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TORN OUT AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING,) LIES HERE, FOOD FOR WORMS. BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST, FOR IT WILL APPEAR ONCE MORE IN A NEW AND MORE ELEGANT EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED BY

When the news of his death reached the National Assembly of France, Mirabeau rose and said:--

"Franklin is dead!

"The genius, which gave freedom to America, and scattered torrents of light upon Europe, is returned to the bosom of the Divinity.

"The sage, whom two worlds claim; the man, disputed by the history of the sciences and the history of empires, holds, most undoubtedly, an elevated rank among the human species.

"Political cabinets have but too long notified the death of those who were never great but in their funeral orations; the etiquette of courts has but too long sanctioned hypocritical grief. Nations ought only to mourn for their benefactors; the representatives of free men ought never to recommend any other than the heroes of humanity to their homage.

"The Congress hath ordered a general mourning for one month throughout the fourteen confederated States on account of the death of Franklin; and America hath thus acquitted her tribute of admiration in behalf of one of the fathers of her constitution.

"Would it not be worthy of you, fellow-legislators, to unite yourselves in this religious act, to participate in this homage rendered in the face of the universe to the rights of man, and to the philosopher who has so eminently propagated the conquest of them throughout the world?

"Antiquity would have elevated altars to that mortal who, for the advantage of the human race, embracing both heaven and earth in his vast and extensive mind, knew how to subdue thunder and tyranny.

"Enlightened and free, Europe at least owes its remembrance and its regret to one of the greatest men who has ever served the cause of philosophy and liberty.

"I propose, therefore, that a decree do now pass, enacting that the National Assembly shall wear mourning during three days for Benjamin Franklin."

HENRY CAVENDISH.

It would not be easy to mention two men between whom there was a greater contrast, both in respect of their characters and lives, than that which existed between Benjamin Franklin and the Honourable Henry Cavendish. The former of humble birth, but of great public spirit, possessed social qualities which were on a par with his scientific attainments, and toward the close of his life was more renowned as a statesman than as a philosopher; the latter, a member of one of the most noble families of England, and possessed of wealth far exceeding his own capacity for the enjoyment of it, was known to very few, was intimate with no one, and devoted himself to scientific pursuits rather for the sake of the satisfaction which his results afforded to himself than from any hope that they might be useful to mankind, or from any desire to secure a reputation by making them known, and passed a long life, the most uneventful that can be imagined.

During his father's life, or, at any rate, till within a few years of its close, Henry Cavendish appears to have enjoyed a very narrow income. He frequently dined at the Royal Society Club, and on these occasions would come provided with the five shillings to be paid for the dinner, but no more. Upon his father's death, which took place in 1783, when Henry was more than fifty years of age, his circumstances were very much changed, but it seems that the greater part of his wealth was left him by an uncle who had been an Indian officer, and this legacy may have come into his possession before his father's death. He appears to have been very liberal when it was suggested to him that his assistance would be of service, but it never occurred to him to offer a contribution towards any scientific or public undertaking, and though at the time of his death he is said to have had more money in the funds than any other person in the country, besides a balance of ?50,000 on his current account at his bank, and various other property, he bequeathed none to scientific societies or similar institutions. Throughout the latter part of his life he seems to have been quite careless about money, and to have been satisfied if he could only avoid the trouble of attending to his own financial affairs. Hence he would allow enormous sums to accumulate at his banker's, and on one occasion, being present at a christening, and hearing that it was customary for guests to give something to the nurse, he drew from his pocket a handful of guineas, and handed them to her without counting them. After his father's death, Cavendish resided in his own house on Clapham Common. Here a few rooms at the top of the house were made habitable; the rest were filled with apparatus of all descriptions, among which the most numerous examples were thermometers of every kind. He seldom entertained visitors, but when, on rare occasions, a guest had to be entertained, the repast invariably consisted of a leg of mutton. His extreme shyness caused him to dislike all kinds of company, and he had a special aversion to being addressed by a stranger. On one occasion, at a reception given by Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Ingenhousz introduced to him a distinguished Austrian philosopher, who professed that his main object in coming to England was to obtain a sight of so distinguished a man. Cavendish listened with his gaze fixed on the floor; then, observing a gap in the crowd, he made a rush to the door, nor did he pause till he had reached his carriage. His aversion to women was still greater; his orders for the day he would write out and leave at a stated time on the hall-table, where his house-keeper, at another stated time, would find them. Servants were allowed access to the portion of the house which he occupied only at fixed times when he was away; and having once met a servant on the stairs, a back staircase was immediately erected. His regular walk was down Nightingale Lane to Wandsworth Common, and home by another route. On one occasion, as he was crossing a stile, he saw that he was watched, and thenceforth he took his walks in the evening, but never along the same road. There were only two occasions on which it is recorded that scientific men were admitted to Cavendish's laboratory. The first was in 1775, when Hunter, Priestley, Romayne, Lane, and Nairne were invited to see the experiments with the artificial torpedo. The second was when his experiment on the formation of nitric acid by electric sparks in air had been unsuccessfully attempted by Van Marum, Lavoisier, and Monge, and he "thought it right to take some measures to authenticate the truth of it."

Besides his house at Clapham, Cavendish occupied a house in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum, while a "mansion" in Dean Street, Soho, was set apart as a library. To this library a number of persons were admitted, who could take out the books on depositing a receipt for them. Cavendish was perfectly methodical in all his actions, and whenever he borrowed one of his own books he duly left the receipt in its place. The only relief to his solitary life was afforded by the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he was elected a Fellow in 1760; by the occasional receptions at the residence of Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S.; and by his not infrequent dinners with the Royal Society Club at the Crown and Anchor; and he may sometimes have joined the social gatherings of another club which met at the Cat and Bagpipes, in Downing Street. It was to his visits to the Royal Society Club that we are indebted for the only portrait that exists of him. Alexander, the draughtsman to the China Embassy, was bent upon procuring a portrait of Cavendish, and induced a friend to invite him to the club dinner, "where he could easily succeed, by taking his seat near the end of the table, from whence he could sketch the peculiar great-coat of a greyish-green colour, and the remarkable three-cornered hat, invariably worn by Cavendish, and obtain, unobserved, such an outline of the face as, when inserted between the hat and coat, would make, he was quite sure, a full-length portrait that no one could mistake. It was so contrived, and every one who saw it recognized it at once." Another incident is recorded of the Royal Society Club which, perhaps, reflects as much credit upon Cavendish as upon the Society. "One evening we observed a very pretty girl looking out from an upper window on the opposite side of the street, watching the philosophers at dinner. She attracted notice, and one by one we got up and mustered round the window to admire the fair one. Cavendish, who thought we were looking at the moon, hustled up to us in his odd way, and when he saw the real object of our study, turned away with intense disgust, and grunted out, 'Pshaw!'"

In the spring and autumn of 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1793, Cavendish made tours through most of the southern, midland, and western counties, and reached as far north as Whitby. The most memorable of these journeys was that undertaken in 1785, since during its course he visited James Watt at the Soho Works, and manifested great interest in Watt's inventions. This was only two years after the great controversy as to the discovery of the composition of water, but the meeting of the philosophers was of the most friendly character. On all these journeys considerable attention was paid to the geology of the country.

The accounts of Cavendish's death differ to some extent in their details, but otherwise are very similar. It appears that he requested his servant, "as he had something particular to engage his thoughts, and did not wish to be disturbed by any one," to leave him and not to return until a certain hour. When the servant came back, at the time appointed, he found his master dead. This was on February 24, 1810, after an illness of only two or three days.

Cavendish adopted Franklin's theory of electricity, treating it as an incompressible fluid pervading all bodies, and admitting of displacement only in a closed circuit, unless, indeed, the disturbance might extend to infinity. This fluid he supposed, with Franklin, to be self-repulsive, but to attract matter, while matter devoid of electricity, and therefore in the highest possible condition of negative electrification, he supposed, with AEpinus, to be, like electricity, self-repulsive. One of Cavendish's earliest experiments was the determination of the precise law according to which electrical action varies with the distance between the charges. Franklin had shown that there was no sensible amount of electricity on the interior of a deep hollow vessel, however its exterior surface might be charged. Cavendish mounted a sphere of 12?1 inches in diameter, so that it could be completely enclosed within two hemispheres of 13?3 inches diameter, which were carried by hinged frames, and could thus be allowed to close completely over the sphere, or opened and removed altogether from its neighbourhood. A piece of wire passed through one of the hemispheres so as to touch the inner sphere, but could be removed at pleasure by means of a silk string. The hemispheres being closed with the globe within them, and the wire inserted so as to make communication between the inner and outer spheres, the whole apparatus was electrified by a wire from a charged Leyden jar. This wire was then removed by means of a silken string and "the same motion of the hand which drew away the wire by which the hemispheres were electrified, immediately after that was done, drew out the wire which made the communication between the hemispheres and the inner globe, and, immediately after that was drawn out, separated the hemispheres from each other," and applied the electrometer to the inner globe. "It was also contrived so that the electricity of the hemispheres and of the wire by which they were electrified was discharged as soon as they were separated from each other.... The inner globe and hemispheres were also both coated with tinfoil to make them the more perfect conductors of electricity." The electrometer consisted of a pair of pith-balls; but, though the experiment was several times repeated, they shewed no signs of electrification. From this it was clear that, as there could have been no communication between the globe and hemispheres when the connecting wire was withdrawn, there must have been no electrification on the globe while the hemispheres, though themselves highly charged, surrounded it. To test the delicacy of the experiment, a charge was given to the globe less than one-sixtieth of that previously given to the hemispheres, and this was readily detected by the electrometer. From the result Cavendish inferred that there is no reason to think the inner globe to be at all charged during the experiment. "Hence it follows that the electric attraction and repulsion must be inversely as the square of the distance, and that, when a globe is positively electrified, the redundant fluid in it is lodged entirely on its surface." This conclusion Cavendish showed to be a mathematical consequence of the absence of electrification from the inner sphere; for, were the law otherwise, the inner sphere must be electrified positively or negatively, according as the inverse power were higher or lower than the second, and that the accuracy of the experiment showed the law must lie between the 2-1/50 and the 1-49/50 power of the distance. With his torsion-balance, Coulomb obtained the same law, but Cavendish's method is much easier to carry out, and admits of much greater accuracy than that of Coulomb. Cavendish's experiment was repeated by Dr. MacAlister, under the superintendence of Clerk Maxwell, in the Cavendish Laboratory, the absence of electrification being tested by Thomson's quadrant electrometer, and it was shown that the deviation from the law of inverse squares could not exceed one in 72,000.

His paper on the torpedo was read before the Royal Society in 1776. The experiments were undertaken in order to determine whether the phenomena observed by Mr. John Walsh in connection with the torpedo could be so far imitated by electricity as to justify the conclusion that the shock of the torpedo is an electric discharge. For this purpose Cavendish constructed a wooden torpedo with electrical organs, consisting of a pewter plate on each side, covered with leather. The plates were connected with a charged Leyden battery, by means of wires carried in glass tubes, and thus the battery was discharged through the water in which the torpedo was immersed, and which was rendered of about the same degree of saltness as the sea. Cavendish compared the shock given through the water with that given by the model fish in air, and found the difference much greater than in the case of the real torpedo, but, by increasing the capacity of the battery and diminishing the potential to which it was charged, this discrepancy was diminished, and it was found to be very much less in the case of a second model having a leather, instead of a wooden, body, so that the body of the fish itself offered less resistance to the discharge. One of the chief difficulties lay in the fact that no one had succeeded in obtaining a visible spark from the discharge of the torpedo, which will not pass through the smallest thickness of air. Cavendish accounted for this by supposing the quantity of electricity discharged to be very great, and its potential very small, and showed that the more the charge was increased and the potential diminished in his model, the more closely did it imitate the behaviour of the torpedo.

But the main interest in this paper lies in the indications which it gives that Cavendish was aware of the laws which regulate the flow of electricity through multiple conductors, and in the comparisons of electrical resistance which are introduced. It had been formerly believed that electricity would always select the shortest or best path, and that the whole of the discharge would take place along that route. Franklin seems to have assumed this in the passage quoted respecting the discharge of the lightning down the uninsulated conductor instead of through the building. The truth, however, is that, when a number of paths are open to an electric current, it will divide itself between them in the inverse ratios of their resistances, or directly as their conductivities, so that, however great the resistance of one of the conductors, some portion, though it may be a very small fraction, of the discharge will take place through it. But this law does not hold in the case of insulators like the air, through which electricity passes only by disruptive discharges, and which completely prevent its passage unless the electro-motive force is sufficient to break through their substance. In the case of the lightning-conductor, however, its resistance is generally so small in comparison with that of the building it is used to protect, that Franklin's conclusion is practically correct.

About 1760 very extraordinary beliefs were current respecting the excessive degree of cold and the rapid variations of temperature which take place in the Arctic regions. Braun, of St. Petersburg, had observed that mercury, in solidifying in the tube of a thermometer, descended through more than four hundred degrees, and it was assumed that the melting point of mercury was about 400? below Fahrenheit's zero. It then became necessary to suppose that, while the mercury in a thermometer was freezing, there was a variation of temperature to this extent, and thus these wild reports became current. Cavendish and Black independently explained the anomaly, and each suggested the same method of determining the freezing point of mercury. Cavendish, however, had a piece of apparatus prepared which he sent to Governor Hutchins, at Albany Fort, Hudson's Bay. It consisted of an outer vessel, in which the mercury was allowed to freeze, but not throughout the whole of its mass, and the bulb of the thermometer was kept immersed in the liquid metal in the interior. In this way the mercury in the thermometer was cooled down to the melting point without commencing to solidify, and the temperature was found to be between 39? and 40? below Fahrenheit's zero.

As a chemist, Cavendish is renowned for his eudiometric analysis, whereby he determined the percentage of oxygen in air with an amount of accuracy that would be creditable to a chemist of to-day, and for his discovery of the composition of water; but to the world generally he is perhaps best known by the famous "Cavendish experiment" for determining the mass, and hence the mean density, of the earth. The apparatus was originally suggested by the Rev. John Michell, but was first employed by Cavendish, who thereby determined the mean density of the earth to be 5?45. At the request of the Astronomical Society, the investigation was afterwards taken up by Mr. Francis Baily, who, after much labour, discovered that the principal sources of error were due to radiation of heat, and consequent variation of temperature of parts of the apparatus during the experiment. To minimize the radiation and absorption, he gilded the principal portions of the apparatus and the interior of the case in which it was contained, and his results then became consistent. Cavendish had himself suggested the cause of the discrepancy, but the gilding was proposed by Principal Forbes. As a mean of many hundreds of experiments, Mr. Baily deduced for the mean density of the earth 5?6604. Cavendish's apparatus was a delicate torsion-balance, whereby two leaden balls were supported upon the extremities of a wooden rod, which was suspended by a thin wire. These balls were about two inches in diameter, and the experiment consisted in determining the deflection of the wooden arm by the attraction of two large solid spheres of lead brought very near the balls, and so situated that the attraction of each tended to twist the rod horizontally in the same direction. The force required to produce the observed deflection was calculated from the time of swing of the rod and balls when left to themselves. The force exerted upon either ball by a known spherical mass of metal, with its centre at a known distance, being thus determined, it was easy to calculate what mass, having its centre at the centre of the earth, would be required to attract one of the balls with the force with which the earth was known to attract it.

Dr. Wilson sums up Cavendish's view of life in these words:--

COUNT RUMFORD.

Young Thompson appears to have received a sound elementary education at the village school. From some remarks made by him in after years to his friend, M. Pictet, it has been inferred that he did not receive very kind treatment at the hands of his stepfather. It is clear, however, that the most affectionate relationships always obtained between him and his mother, and the latter appears to have had no cause to complain of the treatment she received from her second husband, with whom she lived to a very good old age. That Thompson in early boyhood developed some tendencies which did not meet with ready sympathy from those around him is, however, equally clear. His guardians destined him for a farmer, like his ancestors, and his experiments in mechanics, which took up much of his playtime and in all probability not a few hours which should have been devoted to less interesting work, were not regarded as tending towards the end in view. Hence he was probably looked upon as "indolent, flighty, and unpromising." Later on he was sent to school in Byfield, and in 1764, at the age of eleven, "was put under the tuition of Mr. Hill, an able teacher in Medford, a town adjoining Woburn." At length, his friends having given up all hope of ever making a farmer of the boy, he was apprenticed, on October 14, 1766, to Mr. John Appleton, of Salem, an importer of British goods and dealer in miscellaneous articles. He lived with his master, and seems to have done his work in a manner satisfactory on the whole, but there is evidence that he would, during business hours, occupy his spare moments with mechanical contrivances, which he used to hide under the counter, and even ventured occasionally to practise on his fiddle in the store. He stayed with Mr. Appleton till the autumn of 1769, and during this time he attended the ministry of the Rev. Thomas Barnard. This gentleman seems to have taken great interest in the boy, and to have taught him mathematics, so that at the age of fifteen he was able "to calculate an eclipse," and was delighted when the eclipse commenced within six seconds of his calculated time. Thompson, while an apprentice, showed a great faculty for drawing and designing, and used to carve devices for his friends on the handles of their knives or other implements. It was at this time he constructed an elaborate contrivance to produce perpetual motion, and on one evening it is said that he walked from Salem to Woburn, to show it to Loammi Baldwin, who was nine years older than himself, but his most intimate friend. Like many other devices designed for the same purpose, it had only one fault--it wouldn't go.

It was in 1769, while preparing fireworks for the illumination on the abolition of the Stamp Act, that Thompson was injured by a severe explosion as he was grinding his materials in a mortar. His note-book contained many directions for the manufacture of fireworks.

During Thompson's apprenticeship those questions were agitating the public mind which finally had their outcome in the War of Independence. Mr. Appleton was one of those who signed the agreement refusing to import British goods, and this so affected the trade of the store that he had no further need for the apprentice. Hence it was that, in the autumn of 1769, Thompson went to Boston as apprentice-clerk in a dry goods store, but had to leave after a few months, through the depression in trade consequent on the non-importation agreement.

Woburn, August 16, 1769.

Mr. Loammi Baldwin,

SIR,

Please to inform me in what manner fire operates upon clay to change the colour from the natural colour to red, and from red to black, etc.; and how it operates upon silver to change it to blue.

I am your most humble and obedient servant,

BENJAMIN THOMPSON

God save the king.

Woburn, August, 1769.

Mr. Loammi Baldwin,

SIR,

Please to give the nature, essence, beginning of existence, and rise of the wind in general, with the whole theory thereof, so as to be able to answer all questions relative thereto.

Yours,

BENJAMIN THOMPSON.

This was an extensive request, and the reply was probably not altogether satisfactory to the inquirer. On the back of the above letter was written:--

Woburn, August 15, 1769.

SIR,

There was but few beings created before the airy element was; so it has not been transmitted down to us how the Great Creator formed the matter thereof. So I shall leave it till I am asked only the Natural Cause, and why it blows so many ways in so short a time as it does.

Thompson appears now to have given up business and commenced the study of medicine under Dr. Hay, to whom for a year and a half he paid forty shillings per week for his board. During this time he paid part of his expenses by keeping school for a few weeks consecutively at Wilmington and Bradford, and another part was paid by cords of wood. His business capacity, as well as his dislike of ordinary work, is shown by some arrangements which he made for getting wood cut and corded at prices considerably below those at which he was himself paid for it. His note-book made at this time contains, besides business entries, several receipts for medicines and descriptions of surgical operations, in some cases illustrated by sketches. In his work he was methodical and industrious, and the life of a medical student suited his genius far better than that of a clerk in a dry goods store. When teaching at Wilmington he seems to have attracted attention by the gymnastic performances with which he exercised both himself and his pupils. While a student with Dr. Hay, he attended some of the scientific lectures at Harvard College. The pleasure and profit which he derived from these lectures are sufficiently indicated by the fact that forty years afterwards he made the college his residuary legatee.

Thompson won such a reputation as a teacher during the few weeks that he taught in village schools in the course of his student life, that he received an invitation from Colonel Timothy Walker to come to Concord, in New Hampshire, on the Merrimack, and accept a permanent situation in a higher grade school. It was from this place that he afterwards took his title, for the early name of Concord was Rumford, and the name was changed to Concord "to mark the restoration of harmony after a long period of agitation as to its provincial jurisdiction and its relation with its neighbours."

The young schoolmaster of Concord was soon on very intimate terms with the minister of the town, the Rev. Timothy Walker, a man who was so much respected that he had thrice been sent to Britain on diplomatic business. Mr. Walker's daughter had been married to Colonel Rolfe, a man of wealth and position, and, with the exception of the Governor of Portsmouth, said to have been the first man in New Hampshire to drive a curricle and pair of horses. Thompson soon married--or, as he told Pictet, was married to--the young widow. Whatever may have been implied by this other way of putting the question, there is no doubt that Thompson always had the greatest possible respect for his father-in-law, and ever remembered him with sincere gratitude. The fortunes of the gallant young schoolmaster now appeared to be made; when the engagement was settled, the carriage and pair were brought out again, and the youth was attired in his favourite scarlet as a man of wealth and position. In this garb he drove to Woburn, and introduced his future wife to his mother, whose surprise can be better imagined than described.

The exact date of Thompson's marriage is not known. His daughter Sarah, afterwards Countess of Rumford, was born in the Rolfe mansion on October 18, 1774. It is needless to say that the engagement to Mrs. Rolfe terminated the teaching at the school.

Thompson now had a large estate and ample means to improve it. He gave much attention to gardening, and sent to England for garden seeds. In some way he attracted the attention of Governor Wentworth, the Governor of Portsmouth, who invited him to the Government House, and was so taken with the former apprentice, medical student, and schoolmaster, that he gave him at once a commission as major. This appointment was the cause of the misfortunes which almost immediately began to overtake him. He incurred the jealousy of his fellow-officers, over whom he had been appointed, and he failed to secure the confidence of the civilians of Concord.

Public feeling in New England was very much excited against the mother country. Representations were sent to the British Government, but appeared to be treated with contempt. Very many of these documents were found, after the war was over, unopened in drawers at the Colonial Office. British ministers appeared to know little about the needs of their American dependencies, and relations rapidly became more and more strained. The patriots appointed committees to watch over the patriotism of their fellow-townsmen, and thus the freedom of a free country was inaugurated by an institution bordering in character very closely upon the Inquisition; and the Committees of Correspondence and Safety accepted evidence from every spy or eavesdropper who came before them with reports of suspected persons. Thompson was accused of "Toryism;" the only definite charge against him being that he had secured remission of punishment for some deserters from Boston who had for some time worked upon his estate. He was summoned before the Committee of Safety, but refused to make any confession of acts injurious to his country, on the ground that he had nothing to confess. His whole after-life shows that his sympathies were very much on the side of monarchy and centralization, but at this time there appears to have been no evidence that could be brought against him. The populace, however, stormed his house, and he owed his safety to the fact that he had received notice of their intentions, and had made his escape a few hours before. This was in November, 1774. Thompson then took refuge at Woburn, with his mother, but the popular ill feeling troubled him here, so that his life was one of great anxiety.

While at Woburn, his wife and child joined him, and stayed there for some months. At length he was arrested and confined in the town upon suspicion of being inimical to the interests of his country. When he was brought before the Committee of Inquiry, there was no evidence brought against him. Major Thompson then petitioned to be heard before the Committee of the Provincial Congress at Washington. This petition he entrusted to his friend Colonel Baldwin to present. The petition was referred by the committee to Congress, by whom it was deferred for the sake of more pressing business. At length he secured a hearing in his native town, but the result was indecisive, and he did not obtain the public acquittal that he desired, though the Committee of Correspondence found that the "said Thompson" had not "in any one instance shown a disposition unfriendly to American liberty; but that his general behaviour has evinced the direct contrary; and as he has now given us the strongest assurances of his good intentions, we recommend him to the friendship, confidence, and protection of all good people in this and the neighbouring provinces." This decision, however, does not appear to have been made public; and Thompson, on his release, retired to Charlestown, near Boston. When the buildings of Harvard College were converted into barracks, Major Thompson assisted in the transfer of the books to Concord. It is said that, after the battle of Charlestown, Thompson was introduced to General Washington, and would probably have received a commission under him but for the opposition of some of the New Hampshire officers. He afterwards took refuge in Boston, and it does not appear that he ever again saw his wife or her father. His daughter he did not see again till 1796, when she was twenty-two years of age. On March 24, 1776, General Washington obliged the British troops to evacuate Boston; Thompson was the first official bearer of this intelligence to London. Of course, his property at Concord was confiscated to the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and he himself was proscribed in the Alienation Act of New Hampshire, in 1778.

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