FREDERICK-WILLIAM-FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

great joy of his people, in 1813, the allies were soon able to renew hostilities, which were carried on with signal suc ess, until they finally culminated in the great battle of Leipsic, in which the Prussians, under their general, Blücher, earned the greatest share of glory. The Peace of Vienna restored to Prussia almost all her former possessions, while the part taken by the Prussian army under Blücher in gaining the victory of Waterloo, by which Napoleon's power was finally broken, raised the kingdom from its abasement. From that time, F.-W. devoted himself to the improvement of his exhausted states; but although before the French revolution of 1830 Prussia had recovered her old position in regard to material prosperity at home and political consideration abroad, the king adhered too strictly to the old German ideas of absolutism, to grant his people more than the smallest possible amount of political liberty. He had indeed promised to establish a representative constitution for the whole king dom, but this promise he wholly repudiated when reminded of it, and merely established the Landstände, or Provincial Estates, a local institution, devoid of all effective power. His support of the Russian government in its sanguinary methods of crushing revolutionary tendencies in Poland, shewed his absolute tendencies, and his dread of liberal principles. F.-W. was more than once embroiled with the pope, on account of his violation of the concordat. He concluded the great German commercial league known as the Zollverein (see GERMANY), which organised the German customs and duties in accordance with one uniform system. He

died in 1840.

political opinion, was strictly circumscribed. The life of the king was twice attempted; first in 1847 by a dismissed burgomaster, named Tschech; and secondly, in 1850, by an insane discharged soldier of the name of Sefeloge. In 1857, F.-W. was seized with remittent attacks of insanity; and in 1858 he resigned the management of public affairs to his brother and next heir, who acted as regent of the kingdom till his own accession, in 1860, as William L. F.-W. died in 1861. !

FREDERICTON, the political capital of New Brunswick, in British North America, stands on the right bank of the St John, the largest river in the province. It is 56 miles to the north-west of the principal seaport, which bears the name of the stream above mentioned, and it is itself accessible to vessels of 50 tons. The population is about 6000. tion to the public buildings, which F. possess s as the seat of government, it contains the university of King's College, which, independently of other resources, receives from the legislature an annual grant of £2000.

In aldi

FREDERIKSHALD, a fortified seaport of Nor way, in the department (amt) of Smalenen, stands on an inlet called Swinesund, near the Swedish border, about 60 miles south-south-east of Christiania. It is beautifully situated, and is a neat, well-built town, with several handsome edifices. Its harbour is excellent; in it the largest vessels may be safely moored. F. largely exports deals and lobsters. Pop. 7408. To the south-east of the town stands the fortress of Frederiksteen, on a perpendicular rock 400 feet high. This fortress, though often assaulted, has never yet been taken. While laying siege to Frederiksteen, Charles XII. of Sweden was killed, 1718; in commemoration of which event an obelisk was raised, in 1814, upon the spot where he

fell.

FREDERICK-WILLIAM IV., OF PRUSSIA, son of the foregoing, was born October 15, 1795. He had been carefully educated, was fond of the society of learned men, and was a liberal patron of art and literature. He exhibited much of his father's vacillation and instability of purpose; and although FREE BENCH (Francus Bancus). By custom he began his reign (June 7, 1840) by granting minor of certain manors in England, a widow was entitled reforms, and promising radical changes of a liberal to dower out of the lands which were held by her character, he always, on one plea or other, evaded husband in Socage (q. v.). In some places, the widow the fulfillment of these pledges. He was possessed had the whole, or the half, and the like dum sola et by high but vague ideas of the Christian state,' casta vixerit (Co. Litt. 110, b). This right is called and shewed through life a strong tendency to francus bancus, to distinguish it from other dowers, mystic pietism. The one idea to which he adhered for that it cometh freely, without any act of the with constancy was that of a union of all Germany husband's or assignment of the heir (Co. Litt. 94, b). into one great body, of which he offered himself to See DoWER. A widow who has forfeited her free be the guide and head. He encouraged the duchies bench is, by the custom of some manors, permitted of Holstein and Slesvig in their insurrectionary to recover her right. At East and West Enborne, movement, and sent troops to assist them against in the county of Berks, and also in the manor of Denmark; but he soon abandoned their cause, and Chadleworth, in the same county, and at Torr, in being displeased with the revolutionary character of Devon, if the widow commit incontinency, she forthe Frankfurt Diet, refused to accept the imperial feits her estate; yet if she will come into the court crown which it offered him. The conspiracies in of the manor riding backward on a black ram, with Prussian Poland were suppressed with much rigour; his tail in her hand, and will repeat certain verses and the popular movement which followed the (more remarkable for their plainness than their French revolution of 1848, was at first met by delicacy), the steward is bound by the custom to the king with resolute opposition; but when the admit her to her free bench (Cowel's Interpreter, people persisted in demanding the removal of the ed. 1727, fol.). troops from the capital, and enforced their demand by storming the arsenal, and seizing on the palace of the Prince of Prussia (the present king), who was at that time especially obnoxious to the liberals, he was obliged to comply with their wishes. Constituent assemblies were convoked, only to be dissolved when the king recovered his former security of power, and new constitutions were framed and sworn to, and finally modified or withdrawn. After the complete termination of the revolution in Germany, the revolutionary members of the Assembly of 1848 were prosecuted and treated with severity, the obnoxious pietistic' party and the nobility were reinstated in their former influence at court, and the freedom of the press and of religious and

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FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, the name assumed by those who at the Disruption of the Established Church of Scotland, in 1843, withdrew from connection with the state, and formed themselves into a distinct religious community, at the same time claiming to represent the historic church of Scotland, as maintaining the principles for which it has contended since the Reformation.

(It is proper to state that, in accordance with a method adopted in other cases also in this work, the present article is written by a member of the church to which it relates, and is an attempt to exhibit the view of its principles and position generally tak an by those within its own pale.)

There is no difference between the F. C. of S. and

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

the Established Church in the standards which they 1688, an act ratifying the Westminster Confess ou receive; and all the laws of the church existing of Faith itself, and incorporating with the statute and in force prior to the Disruption, are acknow-law of the realm all its statements concerning the ledged as still binding in the one as much as in the province of church-judicatories and that of the other, except in so far as they may since have been civil magistrate, and the bounds of their respective repealed. The same Presbyterian constitution sub- powers. sists in both churches, with the same classes of office-bearers and gradations of church-courts. The F. C., indeed, professes to maintain this constitution and church-government in a perfection impossible in the present circumstances of the Established Church, because of acts of parliament by which the Established Church is trammelled, and interventions of civil authority to which it is liable. And the whole difference between the F. C. and the Established Church relates to the consent and submission of the Established Church to this control of the civil power in things which the F. C. regards as belonging not to the province of civil government, but to the church of Christ and to its office-bearers and courts, as deriving authority from Him; so that the controversy is often described as respecting the Headship of Christ or the Kingdom of Christ. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the doctrine of the headship of Christ over his church, as set forth in the Westminster standards, is fully professed both by the Established Church and by the F. C. of Scotland; the only question between them is, whether or not the existing relations of the Established Church of Scotland to the state are consistent with the due maintenance and practical exhibition of this doctrine. And the question does not directly relate to Voluntaryism (q. v.). Those who constituted the F. C. of S. in 1843, firmly believed that the church might be connected with the state, and receive countenance and support from it, to the advantage of both; whilst they maintained that there must not, for the sake of any apparent benefits flowing from such connection, be any sacrifice of the independence or self-government of the church, as the kingdom of Christ, deriving its existence, organisation, and laws from Him. Nor has any change of opinion on this subject been manifested.

The Westminster Confession of Faith asserts that there is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ;' and that the Lord Jesus, as King and Head of his church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church-officers, distinct from the civil magistrate;' it ascribes to these church-officers the right of meeting in synods or councils,' which it affirms to be an ordinance of God;' and represents the exercise of church-discipline as intrusted to them as well as the ministry of the word and sacraments. It ascribes to the civil magistrate much power and many duties concerning things spiritual, but no power in or over these things themselves. And all this was equally the doctrine of the Church of Scotland before the Westminster Confession was compiled. The support which, in many parts of Europe, princes gave to the cause of the Reformation, and the circumstance that states as well as churches were shaking off the fetters of Rome, led in many cases to a confounding of the civil and the spiritual. The Church of Scotland accomplished its emancipation from Rome, not with the co-operation of the civil power, but in spite of its resistance; and after the Reformation, the Scottish Reformers and their successors were compelled to a closer study of their principles, by the continued attempts of the civil rulers to assume authority over all the internal affairs of the church. But amidst their struggles, the Presbyterians of Scotland so far prevailed as to obtain at different times important acts of parliament in recognition of their principles, and ratification of the liberty of the true kirk;' and finally, after the Revolution of

The rights and privileges of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, guaranteed by the Revolution settlement, were expressly secured by the Treaty of Union, and jealously reserved from the power of the British parliament; yet within five years afterwards, when Jacobite counsels prevailed in the court of Queen Anne, an act was passed for the restoration of patronage in Scotland, with the design of advancing the Jacobite interest by rendering ministers more dependent on the aristocracy, and less strenuous advocates of the most liberal principles then known. This act soon became the cause of strife within the Church of Scotland, and of separation from it; effects which have continually increased to the present day. How the church at first earnestly protested against the act; how this protest gradually became formal, and was at last relinquished; how the church-courts themselves became most active in carrying out the settlement of presentees, notwithstanding all opposition of congregations, are points to which it is enough here to allude. It is important, however, to observe that in all the enforcement of the rights given to patrons by the act of 1712, during the 18th c., and considerable part of the 19th, no direct invasion of the ecclesiastical province took place on the part of civil courts or of the civil power; the presentation by the patron was regarded as conveying a civil right at most to the benefice or emolu. ments only, whilst the church-courts proceeded without restraint in the induction of ministers; and in a few instances it happened that the benefice and the pastoral office were disconnected by the opposite decisions of the civil and ecclesiastical courts. even the forced settlements,' in which the fullest effect was given by the church-courts to the will of patrons, were accomplished according to the ancient form, upon the call of the parishioners, inviting the presentee to be their minister, although the call was a mere form in the words of Dr Chalmers, 'the expressed consent of a few, and these often the mere driblet of a parish.'

And

When the Moderate' party, long dominant in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, became again the minority in 1834, the accession of the Evangelical' party to power was at once signalised by an attempt to restore the call to efficacy. This was done by the famous leto Law, by which it was declared that it is a fundamental law of this church that no pastor shall be intruded on any congregation contrary to the will of the people,' and enacted, in order to give effect to this principle, that a solemn dissent of a majority of male heads of families, members of the vacant congregation, and in full communion with the church, shall be deemed sufficient ground for the rejection of the presentee. The Veto Law thus determined rather how strong an expression of dissent by the parishioners should be requisite to invalidate a call, than how strong an expression of assent should be requisite to give it validity; a circumstance which was afterwards much turned to account in controversy; as if the veto were a new and unconstitutional principle introduced; although it was certainly adopted as the least extreme mode of giving effect to the old principle which the law declared.

The same General Assembly by which the Veto Act was passed, is memorable for the assertion of the constitutional principles and inherent powers of

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

FREE CITIES-FREE PORT.

FREE-LANCES were roving companies of knights and men-at-arms, who, after the Crusades had ceased to give them employment, wandered from state to state, selling their services to any lord who was willing to purchase their aid in the perpetual feuds of the middle ages. They played their most prominent part in Italy, where they were known as Condottieri (q. v.).

In the most

As

FREEMAN AND FREEDMAN. general acceptation of these terms, the first implies one who has inherited the full privileges and immunities of citizenship: the second, one who has been delivered from the restraints of bondage, but who, usually, is not placed in a position of full social or even political equality with him who was born free. Though the words are Teutonic (being composed of frei, free; and mann, a man or human being), the distinction between them depends on the constitution of Roman society. The equivalent for freeman (liber homo), indeed, comprehended all classes of those who were not slaves; but the distinction here pointed out was preserved by the application of the term ingenuus to him who was born free (Gaius, i. 11), and of libertinus to him who, being born in servitude, was emancipated. For the further development of this subject, as regards the classical nations of antiquity, see SLAVERY, CITIZEN. the organisation of Roman society survived the convulsions of the middle ages to a far greater extent in the towns (see MUNICIPIUM, MUNICIPAI GOVERNMENT) than in the landward districts, where the institutions of feudality almost entirely superseded it, it is in the borough and other municipal corporations of this country, and of continental Europe, that we still find freemen, or persons inheriting or acquiring by adoption, purchase, or apprenticeship, the rights of citizenship. See FREEMAN'S ROLL. But the idea of a freeman was by no means peculiar to the Roman or Romanised population of Europe; on the contrary, it belonged to the constitution of society in all the Indo-Germanic nations. Amongst those branches of them commonly known as Teutonic, it was generally based on the possession of some portion of the soil. In Anglo-Saxon England, the freemen were divided into Ceorls (q. v.) and Eorls (q. v.), or Thanes (q. v.). See CITIZEN.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. See PRESS. FREEHOLD, ESTATE OF (liberum tenementum, frank tenement). Real estates in England in the present day are divided into freehold and copy hold. By freehold property is meant all estates which owe no duty or service to any lord but the king. What are now known as estates of freehold were, under the feudal system, denominated frank tenements. They were held by the honourable tenure of Knight's Service (q. v.) and Free Socage (q. v.), and might have been held either of the crown or of a subject. But the statute of Quia emptores having abolished subinfeudation, all freehold estates, except those which have been held of subjects since the time of Edward I., are now held of the crown. A freehold estate must be an estate in fee, in tail, or for life; all other estates in land, as estates for years, are called chattel interests. An estate of freehold could in general be created only by livery of sasine of Feoffment (q. v.). By the doctrine of the feudal law, no person who had an estate of less duration than for his own life or for the life of another man, was considered to be a freeholder; and none but a freeholder was considered to have possession of the land. A tenant for years, &c., was regarded as holding possession for the freeholder. The possession of the freeholder might, however, be defeated by the wrongful act of 76, commonly called the Municipal Corporations' the tenant; for a transfer of possession or livery of Act, which placed the corporate towns, or, as they sasine by the tenant would divest the freeholder, are denominated, the boroughs enumerated in the and leave him to his Right of Entry (q. v.). This schedules A and B-i. e., nearly all the boroughs in effect of a feoffment by wrong was abolished by 8 England and Wales except London-under one uniand 9 Vict. c. 106, s. 4. Before the time of Henry form constitution, a distinction is made (s. 2) between VI., all freeholders were entitled to vote on the the Freeman's Roll and the Burgess Roll. Every election of a knight of the shire, as they still may person who, if the act had not passed, would, as a for the appointment of coroner. But by 8 Hen. VI. burgess or freeman, have enjoyed, or might have c. 7, the famous statute was passed which still in acquired, the right of voting in the election of memgreat measure regulates the county elections, and bers of parliament, is to be entitled to enjoy or enacts that no freeholder shall vote who cannot acquire such right as heretofore. And it is further spend from his freehold at least 40s. a year. By shall make out a list, to be called the Freeman's Roll, enacted (s. 5), that the town-clerk of each borough 2 Will. IV. c. 45, s. 18, this qualification is continued as to all freeholds of inheritance, and to free- of all persons admitted burgesses or freemen, for holders for life in actual occupation, or who have the purpose of such reserved rights as aforesaid, as acquired their lands by marriage, marriage settle-distinguished from the burgesses newly created by ment, devise, or promotion to any benefice or office. FREEHOLD LAND SCHEME had for its object to enable mechanics, artisans, and other persons belonging to the lower classes, to purchase a piece of freehold land, of such yearly value as to

entitle the owner to the elective franchise. Irrespective of any political object, benefit building societies now exist in most of the greater towns of this country, and are believed to be of great service to the labouring-man. See BENEFIT SOCIETIES.

FREEMAN'S ROLL.

By 5 and 6 Will. IV. c.

the act, and entitled to the rights which it newly confers; these last are to be entered on another roll, to be called the Burgess Roll. See BURGESS. FREEMASON, FREEMASONRY. See

MASON; MASONS, FREE.

FREE PORT (Ital. Porto Franco), is a harbour where the ships of all nations may enter on paying a moderate toll, and load and unload. Free ports form dépôts where goods are stored at first without paying duty; these goods may then be either

FREE-SPIRIT-FREE TRADE.

re shipped for export on paying a mere transitduty, or they may pay the usual full customs of the country, and be admitted for home consump tion. Free ports thus facilitate transit trade, and form, as it were, a foreign district within a state.

See WAREHOUSING SYSTEM.

that a

freely cut and dressed by the builder. FREE'STONE, any rock which admits of being In Scotland, it is synonymous with sandstone. It has also been defined as any rock which works equally freely in every direction, having no tendency to split in one direction more than another. In this sense, limestone and even granite have been called freestones.

FREE-TOWN-a name of the same significance

It is situated

FREE TRADE. This term, when used so late as twenty years ago, expressed a disputed proposition, and was the badge of a political party; it now expresses the most important and fundamental truth in political economy. From its simplicity, it affords, to those who expect to make political economy an exact science, the hope that they have obtained at least one axiom. But it has in reality been established as the result of a double experience the one being the failure of all deviations from it, the other the practical success of the principle during the short period in which it has been permitted to regulate the commerce of this country.

FREE-SPIRIT, BRETHREN OF THE, a fanatical sect of the middle ages, which was very generally (though sometimes secretly) diffused over Italy, France, and Germany, between the 13th and 15th centuries. They took their name from the 'freedom of spirit' which they claimed, in virtue of the words as the Liberia of American origin to the south of St Paul (Romans, viii. 2, 14), maintaining that of it-the capital of Sierra Leone, a British settlethe true sons of God are exempt from subjectionment on the west coast of Africa. to the law. They appeared first in Alsace, in the on the left bank of the Sierra Leone river, about early part of the 13th c., and attracted notice by 5 miles from the sea, in lat. 8° 29′ N., and long. 13' their singular attire and their fanatical proceedings, 9 W. Pop. about 16,000. The town is pleasantly traversing the country in troops, accompanied by situated, and its wide streets are prettily ornawomen, with whom, under the name of sisters, they mented with rows of orange, lime, banana, or The temperature, as one may lived in the greatest familiarity. Their doctrine cocoa-nut trees. was a species of pantheistic mysticisin, which they expect from the locality, is tolerably uniform, varyapplied with fearless consistency to all the details ing in opposite seasons between the averages of of the moral obligations. They held, according to 776 F. and 80°-9. Towards the interior, F. is Mosheim, who has collected the original authorities, enclosed by the mountain-chain from which the that all things emanate from God, and will revert colony is designated, a position to which the proback into Him; that rational souls are part of Verbial insalubrity of the climate is partly owing. the Divine Being; that the whole universe is God; The population, exclusive of the authorities and man, by turning his thoughts inward, the garrison, consists almost exclusively of liberated is united inexplicably with the First Cause, and negroes. becomes one with Him; and that those who are so immersed in the vortex of the Deity attain to perfect freedom, and are divested not only of the lusts, but even of the instincts, of nature.' From these principles, they inferred that the free man, thus absorbed in God, is himself God, and a son of God, in the same sense in which Christ is called the Son of God; and that, as such, he is raised above all laws, human and divine; to such a degree that, according to some of them, the godlike man cannot sin, do what he may; either because the soul, being elevated and blended with the divine nature, is no longer affected by the actions of the body, or because the emotions of the soul, after such union, become in reality the acts and operations of God himself, and therefore, though apparently criminal, and contrary to the law, are really good and holy, because God is above all law!' These blasphemous and immoral principles, incredible as they may appear, are extracted by Mosheim, partly from the books of the sect, partly from the decrees of Henry, Archbishop of Cologne, by whom they were condemned. Principles such as these drew down upon the sect the arm of the state, as well as the censures of the church. No sect of the time suffered so much from the inquisition in the 14th century. They were regarded as offenders against public order and morality, as well as against the faith of the church. See INQUISITION. After the first appearance of the sect in Alsace (1212), where its leader was a certain fanatic called Ortlieb (after whom the members are sometimes called Ortliebians), it spread into Thurgau and the Upper and Lower Rhine. During the latter part of that century, one of the leaders, named Meister Eckart, had so large a following at Cologne, that the archbishop made his teachings the subject of a lengthened edict. The sect spread also in Swabia, where its members were confounded with the Beghards. In France, they were popularly known by the name Turlupins, a word of uncertain etymology. We meet them in Bohemia in the beginning of the 15th c., and there is considerable similarity between their principles and those of the Adamites, who figure in Hussite history. From this date they are heard of no more.-See Mosheim, Soames's ed. ii. 582; also Gieseler's Church History, iii. 467, iv. 226.

Trade consists in buying and selling. There is free trade when there is no interference with the natural course of buying and selling, if such interference be intended to improve or otherwise to influence trade. It is necessary to keep this distinction in view, because there are many laws not contrary to the spirit of free trade which interfere with buying and selling; for instance, in this country, it is unlawful to deal in slaves, because we do not acknowledge the right of one human being to be the owner of another; it is unlawful to sell intoxicating spirits without having obtained a licence, because the tax for the licence brings revenue to the Exchequer, and intoxicating liquors are a commodity which it is advisable to tax, in preference to the common necessaries of life, or even harmless luxuries. There are many of these last which cannot be sold into this country without paying customs duty, but this is for the purpose of revenue merely, not as a restraint on trade.

The many attempts made by governments to regulate trade for the purpose of benefiting the communities over which they ruled, may be divided into two great classes: the one prohibited the exportation of commodities, the other encouraged exportation, and prohibited or discouraged importation. The former was the old rule in this and in other countries. It was supposed that the wealth of the country depended on its retaining within itself certain productions of native growth or industry, and their removal out of the country was prohibited or restrained. Until a late period, the exportation of machinery was prohibited; but this was an exceptional remnant of the old principle,