Part 848

_History of the Red Cross (Washington, 1883)._

RED FORTRESS, The. The Alhambra.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1238-1273.

RED LAND, The.

See VEHMGERICHTS.

RED LEGS.

See JAYHAWKERS.

RED RIVER COMPANY AND SETTLEMENT. RIEL'S REBELLION.

See CANADA: A. D. 1869-1873.

RED RIVER EXPEDITION.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MARCH-MAY: LOUISIANA).

RED ROBE, Counsellors of the.

See VENICE: A. D. 1032-1319.

RED TERROR, The.

The later period of the French Reign of Terror, when the guillotine was busiest, is sometimes so called.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (JULY-APRIL,).

REDAN, Assaults on the (1855).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1854-1856.

REDEMPTIONERS.

"Redemptioners, or term slaves, as they were sometimes called, constituted in the early part of the 18th century a peculiar feature of colonial society. They were recruited from among all manner of people in the old world, and through this channel Europe emptied upon America, not only the virtuous poor and oppressed of her population, but the vagrants, felons, and the dregs of her communities. … There were two kinds of redemptioners: 'indented servants,' who had bound themselves to their masters for a term of years previous to their leaving the old country; and 'free–willers,' who, being without money and desirous of emigrating, agreed with the captains of ships to allow themselves and their families to be sold on arrival, for the captain's advantage, and thus repay costs of passage and other expenses."

_A. D. Mellick, Jr., The Story of an Old Farm, chapter 11._

REDEMPTORISTS, The.

The members of the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, founded by St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, in 1732, are commonly known as Redemptorists. The congregation is especially devoted to apostolic work among neglected classes of people. It has monasteries in several parts of Europe.

REDONES, The.

See VENETI OF WESTERN GAUL.

REDSTICKS, The.

This name was given to the hostile Creek Indians of Florida.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

REDUCTIONS IN PARAGUAY, The Jesuit.

See PARAGUAY: A. D. 1608-1873.

REEVE.

See GEREFA; and MARGRAVE.

REFERENDARIUS.

See CHANCELLOR.

REFERENDUM AND INITIATIVE, The Swiss.

"A popular vote under the name Referendum was known in the valleys of Graubunden and Wallis as early as the 16th century. Here existed small federations of communities who regulated certain matters of general concern by means of assemblies of delegates from each village. These conventions were not allowed to decide upon any important measure finally, but must refer the matter to the various constituencies. If a majority of these approved, the act might be passed at the next assembly. {2628} This primitive system lasted till the French invasion of 1798, and was again established in Graubünden in 1815. The word Referendum was also used by the old federal diets, in which there were likewise no comprehensive powers of legislation. If not already instructed the delegates must vote 'ad referendum' and carry all questions to the home government. The institution as now known is a product of this century. It originated in the canton of St. Gallen in 1830, where at the time the constitution was undergoing revision. As a compromise between the party which strove for pure democracy and that desiring representative government, it was provided that all laws should be submitted to popular vote if a respectable number of voters so demanded. Known at first by the name Veto, this system slowly found its way into several of the German-speaking cantons, so that soon after the adoption of the federal constitution five were employing the optional Referendum. Other forms of popular legislation were destined to find wider acceptance, but at present [1891] in eight states, including three of the Romance tongue, laws must be submitted on request. … The usual limit of time during which the petition must be signed is 30 days. These requests are directed to the Executive Council of the state, and that body is obliged, within a similar period after receiving the same, to appoint a day for the vote. The number of signers required varies from 500 in the little canton Zug to 6,000 in St. Gallen, or from one-tenth to one–fifth of all the voters. Some states provide that in connection with the vote on the bill as a whole, an expression may be taken on separate points. Custom varies as to the number of votes required to veto a law. Some fix the minimum at a majority of those taking part in the election, and others at a majority of all citizens, whether voting or not. In case the vote is against the bill, the matter is referred by the Executive Council to the legislature. This body, after examining into the correctness of the returns, passes a resolution declaring its own act to be void. By means of the Initiative or Imperative Petition, the order of legislation just described is reversed, since the impulse to make law is received from below instead of above. The method of procedure is about as follows: Those who are interested in the passage of a new law prepare either a full draft of such a bill or a petition containing the points desired to be covered, with the reasons for its enactment, and then bring the matter before the public for the purpose of obtaining signatures. Endorsement may be given either by actually signing the petition or by verbal assent to it. The latter form of consent is indicated either in the town meetings of the communes or by appearing before the official in charge of the petition and openly asking that his vote be given for it. If, in the various town meetings of the canton taken together, a stated number of affirmative votes are given for the petition, the effect is the same as if the names of voters had been signed. … The number of names required is about the same in proportion to the whole body of voters as for the Optional Referendum. The requisite number of signatures having been procured, the petition is carried to the legislature of the canton. This body must take the matter into consideration within a specified time (Solothurn, two months), and prepare a completed draft in accordance with the request. It may also at the same time present an alternate proposition which expresses its own ideas of the matter, so that voters may take their choice. In any case the legislature gives an opinion on the project, as to its desirability or propriety, and the public has thus a report of its own select committee for guidance. The bill is then submitted to the voters, and on receiving the assent of a majority, and having been promulgated by the executive authority, becomes a law of the land."

_J. M. Vincent, State and Federal Government in Switzerland, chapter 13._

"Between 1874 and 1886, the federal legislature passed 113 laws and resolutions which were capable of being submitted to the referendum. Of these only 19 were subjected to the popular vote, and of these last 13 were rejected and 6 adopted. The strong opposing views, which are held in Switzerland regarding the expediency of the referendum, indicate that this is one of the features of the government which is open to future discussion."

_B. Moses, The Federal Government of Switzerland, page 119._

See, also, SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1848-1890.

"A plébiscite is a mass vote of the French people by which a Revolutionary or Imperial Executive obtains for its policy, or its crimes, the apparent sanction or condonation of France. Frenchmen are asked at the moment, and in the form most convenient to the statesmen or conspirators who rule in Paris, to say 'Aye' or 'No' whether they will, or will not, accept a given Constitution or a given policy. The crowd of voters are expected to reply in accordance to the wishes or the orders of the Executive, and the expectation always has met, and an observer may confidently predict always will meet, with fulfilment. The plébiscite is a revolutionary, or at least abnormal, proceeding. It is not preceded by debate. The form and nature of the question to be submitted to the nation is chosen and settled by the men in power. Rarely, indeed, when a plébiscite has been taken, has the voting itself been either free or fair. Taine has a strange tale to tell of the methods by which a Terrorist faction, when all but crushed by general odium, extorted from the country by means of the plébiscite a sham assent to the prolongation of revolutionary despotism. The credulity of partisanship can nowadays hardly induce even Imperialists to imagine that the plébiscites which sanctioned the establishment of the Empire, which declared Louis Napoleon President for life, which first re-established Imperialism, and then approved more or less Liberal reforms, fatal at bottom to the Imperial system, were the free, deliberate, carefully considered votes of the French nation given after the people had heard all that could be said for and against the proposed innovation. … The essential characteristics, however, the lack of which deprives a French plébiscite of all moral significance, are the undoubted properties of the Swiss Referendum. When a law revising the Constitution is placed before the people of Switzerland, every citizen throughout the land has enjoyed the opportunity of learning the merits and demerits of the proposed alteration. The subject has been 'threshed out,' as the expression goes, in Parliament; the scheme, whatever its worth, has received the deliberately given approval of the elected Legislature; it comes before the people with as much authority in its favour as a Bill which in England has passed through both Houses."

_A. V. Dicey, The Referendum, (Contemporary Review, April, 1890)._

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"A judgment of the referendum must be based on the working of the electoral machinery, on the interest shown by the voters, and on the popular discrimination between good and bad measures. The process of invoking and voting on a referendum is simple and easily worked, if not used too often. Although the Assembly has, in urgent cases, the constitutional right to set a resolution in force at once, it always allows from three to eight months' delay so as to permit the opponents of a measure to lodge their protests against it. Voluntary committees take charge of the movement, and, if a law is unpopular, little difficulty is found in getting together the necessary thirty thousand or fifty thousand signatures. Only thrice has the effort failed when made. When, as in 1882, the signatures run up to 180,000, the labor is severe, for every signature is examined by the national executive to see whether it is attested as the sign manual of a voter; sometimes, in an interested canton, as many as 70 per cent. of the voters have signed the demand. The system undoubtedly leads to public discussion: newspapers criticise; addresses and counter addresses are issued; cantonal councils publicly advise voters; and of late the federal Assembly sends out manifestoes against pending initiatives. The federal Executive Council distributes to the cantons enough copies of the proposed measure, so that one may be given to each voter. The count of the votes is made by the Executive Council as a returning-board. Inasmuch as the Swiss are unfamiliar with election frauds, and there has been but one very close vote in the national referenda, the count is not difficult, but there are always irregularities, especially where more than one question is presented to the voters at the same time. What is the effect of the popular votes, thus carried out? The following table, based on official documents, shows the results for the twenty years, 1875-1894;

Passed Rejected Total

(a.) Constitutional amendments proposed by the Assembly (referendum obligatory) 1 6 7

(b.) Constitutional amendments proposed by popular initiative 2 1 *4 (50,000 signatures)

(c.) Laws passed by the Assembly 14 6 20 (referendum demanded by 30,000).

Total 17 13 31

* One measure still pending.

Making allowances for cases where more than one question has been submitted at the same time, there have been twenty-four popular votes in twenty years. In addition, most of the cantons have their own local referenda; in Zurich, for example, in these twenty years, more than one hundred other questions have been placed before the sovereign people. These numbers are large in themselves, but surprising in proportion to the total legislation. Out of 158 general acts passed by the federal Assembly from 1874 to 1892, 27 were subjected to the referendum; that is, about one-sixth are reviewed and about one-tenth are reversed. Constitutional amendments usually get through sooner or Inter, but more than two-thirds of the statutes attacked are annulled. To apply the system on such a scale in any State of our Union is plainly impossible; thirty-nine–fortieths of the statute-book must still rest, as now, on the character of the legislators. Nevertheless it may be worth while to excise the other fortieth, if experience shows that the people are more interested and wiser than their representatives, when a question is put plainly and simply before them. I must own to disappointment over the use made by the Swiss of their envied opportunity. On the twenty referenda between 1879 and 1891 the average vote in proportion to the voters was but 58.5 per cent.; in only one case did it reach 67 per cent.; and in one case—the patent law of 1887—it fell to about 40 per cent. in the Confederation, and to 9 per cent. in Canton Schwyz. On the serious and dangerous question of recognizing the right to employment, this present year, only about 56 per cent. participated. In Zurich there is a compulsory voting law, of which the curious result is that on both national and cantonal referenda many thousands of blank ballots are cast. The result of the small vote is that laws, duly considered by the national legislature and passed by considerable majorities, are often reversed by a minority of the voters. The most probable reason for this apathy is that there are too many elections—in some cantons as many as fifteen a year. Whatever the cause, Swiss voters are less interested in referenda than Swiss legislators in framing bills. … 'I am a friend of the referendum,' says an eminent member of the Executive Council, 'but I do not like the initiative.' The experience of Switzerland seems to show four things: that the Swiss voters are not deeply interested in the referendum; that the referendum is as likely to kill good as bad measures; that the initiative is more likely to suggest bad measures than good; that the referendum leads straight to the initiative. The referendum in the United States would therefore probably be an attempt to govern great communities by permanent town meeting."

_Prof. A. B. Hart, Vox Populi in Switzerland (Nation, September 13, 1894)._

ALSO IN: _A. L. Lowell, The Referendum in Switzerland and America (Atlantic Monthly, April, 1894)._

_E. P. Oberholtzer, The Referendum in America._

REFORM, Parliamentary.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1830; 1830-1832; 1865-1868, and 1884-1885.

REFORMATION: Start--------

REFORMATION: Bohemia.

See BOHEMIA: A. D. 1405-1415; and 1419-1434, and after.

REFORMATION: England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1527-1534, to 1558-1588.

REFORMATION: France.

See PAPACY; A. D. 1521-1535; and FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547, and after.

REFORMATION: Germany.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517, 1517, 1517-1521, 1521-1522, 1522-1525, 1525-1529, 1530-1531, 1537-1563; also GERMANY: A. D. 1517-1523, 1530-1532, 1533-1546, 1546-1552, 1552-1561; also PALATINATE OF THE RHINE; A. D. 1518-1572.

REFORMATION: Hungary.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1526-1567

REFORMATION: Ireland; its failure.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.

REFORMATION: Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1521-1555, and after.

REFORMATION: Piedmont.

See SAVOY AND PIEDMONT: A. D. 1559-1580.

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REFORMATION: Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1547-1557; 1557; 1558-1560; and 1561-1568.

REFORMATION: Sweden and Denmark.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1397-1527.

REFORMATION: Switzerland.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1519-1524; SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1528-1531; and GENEVA: A. D. 1504-1535; and 1536-1564.

REFORMATION: End--------

REFORMATION, The Counter.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1534-1540; 1537-1563; 1555-1603.

REGED.

See CUMBRIA.

REGENSBURG.

See RATISBON-under which name the town is more commonly known to English readers.

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY, New York.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: AMERICA: A. D. 1746-1787.

REGICIDES AT NEW HAVEN, The.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1660-1664.

REGILLUS, Lake, Battle at.

In the legendary history of the Roman kings it is told that the last of the Tarquins strove long to regain his throne, with the help of the Etruscans first, afterwards of the Latins, and that the question was finally settled in a great battle fought with the latter, near the Lake Regillus, in which the Romans were helped by Castor and Pollux, in person.

_Livy, History, II. 19._

REGNI, The.

See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

REGULATORS OF NORTH CAROLINA.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1766-1771.

REGULBIUM.

One of the fortified Roman towns in Britain on the Kentish coast,—modern Reculver.

_T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, chapter 5._

See ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.

REGULUS, and the Carthaginians.

See PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST.

REICHSTAG.

See DIET, THE GERMANIC.

REIGN OF TERROR, The.

See TERROR.

REIS EFFENDI.

See SUBLIME PORTE.

REMI, The.

See BELGÆ.

REMO, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ANDESIANS.

REMONSTRANTS AND COUNTER-REMONSTRANTS.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1603-1619.

REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1833-1836.

RENAISSANCE, The.

"The word Renaissance has of late years received a more extended significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent—the Revival of Learning. We use it to denote the whole transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it is possible to assign certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say—between this year and that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended. Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and from summer. … By the term Renaissance, or new birth, is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort of humanity for which at length the time had come, and in the onward progress of which we still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of arts, or of sciences, or of literature, or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the modern world. … The reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy possessed a language, a favourable climate, political freedom, and commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations were still semi-barbarous. … It was … at the beginning of the 14th century, when Italy had lost indeed the heroic spirit which we admire in her Communes of the 13th, but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last began. … The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the world and the discovery of man. Under these two formulæ may be classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The discovery of the world divides itself into two branches—the exploration of the globe, and the systematic exploration of the universe which is in fact what we call Science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain statement. … In the discovery of man … it is possible to trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations, illustrated by Pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations, illustrated by Biblical antiquity: these are the two regions, at first apparently distinct, afterwards found to be interpenetrative, which the critical and inquisitive genius of the Renaissance opened for investigation. In the former of these regions we find two agencies at work, art and scholarship. … Through the instrumentality of art, and of all the ideas which art introduced into daily life, the Renaissance wrought for the modern world a real resurrection of the body. … It was scholarship which revealed to men the wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human thought, the value of human speculation, the importance of human life regarded as a thing apart from religious rules and dogmas. … The Renaissance opened to the whole reading public the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. At the same time the Bible in its original tongues was rediscovered. Mines of Oriental learning were laid bare for the students of the Jewish and Arabic traditions. What we may call the Aryan and the Semitic revelations were for the first time subjected to something like a critical comparison. With unerring instinct the men of the Renaissance named the voluminous subject-matter of scholarship 'Litteræ Humaniores,' the more human literature, the literature that humanises [hence the term Humanism]. … Not only did scholarship restore the classics and encourage literary criticism; it also restored the text of the Bible, and encouraged theological criticism. In the wake of theological freedom followed a free philosophy, no longer subject to the dogmas of the Church. … On the one side Descartes, and Bacon, and Spinoza, and Locke are sons of the Renaissance, champions of new-found philosophical freedom; on the other side, Luther is a son of the Renaissance, the herald of new-found religious freedom."

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Age of the Despots, chapter 1._

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