pension veto messages of President Cleveland. Having failed to secure a re-election to the Senate in 1887, Harrison was nominated by the Republican party for the presidency in 1888, and defeated Grover Cleveland, the candidate of the Democratic party, receiving 233 electoral votes to Cleveland’s 168. Among the measures and events distinguishing his term as president were the following: The meeting of the Pan-American Congress at Washington; the passage of the McKinley Tariff Bill and of the Sherman Silver Bill of 1890; the suppressing of the Louisiana Lottery; the enlargement of the navy; further advance in civil service reform; the convocation by the United States of an international monetary conference; the establishment of commercial reciprocity with many countries of America and Europe; the peaceful settlement of a controversy with Chile; the negotiation of a Hawaiian Annexation Treaty, which, however, before its ratification, his successor withdrew from the Senate; the settlement of difficulties with Germany concerning the Samoan Islands, and the adjustment by arbitration with Great Britain of the Bering Sea fur-seal question. His administration was marked by a revival of American industries and a reduction of the public debt, and at its conclusion the country was left in a condition of prosperity and on friendly terms with foreign nations. He was nominated by his party in 1892 for re-election, but was defeated by Cleveland, this result being due, at least in part, to the labour strikes which occurred during the presidential campaign and arrayed the labour unions against the tariff party.
After leaving public life he resumed the practice of the law, and in 1898 was retained by the government of Venezuela as its leading counsel in the arbitration of its boundary dispute with Great Britain. In this capacity he appeared before the international tribunal of arbitration at Paris in 1899, worthily maintaining the reputation of the American bar. After the Spanish-American War he strongly disapproved of the colonial policy of his party, which, however, he continued to support. He occupied a portion of his leisure in writing a book, entitled This Country of Ours (1897), treating of the organization and administration of the government of the United States, and a collection of essays by him was published posthumously, in 1901, under the title Views of an Ex-President. He died at Indianapolis on the 13th of March 1901. Harrison’s distinguishing trait of character, to which his success is to be most largely attributed, was his thoroughness. He was somewhat reserved in manner, and this led to the charge in political circles that he was cold and unsympathetic; but no one gathered around him more devoted and loyal friends, and his dignified bearing in and out of office commanded the hearty respect of his countrymen.
President Harrison was twice married; in 1853 to Miss Caroline Lavinia Scott, by whom he had a son and a daughter, and in 1896 to Mrs Mary Scott Lord Dimmock, by whom he had a daughter.
A “campaign” biography was published by Lew Wallace (Philadelphia, 1888), and a sketch of his life may be found in Presidents of the United States (New York, 1894), edited by James Grant Wilson. (J. W. Fo.)
HARRISON, FREDERIC (1831– ), English jurist and historian, was born in London on the 18th of October 1831. Members of his family (originally Leicestershire yeomen) had been lessees of Sutton Place, Guildford, of which he wrote an interesting account (Annals of an Old Manor House, 1893). He was educated at King’s College school and at Wadham College, Oxford, where, after taking a first-class in Literae Humaniores in 1853, he became fellow and tutor. He was called to the bar in 1858, and, in addition to his practice in equity cases, soon began to distinguish himself as an effective contributor to the higher-class reviews. Two articles in the Westminster Review, one on the Italian question, which procured him the special thanks of Cavour, the other on Essays and Reviews, which had the probably undesigned effect of stimulating the attack on the book, attracted especial notice. A few years later Mr Harrison worked at the codification of the law with Lord Westbury, of whom he contributed an interesting notice to Nash’s biography of the chancellor. His special interest in legislation for the working classes led him to be placed upon the Trades Union Commission of 1867–1869; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869–1870; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of jurisprudence and international law under the council of legal education. A follower of the positive philosophy, but in conflict with Richard Congreve (q.v.) as to details, he led the Positivists who split off and founded Newton Hall in 1881, and he was president of the English Positivist Committee from 1880 to 1905; he was also editor and part author of the Positivist New Calendar of Great Men (1892), and wrote much on Comte and Positivism. Of his separate publications, the most important are his lives of Cromwell (1888), William the Silent (1897), Ruskin (1902), and Chatham (1905); his Meaning of History (1862; enlarged 1894) and Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages (1900); and his essays on Early Victorian Literature (1896) and The Choice of Books (1886) are remarkable alike for generous admiration and good sense. In 1904 he published a “romantic monograph” of the 10th century, Theophano, and in 1906 a verse tragedy, Nicephorus. An advanced and vehement Radical in politics and Progressive in municipal affairs, Mr Harrison in 1886 stood unsuccessfully for parliament against Sir John Lubbock for London University. In 1889 he was elected an alderman of the London County Council, but resigned in 1893. In 1870 he married Ethel Berta, daughter of Mr William Harrison, by whom he had four sons. George Gissing, the novelist, was at one time their tutor; and in 1905 Mr Harrison wrote a preface to Gissing’s Veranilda (see also Mr Austin Harrison’s article on Gissing in the Nineteenth Century, September 1906). As a religious teacher, literary critic, historian and jurist, Mr Harrison took a prominent part in the life of his time, and his writings, though often violently controversial on political and social subjects, and in their judgment and historical perspective characterized by a modern Radical point of view, are those of an accomplished scholar, and of one whose wide knowledge of literature was combined with independence of thought and admirable vigour of style. In 1907 he published The Creed of a Layman, Apologia pro fide mea, in explanation of his religious position.
HARRISON, JOHN (1693–1776), English horologist, was the son of a carpenter, and was born at Faulby, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, in the year 1693. Thence his father and family removed in 1700 to Barrow in Lincolnshire. Young Harrison at first learned his father’s trade, and worked at it for several years, at the same time occasionally making a little money by land-measuring and surveying. The bent of his mind, however, was towards mechanical pursuits. In 1715 he made a clock with wooden wheels, which is in the patent museum at South Kensington, and in 1726 he devised his ingenious “gridiron pendulum,” which maintains its length unaltered in spite of variations of temperature (see Clock). Another invention of his was a recoil clock escapement in which friction was reduced to a minimum, and he was the first to employ the commonly used and effective form of “going ratchet,” which is a spring arrangement for keeping the timepiece going at its usual rate during the interval of being wound up.
In Harrison’s time the British government had become fully alive to the necessity of determining more accurately the longitude at sea. For this purpose they passed an act in 1713 offering rewards of £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 to any who should construct chronometers that would determine the longitude within 60, 40 and 30 m. respectively. Harrison applied himself vigorously to the task, and in 1735 went to the Board of Longitude with a watch which he also showed to Edmund Halley, George Graham and others. Through their influence he was allowed to proceed in a king’s ship to Lisbon to test it; and the result was so satisfactory that he was paid £500 to carry out further improvements. Harrison worked at the subject with the utmost perseverance, and, after making several watches, went up to London in 1761 with one which he considered almost perfect. His son William was sent on a voyage to Jamaica to test it; and, on his return to Portsmouth in 1762, it was found to have lost
