Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Athens-BOI

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menced against him for some assertions in one of his
speeches, but he escaped with nothing more severe than a
censure by the Council of Advocates. By this time he
had a very large business as advocate, and was engaged on
behalf of journalists in many press prosecutions. He stood
forward with a noble resolution to maintain the freedom
of the press, and severely censured the rigorous measures
of the police department. In 1830, not long before the
fall of Charles X., Berryer was elected a member of the
Chamber of Deputies. He appeared there as the cham¬
pion of the king, and encouraged him in his tyrannical
course. After the Revolution of July, when the Legitimists
withdrew in a body, Berryer alone retained his seat as
deputy; and though avowedly the friend of the deposed
king, he took an independent course, not making himself
an unscrupulous partizan, but guided in his advocacy or
his opposition by reason and prudence. He was one of
the influential men who resisted, but unsuccessfully, the
abolition of the hereditary peerage. He advocated trial
by jury in press prosecutions, the extension of municipal
franchises, and other liberal measures. In May 1832 he
hastened from Paris to see the duchess of Berri on her
landing in the south of France for the purpose of organizing
an insurrection in favour of her son, the duke of Bor¬
deaux, since known as the count of Chambord. Berryer
attempted to turn her from her purpose; and failing in
this he set out for Switzerland. He was, however,
arrested, imprisoned, and brought to trial as one of the in¬
surgents. He was immediately acquitted. In the follow¬
ing year he pleaded for the liberation of the countess;
made a memorable speech in defence of Chateaubriand, who
was prosecuted for his violent attacks on the Government
of Louis Philippe; and undertook the defence of several
Legitimist journalists. In 1834 he defended two deputies
in a Government prosecution for libel, and the same year
opposed the passing of a new rigorous law against political
and other associations. Among the more noteworthy
events of his subsequent career were his defence of Louis
Napoleon after the ridiculous affair of Boulogne, in 1840,
and a visit to England in December 1843, for the purpose
of formally acknowledging the pretender, the duke of
Bordeaux, then living in London, as Henry V., and lawful
king of France. This proceeding brought on him the cen¬
sure of M. Guizot, then first minister of Louis Philippe.
Berryer was an active member of the National Assembly
convoked after the Revolution of February 1848, again
visited the pretender, then at Wiesbaden, and still fought
in the old cause. This long parliamentary career was
closed by a courageous protest against the coup detect of
December 2, 1851. After a lapse of twelve years, however,
he appeared once more in his forsaken field as a deputy to
the Corps L^gislatif. Meanwhile he had been a diligent
promoter of the much talked of fusion of the two branches
of the Bourbon family, and had distinguished himself at
the bar by great speeches on the trial of Montalembert in
1858, and in the civil proceedings set on foot by M.
Patterson against Jerome Bonaparte in 1860. Berryer
was elected member of the French Academy in 1854. A
visit paid by this famous orator to Lord Brougham in 1865
was made the occasion of a banquet given in his honour
by the benchers of the Temple and of Lincoln’s Inn. In
November 1868 he was removed by his own desire from
Paris to his country seat at Augerville, and there he died
on the 29th of the same month.
BERTHOLLET, Claude Louis, one of the most dis¬
tinguished chemists of the French school, was born at
Talloire, near Annecy, in Savoy, in 1748. He studied
first at Chambery, and subsequently at Turin, where he
took his degree as a physician. In 1772 he settled at
Paris, and soon became the medical attendant of Philip,
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duke of Orleans. By the publication of a volume of
chemical essays, he gained such reputation that he was
admitted in 1781 into the Academic des Sciences. He was
appointed Government superintendent of the establishment
for the improvement of dyeing; and in 1791 he published
his essay Sur la Teinture, a work that first systematized
and chemically explained the principles of the art. It was
translated into English by Dr William Hamilton, 1794.
Berthollet early adopted the chemical views of Lavoisier,
and took part with him in the formation of a new system
of chemical nomenclature. He confirmed and extended
the discoveries of Priestley on ammonia, discovered ful¬
minating silver, and greatly extended our knowledge of
the dephlogisticated marine acid of Scheele, for which the
name of oxymuriatic acid was then proposed, and which is
now termed chlorine. It was he who in 1785 first proposed
to apply it to bleaching. He discovered the remarkable
salt now called chlorate of potash; and we owe to him
also an excellent essay on the chemical constitution of
soaps. Berthollet’s contributions to chemistry are scattered
through the pages of the Journal de Physique, Annales de
Chimie, M'emoires de Vlnstitut, and Memoires d'Arceuil.
At the commencement of the French Revolution the
scarcity of saltpetre for the manufacture of gunpowder was
much felt; and Berthollet was placed at the head of a
commission for improving the processes for obtaining and
purifying this important product within the territory of
France. Soon afterwards we find him one of a commission
for improving the processes in the smelting of iron, and con¬
verting it into steel. In 1792 he was appointed a director
of the mint, and in 1794 he became a member of the
committee on agriculture and the arts; while he filled the
office of teacher of chemistry in the Polytechnic and Normal
Schools of Paris, and took an active part in the remodel¬
ling of the National Institute in 1795. In the following
year Berthollet and Monge were appointed heads of a
commission to select in Italy the choicest specimens of
ancient and modern art, for the national galleries of Paris.
In 1798 Berthollet accompanied General Bonaparte to
Egypt. On the overthrow of the Directory he was made
a senator and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour.
Under the empire he was created a count, and he sat
as a peer on the restoration of the Bourbons. His last
work was his curious essay on Chemical Statics (1803), in
which he controverted the views of Bergman. Berthollet
was a man of great modesty and unostentatious manners.
For some years he lived retired at Arcueil, especially after
the misconduct and suicide of his only son. He died at
Paris of a painful malady bravely borne, November 6,
1822.
BERTHOUD, Ferdinand, a celebrated Swiss chrono¬
meter-maker, was born in Neufchatel. The date of his
birth is variously given as 1725, 1727, and 1729. His
father was an architect, and the son was intended for the
church; but, showing a taste for mechanics, he was placed
under an experienced workman to be instructed in clock
and watch making, and was afterwards sent to Paris to
improve himself in the knowledge and practice of the
art. He settled in Paris in 1745, and applied himself to
the making of chronometers, an art which was then in its
infancy. He soon attained distinction for the excellence
of his workmanship and the accuracy of his chronometers.
Fleurieu and Borda, by order of the French Government,
made a voyage from La Rochelle to the West Indies and
Newfoundland for the purpose of testing them, and they
found that they gave the longitude with an error of only a
quarter of a degree, after a cruise of six weeks. Satisfac¬
tory results were also obtained in the expedition of Verdun,
Borda, and Pingr6, which was appointed to try these
chronometers and those of his only rival, Le Roy. Sully,
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