and, in 1829, counsellor of the supreme court of the state. Returning to Buffalo in 1830 he formed, in 1832, a partnership with Nathan K. Hall (1810–1874), later a member of Congress and postmaster-general in his cabinet. Solomon G. Haven (1810–1861), member of Congress from 1851 to 1857, joined them in 1836. The firm met with great success. From 1829 to 1832 Fillmore served in the state assembly, and, in the single term of 1833–1835, in the national House of Representatives, coming in as anti-Jackson, or in opposition to the administration. From 1837 to 1843, when he declined further service, he again represented his district in the House, this time as a member of the Whig party. In Congress he opposed the annexation of Texas as slave territory, was an advocate of internal improvements and a protective tariff, supported J. Q. Adams in maintaining the right of offering anti-slavery petitions, advocated the prohibition by Congress of the slave trade between the states, and favoured the exclusion of slavery from the District of Columbia. His speech and tone, however, were moderate on these exciting subjects, and he claimed the right to stand free of pledges, and to adjust his opinions and his course by the development of circumstances. The Whigs having the ascendancy in the Twenty-Seventh Congress, he was made chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means. Against a strong opposition he carried an appropriation of $30,000 to Morse’s telegraph, and reported from his committee the Tariff Bill of 1842. In 1844 he was the Whig candidate for the governorship of New York, but was defeated. In November 1847 he was elected comptroller of the state of New York, and in 1848 he was elected vice-president of the United States on the ticket with Zachary Taylor as president. Fillmore presided over the senate during the exciting debates on the “Compromise Measures of 1850.”
President Taylor died on the 9th of July 1850, and on the next day Fillmore took the oath of office as his successor. The cabinet which he called around him contained Daniel Webster, Thomas Corwin and John J. Crittenden. On the death of Webster in 1852, Edward Everett became secretary of state. Unlike Taylor, Fillmore favoured the “Compromise Measures,” and his signing one of them, the Fugitive Slave Law, in spite of the vigorous protests of anti-slavery men, lost him much of his popularity in the North. Few of his opponents, however, questioned his own full persuasion that the Compromise Measures were vitally necessary to pacify the nation. In 1851 he interposed promptly but ineffectively in thwarting the projects of the “filibusters,” under Narciso Lopez for the invasion of Cuba. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry’s expedition, which opened up diplomatic relations with Japan, and the exploration of the valley of the Amazon by Lieutenants William L. Herndon (1813–1857) and Lardner Gibbon also occurred during his term. In the autumn of 1852 he was an unsuccessful candidate for nomination for the presidency by the Whig National Convention, and he went out of office on the 4th of March 1853. In February 1856, while he was travelling abroad, he was nominated for the presidency by the American or Know Nothing party, and later this nomination was also accepted by the Whigs; but in the ensuing presidential election, the last in which the Know Nothings and the Whigs as such took any part, he received the electoral votes of only one state, Maryland. Thereafter he took no public share in political affairs. Fillmore was twice married: in 1826 to Abigail Powers (who died in 1853, leaving him with a son and daughter), and in 1858 to Mrs. Caroline C. McIntosh. He died at Buffalo on the 8th of March 1874.
In 1907 the Buffalo Historical Society, of which Fillmore was one of the founders and the first president, published the Millard Fillmore Papers (2 vols., vol. x. and xi. of the Society’s publications; edited by F. H. Severance), containing miscellaneous writings and speeches, and official and private correspondence. Most of his correspondence, however, was destroyed in pursuance of a direction in his son’s will.
FILMER, SIR ROBERT (d. 1653), English political writer, was
the son of Sir Edward Filmer of East Sutton in Kent. He
studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in
1604. Knighted by Charles I. at the beginning of his reign, he
was an ardent supporter of the king’s cause, and his house is said
to have been plundered by the parliamentarians ten times. He
died on the 26th of May 1653.
Filmer was already a middle-aged man when the great controversy between the king and the Commons roused him into literary activity. His writings afford an exceedingly curious example of the doctrines held by the most extreme section of the Divine Right party. Filmer’s theory is founded upon the statement that the government of a family by the father is the true original and model of all government. In the beginning of the world God gave authority to Adam, who had complete control over his descendants, even as to life and death. From Adam this authority was inherited by Noah; and Filmer quotes as not unlikely the tradition that Noah sailed up the Mediterranean and allotted the three continents of the Old World to the rule of his three sons. From Shem, Ham and Japheth the patriarchs inherited the absolute power which they exercised over their families and servants; and from the patriarchs all kings and governors (whether a single monarch or a governing assembly) derive their authority, which is therefore absolute, and founded upon divine right. The difficulty that a man “by the secret will of God may unjustly” attain to power which he has not inherited appeared to Filmer in no way to alter the nature of the power so obtained, for “there is, and always shall be continued to the end of the world, a natural right of a supreme father over every multitude.” The king is perfectly free from all human control. He cannot be bound by the acts of his predecessors, for which he is not responsible; nor by his own, for “impossible it is in nature that a man should give a law unto himself”—a law must be imposed by another than the person bound by it. With regard to the English constitution, he asserted, in his Freeholder’s Grand Inquest touching our Sovereign Lord the King and his Parliament (1648), that the Lords only give counsel to the king, the Commons only “perform and consent to the ordinances of parliament,” and the king alone is the maker of laws, which proceed purely from his will. It is monstrous that the people should judge or depose their king, for they would then be judges in their own cause.
The most complete expression of Filmer’s opinions is given in the Patriarcha, which was published in 1680, many years after his death. His position, however, was sufficiently indicated by the works which he published during his lifetime: the Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed Monarchy (1648), an attack upon a treatise on monarchy by Philip Hunton (1604?–1682), who maintained that the king’s prerogative is not superior to the authority of the houses of parliament; the pamphlet entitled The Power of Kings, and in particular of the King of England (1648), first published in 1680; and his Observations upon Mr Hobbes’s Leviathan, Mr Milton against Salmasius, and H. Grotius De jure belli et pacis, concerning the Originall of Government (1652). Filmer’s theory, owing to the circumstances of the time, obtained a recognition which it is now difficult to understand. Nine years after the publication of the Patriarcha, at the time of the Revolution which banished the Stuarts from the throne, Locke singled out Filmer as the most remarkable of the advocates of Divine Right, and thought it worth while to attack him expressly in the first part of the Treatise on Government, going into all his arguments seriatim, and especially pointing out that even if the first steps of his argument be granted, the rights of the eldest born have been so often set aside that modern kings can claim no such inheritance of authority as he asserted.
FILMY FERNS, a general name for a group of ferns with
delicate much-divided leaves and often moss-like growth,
belonging to the genera Hymenophyllum, Todea and Trichomanes.
They require to be kept in close cases in a cool fernery, and the
stones and moss amongst which they are grown must be kept
continually moist so that the evaporated water condenses on the
very numerous divisions of the leaves.
FILON, PIERRE MARIE AUGUSTIN (1841–), French man
of letters, son of the historian Charles Auguste Désiré Filon
(1800–1875), was born in Paris in 1841. His father became
professor of history at Douai, and eventually “inspecteur
d’académie” in Paris; his principal works were Histoire comparée
