malcontents in the streets near the Tuileries, 13 Vendémiaire (5th of October 1795). Thereupon Barras became one of the five Directors who controlled the executive of the French republic. Owing to his intimate relations with Joséphine de Beauharnais, he helped to facilitate a marriage between her and Bonaparte; and many have averred, though on defective evidence, that Barras procured the appointment of Bonaparte to the command of the army of Italy early in the year 1796. The achievements of Bonaparte gave to the Directory a stability which it would not otherwise have enjoyed; and when in the summer of 1797 the royalist and constitutional opposition again gathered strength, Bonaparte sent General Augereau (q.v.), a headstrong Jacobin, forcibly to repress that movement by what was known as the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor (4th September). Barras and the violent Jacobins now carried matters with so high a hand as to render the government of the Directory odious; and Bonaparte had no difficulty in overthrowing it by the coup d’état of 18–19 Brumaire (9th–10th of November). Barras saw the need of a change and was to some extent (how far will perhaps never be known) an accomplice in Bonaparte’s designs, though he did not suspect the power and ambition of their contriver. He was left on one side by the three Consuls who took the place of the five Directors and found his political career at an end. He had amassed a large fortune and spent his later years in voluptuous ease. Among the men of the Revolution few did more than Barras to degrade that movement. His immorality in both public and private life was notorious and contributed in no small degree to the downfall of the Directory, and with it of the first French Republic. Despite his profession of royalism in and after 1815, he remained more or less suspect to the Bourbons; and it was with some difficulty that the notes for his memoirs were saved from seizure on his death on the 29th of January 1829.
Barras left memoirs in a rough state to be drawn up by his literary executor, M. Rousselin de St Albin. The amount of alteration which they underwent at his hands is not fully known; but M. George Duruy, who edited them on their publication in 1895, has given fairly satisfactory proofs of their genuineness. For other sources respecting Barras see the Memoirs of Gohier, Larevellière-Lépeaux and de Lescure; also Sciout, Le Directoire (4 vols., Paris, 1895–1897), A. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française (esp. vols. v. and vi., Paris, 1903–1904), and A. Vandal, L’Avènement de Bonaparte (Paris, 1902–1904). (J. Hl. R.)
BARRATRY (O. Fr. bareter, barater, to barter or cheat), in English criminal law, the offence (more usually called common barratry) of constantly inciting and stirring up quarrels in disturbance of the peace, either in courts or elsewhere. It is an offence both at common law and by statute, and is punishable by fine and imprisonment. By a statute of 1726, if the person guilty of common barratry belonged to the profession of the law, he was disabled from practising in the future. It is a cumulative offence, and it is necessary to prove at least three commissions of the act. For nearly two centuries there had been no record of an indictment having been preferred for this offence, but in 1889 a case occurred at the Guildford summer assizes, R. v. Bellgrove (The Times, 8th July 1889). As, however, the defendant was convicted of another offence, the charge was not proceeded upon. (See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; Russell, Crimes and Misdemeanours; Stephen, Criminal Law.)
In marine insurance barratry is any kind of fraud committed upon the owner or insurers of a ship by a master with the intention of benefiting himself at their expense. Continental jurists give a wider meaning to barratry, as meaning any wilful act by the master or crew, by whatever motive induced, whereby the owners or charterers are damnified. In bills of lading it is usual to except it from the shipowners' liability (see Affreightment).
In Scotland, barratry is the crime committed by a judge who is induced by bribery to pronounce judgment.
BARRÉ, ISAAC (1726–1802), British soldier and politician, was born at Dublin in 1726, the son of a French refugee. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, entered the army, and in 1759 was with Wolfe at the taking of Quebec, on which occasion he was wounded in the cheek. His entry into parliament in 1761 under the auspices of Lord Shelburne, who had selected him “as a bravo to run down Mr Pitt,” was characterized by a virulent attack on Pitt, of whom, however, he became ultimately a devoted adherent. A vigorous opponent of the taxation of America, his mastery of invective was powerfully displayed in his championship of the American cause, and the name “Sons of Liberty,” which he had applied to the colonists in one of his speeches, became a common designation of the American organizations directed against the Stamp Act, as well as of later patriotic clubs. His appointment in 1782 to the treasurership of the navy, which carried with it a pension of £3200 a year, at a time when the government was ostensibly advocating economy, caused great discontent; subsequently, however, he received from the younger Pitt the clerkship of the pells in place of the pension, which thus was saved to the public. Becoming blind, he retired from office in 1790 and died on the 20th of July 1802.
BARRE, a city of Washington county, Vermont, U.S.A., in the north central part of the state, about 6 m. S.E. of Montpelier. Pop. (1890) 4146; (1900) 8448, of whom 2831 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 10,734. It is served by the Central Vermont and the Montpelier & Wells River railways, and is connected by electric street railways with Montpelier. Barre is an important seat of the granite industry, and manufactures monuments and tombstones, stone-cutting implements and other machinery. In 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $3,373,046, of which 86·9% was the value of the monuments and tombstones manufactured. Among its institutions are the Aldrich public library and Goddard Seminary (1870; Universalist). There is a beautiful granite statue of Burns (by J. Massey Rhind), erected in 1899 by the Scotsmen of Barre. The water-works are owned and operated by the municipality. Settled soon after the close of the War of Independence, the township of Barre (pop. in 1910, 4194) was organized in 1793 and named in honour of Isaac Barré (1726–1802), a defender of American rights in the British parliament. The present city, chartered in 1894, was originally a part of the township.
BARREL (a word of uncertain origin common to Romance languages; the Celtic forms, as in the Gaelic baraill, are derived from the English), a vessel of cylindrical shape, made of staves bound together by hoops, a cask; also a dry and liquid measure of capacity, varying with the commodity which it contains (see Weights and Measures). The term is applied to many cylindrical objects, as to the drum round which the chain is wound in a crane, a capstan or a watch; to the cylinder studded with pins in a barrel-organ or musical-box; to the hollow shaft in which the piston of a pump works; or to the tube of a gun. The “barrel” of a horse is that part of the body lying between the shoulders and the quarters. For the system of vaulting in architecture known as “barrel-vaulting” see Vault.
BARREL-ORGAN (Eng. “grinder-organ,” “street-organ,” “hand-organ,” “Dutch organ”; Fr. orgue de Barbarie, orgue d’Allemagne, orgue mécanique, cabinet d’orgue, serinette; Ger. Drehorgel, Leierkasten; Ital. organetto a manovella, organo tedesco), a small portable organ mechanically played by turning a handle. The barrel-organ owes its name to the cylinder on which the tunes are pricked out with pins and staples of various lengths, set at definite intervals according to the scheme required by the music. The function of these pins and staples is to raise balanced keys connected by simple mechanism with the valves of the pipes, which are thus mechanically opened, admitting the stream of air from the wind-chest. The handle attached to the shaft sets the cylinder in slow rotation by means of a worm working in a fine-toothed gear on the barrel-head; the same motion works the bellows by means of cranks and connecting rods on the shaft. The wind is thereby forced into a reservoir, whence it passes into the wind-chest, on the sides of which are grouped the pipes. The barrel revolves slowly from back to front, each revolution as a rule playing one complete tune. A notch-pin in the barrelhead, furnished with as many notches as there are tunes, enables the performer to shift the barrel and change the tune. The ordinary street barrel-organ had a compass varying from 24 to 34 notes, forming a diatonic scale with a few accidentals, generally F♯, G♯, C♯. There were usually two stops, one for the open pipes of metal, the other for the closed wooden pipes. Barrel-organs
