has come into the lord's hands by escheat or forfeiture.

Amongst the first two classes we usually find the majority of the commoners on the wastes or commons of the manor. To every freehold tenant belongs a right of common of pasture on the commons, such right being "appendant" to the land which he holds freely of the manor. This right differs from most other rights of common in the characteristic that actual exercise of the right need not be proved. When once it is shown that certain land is held freely of the manor, it follows of necessity that a right of common of pasture for commonable cattle attaches to the land, and therefore belongs to its owner, and may be exercised by its occupant. "Common appendant," said the Elizabethan judges, "is of common right, and commences by operation of law and in favour of tillage."

Now this is exactly what we saw to be the case with reference to the use of the common of the vill by the householder cultivating the arable fields. The use was a necessity, not depending upon the habits of this or that householder; it was a use for commonable cattle only, and was connected with the tillage of the arable lands. It seems almost necessarily to follow that the freehold tenants of the manor are the representatives of the householders of the vill. However this may be, it is amongst the freehold tenants of the manor that we must first look for commoners on the waste of the manor.

Owing, however, to the light character of the services rendered by the freeholders, the connexion of their lands with the manor is often difficult to prove. Copyhold tenure, on the other hand, cannot be lost sight of; and in many manors copyholders are numerous, or were, till quite recently. Copyholders almost invariably possess a right of common on the waste of the manor; and when (as is usual) they exist side by side with freeholders, their rights are generally of the same character. They do not, however, exist as of common right, without proof of usage, but by the custom of the manor. Custom has been defined by a great judge (Sir George Jessel, M.R., in _Hammerton_ v. _Honey_) as local law. Thus, while the freehold tenants enjoy their rights by the general law of the land, the copyholders have a similar enjoyment by the local law of the manor. This, again, is what one might expect from the ancient constitution of a village community. The copyholders, being originally serfs, had no rights at law; but as they had a share in the tillage of the land, and gradually became possessed of strips in the common fields, or of other plots on which they were settled by the lord, they were admitted by way of indulgence to the use of the common; and the practice hardened into a custom. As might be expected, there is more variety in the details of the rights they exercise. They may claim common for cattle which are not commonable, if the custom extends to such cattle; and their claim is not necessarily connected with arable land.

In the present day large numbers of copyhold tenements have been enfranchised, i.e. converted into freehold. The effect of this step is to sever all connexion between the land enfranchised and the manor of which it was previously held. Technically, therefore, the common rights previously enjoyed in respect of the land would be gone. When, however, there is no indication of any intention to extinguish such rights, the courts protect the copyholders in their continued enjoyment; and when an enfranchisement is effected under the statutes passed in modern years, the rights are expressly preserved. The commoners on a manorial common then will be, prima facie, the freeholders and copyholders of the manor, and the persons who own lands which were copyhold of the manor but have been enfranchised.

The occupants of lands belonging to the lord of the manor, though they usually turn out their cattle on the common, do so by virtue of the lord's ownership of the soil of the common, and can, as a rule, make no claim to any right of common as against the lord, even though the practice of turning out may have obtained in respect of particular lands for a long series of years. When, however, lands have been sold by the lord of the manor, although no right of common attached by law to such lands in the lord's hands, their owners may subsequently enjoy such a right, if it appears from the language of the deeds of conveyance, and all the surrounding circumstances, that there was an intention that the use of the common should be enjoyed by the purchaser. The rules on this point are very technical; it is sufficient here to indicate that lands bought from a lord of a manor are not necessarily destitute of common rights.

Rights of common not connected with manorial system.

So far we have considered common rights as they have arisen out of the manorial system, and out of the still older system of village communities. There may, however, be rights of common quite unconnected with the manorial system. Such rights may be proved either by producing a specific grant from the owner of the manor or by long usage. It is seldom that an actual grant is produced, although it would seem likely that such grants were not uncommon at one time. But a claim founded on actual user is by no means unusual. Such a claim may be based (a) on immemorial usage, i.e. usage for which no commencement later than the coronation of Richard I. (1189) can be shown, (b) on a presumed modern grant which has been lost, or (c) (in some cases) on the Prescription