Part 72

PRESCOTT, Colonel William, and the battle of Bunker Hill.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (JUNE).

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PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

"The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice-President, chosen for the same term, be elected as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress [and these electors, meeting in their respective States, shall vote for President and Vice-President, transmitting certified lists of their votes to the President of the Senate of the United States, who shall count them in the presence of the two Houses of Congress; and if no person is elected President by a majority of all the votes cast, then the House of Representatives shall elect a President from the three persons who received the highest numbers of the votes cast by the electors, the representation from each State having one vote in such election]. … No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States. … The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment. He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law; but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments. The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session. He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States. The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

_Constitution of the United States, article 2, and article 12 of amendments._

The provisions of the Constitution regarding the Presidential succession, in case of the death or resignation of both President and Vice-President, are: 'In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly until the disability be removed or a President shall be elected.'

_(Article II, Section 6.)_

In pursuance of the power thus granted to it in the last half of this section, Congress in 1792 passed an act declaring that in case of the death, resignation, etc., of both the President and Vice-President, the succession should be first to the President of the Senate and then to the Speaker of the House. This order was changed by the act of 1886, which provided that the succession to the presidency should be as follows:

1. President. 2. Vice-President. 3. Secretary of State. 4. Secretary of the Treasury. 5. Secretary of War. 6. Attorney General. 7. Postmaster General. 8. Secretary of the Navy. 9. Secretary of the Interior.

In all cases the remainder of the four-years' term shall be served out. This act also regulated the counting of the votes of the electors by Congress, and the determination of who were legally chosen electors.

_Statutes of the United States passed at 1st Session of 49th Congress, page 1._

ALSO IN: _E. Stanwood, History of Presidential Elections, chapter 27._

_J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, book 3, chapters 36-37 (volume 3)._

_The Federalist, numbers 66-76._

_J. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chapters 5-8 (volume 1)._

PRESIDIO.

See TEXAS: A. D. 1819-1835

PRESS, The.

See PRINTING.

PRESSBURG, or PRESBURG, Treaty of (1805).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1800.

PRESS-GANG.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812.

PRESTER JOHN, The Kingdom of.

"About the middle of the eleventh century stories began to be circulated in Europe as to a Christian nation of north-eastern Asia, whose sovereign was at the same time king and priest, and was known by the name of Prester John. Amid the mass of fables with which the subject is encumbered, it would seem to be certain that, in the very beginning of the century, the Khan of the Keraït, a tribe whose chief seat was at Karakorum, between Lake Baikal and the northern frontier of China, was converted to Nestorian Christianity—it is said, through the appearance of a saint to him when he had lost his way in hunting. By means of conversation with Christian merchants, he acquired some elementary knowledge of the faith, and, on the application of Ebed-Jesu, metropolitan of Maru, to the Nestorian patriarch Gregory, clergy were sent, who baptized the king and his subjects, to the number of 200,000. Ebed-Jesu consulted the patriarch how the fasts were to be kept, since the country did not afford any corn, or anything but flesh and milk; and the answer was, that, if no other Lenten provisions were to be had, milk should be the only diet for seasons of abstinence. The earliest western notice of this nation is given by Otho of Freising, from the relation of an Armenian bishop who visited the court of pope Eugenius III. This report is largely tinctured with fable, and deduces the Tartar chief's descent from the Magi who visited the Saviour in His cradle. {2586} It would seem that the Nestorians of Syria, for the sake of vying with the boasts of the Latins, delighted in inventing tales as to the wealth, the splendour, and the happiness of their convert's kingdom; and to them is probably to be ascribed an extravagantly absurd letter, in which Prester John is made to dilate on the greatness and the riches of his dominions, the magnificence of his state and the beauty of his wives, and to offer the Byzantine emperor, Manuel, if he be of the true faith, the office of lord chamberlain in the court of Karakorum. In 1177 Alexander III. was induced by reports which a physician named Philip had brought back from Tartary, as to Prester John's desire to be received into communion with the pope, to address a letter to the king, recommending Philip as a religions instructor. But nothing is known as to the result of this; and in 1202 the Keraït kingdom was overthrown by the Tartar conqueror Genghis Khan. In explanation of the story as to the union of priesthood with royalty in Prester John, many theories have been proposed, of which two may be mentioned here: that it arose out of the fact of a Nestorian priest's having got possession of the kingdom on the death of a khan; or that, the Tartar prince's title being compounded of the Chinese 'wang' (king) and the Mongol 'khan,' the first of these words was confounded by the Nestorians of Syria with the name John, and the second with 'cohen' (a priest). … The identification of Prester John's kingdom with Abyssinia was a mistake of Portuguese explorers some centuries later."

_J. C. Robertson, History of the Christian Church, book 6, chapter 11, with foot-note (volume 5)._

ALSO IN: _Colonel H. Yule, Note to 'The Book of Marco Polo,' volume 1, pages 204-209._

PRESTON, Battle of (1648).

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (APRIL-AUGUST).

Battle of (1715).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1715.

PRESTON PANS, Battle of (1745).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1745-1746.

PRESTONBURG, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE).

PRETAXATION.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

PRETENDERS, The Stuart.

See JACOBITES.

PRICE'S RAID.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MARCH-OCTOBER: ARKANSAS-MISSOURI).

PRIDE'S PURGE.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER).

PRIEST'S LANE, The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1632.

PRIM, General, Assassination of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1866-1873.

PRIMATES. METROPOLITANS. PATRIARCHS.

In the early organization of the Christian Church, the bishops of every province found it necessary "to make one of themselves superior to all the rest, and invest him with certain powers and privileges for the good of the whole, whom they therefore named their primate, or metropolitan, that is, the principal bishop of the province. … Next in order to the metropolitans or primates were the patriarchs; or, as they were at first called, archbishops and exarchs of the diocese. For though now an archbishop and a metropolitan be generally taken for the same, to wit, the primate of a single province; yet anciently the name archbishop was a more extensive title, and scarce given to any but those whose jurisdiction extended over a whole imperial diocese, as the bishop of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, &c."

_T. Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church, book 2, chapters 16-17 (volume 1)._

See, also, CHRISTIANITY; A. D. 312-337.

PRIME MINISTER, The English.

See CABINET, THE ENGLISH.

PRINCE, Origin of the title.

See PRINCEPS SENATUS.

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

"Prince Edward's Island, the smallest province of the Dominion [of Canada], originally called St. John's Island, until 1770 formed part of Nova Scotia. The first Governor was Walter Patterson. … The first assembly met in 1773." In 1873 Prince Edward Island consented to be received into the Confederation of the Dominion of Canada—the latest of the provinces to accede to the Union, except Newfoundland, which still (1894) remains outside.

_J. E. C. Munro, The Constitution of Canada, chapter 2._

See, also, CANADA: A. D. 1867; and 1869-1873.

PRINCE OF THE CAPTIVITY.

See JEWS: A. D. 200-400.

PRINCE OF WALES.

See WALES, PRINCE OF.

PRINCEPS SENATUS.

"As the title of imperator conferred the highest military rank upon Augustus and his successors, so did that of princeps senatus, or princeps (as it came to be expressed by an easy but material abridgment), convey the idea of the highest civil preeminence consistent with the forms of the old constitution. In ancient times this title had been appropriated to the first in succession of living censorii, men who had served the office of censor; and such were necessarily patricians and senators. The sole privilege it conferred was that of speaking first in the debates of the senate; a privilege however to which considerable importance might attach from the exceeding deference habitually paid to authority and example by the Roman assemblies. … The title of princeps was modest and constitutional; it was associated with the recollection of the best ages of the free state and the purest models of public virtue; it could not be considered beyond the deserts of one who was undoubtedly the foremost man of the nation. … The popularity which the assumption of this republican title conferred upon the early emperors may be inferred from the care with which it is noted, and its constitutional functions referred to by the writers of the Augustan age and that which succeeded it. But it was an easy and natural step in the progress of political ideas to drop the application of the title, and contract it from prince of the senate, to prince merely. The original character of the appellation was soon forgotten, and the proper limits of its privileges confounded in the more vague and general prerogative which the bare designation of first or premier seemed to imply."

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 31._

ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 3, note by Dr. W. Smith._

PRINCETON, Battle of (1777).

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1777 WASHINGTON'S RETREAT.

PRINCIPES.

See LEGION, THE ROMAN.

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PRINTING AND THE PRESS: Start--------

PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1430-1456. The invention of movable type. Rival claims for Coster and Gutenberg. The first Printed Book.