Man’s World [translated by Ernest Thompson] (Paris, 1904); Prof. A. Mell, Encyklopadisches Handbuch des Blindenwesens (Vienna, 1899). (F. J. C.)
BLISS, CORNELIUS NEWTON (1833– ), American merchant and politician, was born at Fall River, Massachusetts, on the 26th of January 1833. He was educated in his native city and in New Orleans, where he early entered his step-father’s counting-house. Returning to Massachusetts in 1849, he became a clerk and subsequently a junior partner in a prominent Boston commercial house. Later he removed to New York City to establish a branch of the firm. In 1881 he organized and became president of Bliss, Fabyan & Company, one of the largest wholesale dry-goods houses in the country. A consistent advocate of the protective tariff, he was one of the organizers, and for many years president, of the American Protective Tariff League. In politics an active Republican, he was chairman of the Republican state committee in 1887 and 1888, and contributed much to the success of the Harrison ticket in New York in the latter year. He was treasurer of the Republican national committee from 1892 to 1904, and was secretary of the interior in President McKinley’s cabinet from 1897 to 1899.
BLISTER (a word found in many forms in Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Blase; it is ultimately connected with the same root as in “blow,” cf. “bladder”), a small vesicle filled with serous fluid raised on the skin by a burn, by rubbing on a hard surface, as on the hand in rowing, or by other injury; the term is also used of a similar condition of the skin caused artificially, as a counter-irritant in cases of inflammation, by the application of mustard, of various kinds of fly (see Cantharides) and of other vesicatories. Similar small swellings, filled with fluid or air, on plants and on the surface of steel or paint, &c., are also called “blisters.”
BLIZZARD (origin probably onomatopoeic, cf. “blast,” “bluster”), a furious wind driving fine particles of choking, blinding snow whirling in icy clouds. The conditions to which the name was originally given occur with the northerly winds in rear of the cyclones crossing the eastern states of America during winter.
BLOCH, MARK ELIEZER (c. 1723–1799), German naturalist, was born at Ansbach, of poor Jewish parents, about 1723. After taking his degree as doctor at Frankfort-on-Oder he established himself as a physician at Berlin. His first scientific work of importance was an essay on intestinal worms, which gained a prize from the Academy of Copenhagen, but he is best known by his important work on fishes (see Ichthyology). Bloch was fifty-six when he began to write on ichthyological subjects. To begin at his time of life a work in which he intended not only to give full descriptions of the species known to him from specimens or drawings, but also to illustrate each species in a style truly magnificent for his time, was an undertaking the execution of which most men would have despaired of. Yet he accomplished not only this task, but even more than he at first contemplated. He died at Carlsbad on the 6th of August 1799.
BLOCK, MAURICE (1816–1901), French statistician, was born in Berlin of Jewish parents on the 18th of February 1816. He studied at Bonn and Giessen, but settled in Paris, becoming naturalized there. In 1844 he entered the French ministry of agriculture, becoming in 1852 one of the heads of the statistical department. He retired in 1862, and thenceforth devoted himself entirely to statistical studies, which have gained for him a wide reputation. He was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1880. He died in Paris on the 9th of January 1901. His principal works are: Dictionnaire de l’administration française (1856); Statistique de la France (1860); Dictionnaire général de la politique (1862); L’Europe politique et sociale (1869); Traité théorique et pratique de statistique (1878); Les Progrés de l’économie politique depuis Adam Smith (1890); he also edited from 1856 L’Annuaire de l’économie politique et de la statistique, and wrote in German Die Bevolkerung des französischen Kaiserreichs (1861); Die Bevolkerung Spaniens und Portugals (1861); and Die Machtstellung der europäischen Staaten (1862).
BLOCK (from the Fr. bloc, and possibly connected with an Old Ger. Block, obstruction, cf. “baulk”), a piece of wood. The word is used in various senses, e.g. the block upon which people were beheaded, the block or mould upon which a hat is shaped, a pulley-block, a printing-block, &c. From the sense of a solid mass comes the expression, a “block” of houses, i.e. a rectangular space covered with houses and bounded by four streets. From the sense of “obstruction” comes a “block” in traffic, a block in any proceedings, and the block system of signalling on railways.
BLOCKADE (Fr. blocus, Ger. Blokade), a term used in maritime warfare. Originally a blockade by sea was probably nothing more than the equivalent in maritime warfare of a blockade or siege on land in which the army investing the blockaded or besieged place is in actual physical possession of a zone through which it can prevent and forbid ingress and egress. An attempt to cross such a zone without the consent of the investing army would be an act of hostility against the besiegers. A maritime blockade, when it formed part of a siege, would obviously also be a close blockade, being part of the military cordon drawn round the besieged place. Even from the first, however, differences would begin to grow up in the conditions arising out of the operations on land and on sea. Thus whereas conveying merchandise across military lines would be a deliberate act of hostility against the investing force, a neutral ship which had sailed in ignorance of the blockade for the blockaded place might in good faith cross the blockade line without committing a hostile act against the investing force. With the development of recognition of neutral rights the involuntary character of the breach would be taken into account, and notice to neutral states and to approaching vessels would come into use. With the employment in warfare of larger vessels in the place of the more numerous small ones of an earlier age, notice, moreover, would tend to take the place of de facto investment, and at a time when communication between governments was still slow and precarious, such notice would sometimes be given as a possible measure of belligerent tactics before the blockade could be actually carried out. Out of these circumstances grew up the abuse of “paper blockades.”
The climax was reached in the “Continental Blockade” decreed by Napoleon in 1806, which continued till it was abolished by international agreement in 1812. This blockade forbade all countries under French dominion or allied with France to have any communication with Great Britain. Great Britain replied in 1807 by a similar measure. The first nation to protest against these fictitious blockades was the United States. Already in 1800 John Marshall, secretary of state, wrote to the American minister in Great Britain pointing out objections which have since been universally admitted. In the following interesting passage he said:—
“Ports not effectually blockaded by a force capable of completely investing them have yet been declared in a state of blockade. . . . If the effectiveness of the blockade be dispensed with, then every port of the belligerent powers may at all times be declared in that state, and the commerce of neutrals be thereby subjected to universal capture. But if this principle be strictly adhered to, the capacity to blockade will be limited by the naval force of the belligerent and, in consequence, the mischief to neutral commerce cannot be very extensive. It is, therefore, of the last importance to neutrals that this principle be maintained unimpaired. I observe that you have pressed this reasoning on the British minister, who replies that an occasional absence of a fleet from a blockaded port ought not to change the state of the place. Whatever force this observation may be entitled to, where that occasional absence has been produced by an accident, as a storm, which for a moment blows off a fleet and forces it from its station, which station it immediately resumes, I am persuaded that where a part of the fleet is applied, though only for a time, to other objects or comes into port, the very principle requiring an effective blockade, which is that the mischief can only be coextensive with the naval force of the belligerent, requires that during such temporary absence the commerce to the neutrals to the place should be free.”[1]
- ↑ John Marshall, secretary of state, to Rufus King, minister to England, 20th of September 1800, Am. State Papers, Class I, For. Rel. II, No. 181, J. B. Moore, Digest of International Law, vii. 788.
