Catholics also support schools. Plymouth (pop. 1461), the chief town, stands on an open roadstead on the south-west coast.
The island was discovered by Columbus in 1493, who named it after Monserrado, a mountain in Spain. It was colonized by the British under Sir Thomas Warner in 1632, and was taken by the French in 1664. Restored to the British in 1668, it capitulated to the French in 1782, but was again restored in 1784.
MONTT, MANUEL (1809–1880), Chilean statesman, was born
on the 5th of September 1809. He had a distinguished career
as a scholar, and was introduced into public life during the
presidency (1831–1841) of Arieto by Diego Portales. Montt
distinguished himself by his courage in the crisis that followed
upon Portales’ assassination in 1837, though only holding a subordinate
post in the government, and afterwards he held several
ministerial offices, and during the presidency (1841–1851) of
Bulnes he became minister of justice and public instruction, and
later of the interior. He was elected president in 1851 and again
in 1856, and though the Liberals chafed under his rule, and two
revolutions, in 1851 and 1859, took place during his administration,
he governed Chile with an energy and wisdom that laid the
foundation of her material prosperity. He was ably assisted by
his minister of the interior Antonio Varas, and it was from the
union of the two statesmen that the well-known ultra-conservative
faction, the Montt-Varistas, took their name. His presidency
was marked by the establishment of railways, telegraphs,
banks, schools and training-colleges. On giving up his post in
1861 he became president of the Supreme Court of justice, a
position which he held up to his death on the 20th of September
1880. His son Jorje (b. 1846) was president of Chile in 1891–1896,
and a younger son, Pedro (d. 1910), in 1906–1910.
See P. B. Figueroa, Diccionario biografico de Chile, 1550–1887 (Santiago, 1888); and J. B. Suarez, Rasgos biograficos de hombres notables de Chile (Valparaiso, 1886).
MONTUCLA, JEAN ÉTIENNE (1725–1799), French mathematician, was born at Lyons on the 5th of September 1725. In 1754 he published an anonymous treatise entitled Histoire des recherche sur la quadrature du cercle, and in 1758 the first part of his great work, Histoire des mathématiques, the first history of mathematics worthy of the name. He was appointed intendant-secretary of Grenoble in 1758, secretary to the expedition for colonizing Cayenne in 1764, and “premier commis des bâtiments” and censor-royal for mathematical books in 1765. The Revolution deprived him of his income and left him in great destitution. The offer in 1795 of a mathematical chair in one of the schools of
Paris was declined on account of his infirm health, and he was still in straitened circumstances in 1798, when he published a second edition of the first part of his Histoire. In 1778 he re-edited Jacques Ozanam’s Récréations mathématiques, afterwards published in English by Charles Hutton (4 vols., London, 1803). He died on the 18th of December 1799. His Histoire was completed by J. J. Le F. de Lalande, and published at Paris in 1799–1802 (4 vols.).
MONTYON, ANTOINE JEAN BAPTISTE ROBERT AUGET, Baron de (1733–1820), French philanthropist, was born in Paris on the 23rd of December 1733. His father was a maître des comptes; he was educated for the law, and became advocate at the Châtelet in 1755, master of requests to the council of state in 1760, and intendant successively of Auvergne, Provence and La Rochelle. He had repeatedly shown great independence of character, protesting against the accusation of Caradeuc de La Chalotais in 1766, and refusing in 1771 to suppress the local courts of justice in obedience to Maupeou. He was made a councillor of state in 1775 by the influence of Louis de Bourbon, duke of Penthievre, and in 1780 he was attached to the court in the honorary office of chancellor to the comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.). He followed the princes into exile, and lived for some years in London. During the emigration period he spent large sums on the alleviation of the poverty of his fellow immigrants, returning to France only at the second restoration. Between 1780 and 1787 he had founded a series of prizes, the awards to be made by the French academy and the academies of science and medicine. These prizes fell into abeyance during the revolutionary period, but were re-established in 1815. Montyon died on the 29th of December 1820, bequeathing 10,000 francs for the perpetual endowment of each of the following prizes: for the discovery of the means of rendering some mechanical process less dangerous to the Workman; for the perfecting of any technical improvement in a mechanical process; for the book which during the year rendered the greatest service to humanity; the “prix de vertu” for the most courageous act on the part of a poor Frenchman—the awards being left as before to the learned academies. He also left 10,000 francs to each of the Parisian hospitals.
Montyon wrote a series of works, chiefly on political economy: Éloge de Michel de l’hôpital (Paris, 1777); Recherches et considérations sur la population de la France (1778), a share of which is attributed to his secretary, Moheau; Rapport fait à Louis XVIII. (Constance, 1796), in which he maintained in opposition to Calonne’s Tableau de l’Europe that France had always possessed a constitution, which had, however, been violated by the kings of France; L’état statistique du Tunkin (1811); and Particularités . . . sur les ministres des finances en France (1812).
See Lacretelle, “Discours sur M. Montyon,” in the Recueil de l’académie (1820–1829); Quérard, La France littéraire, vol. vi. (1834); and, further, F. Labour, M. de Montyon d’après des documents inédits (Paris, 1880); G. Dumoulin, Montyon (Paris, 1884); and especially L. Guimbaud, Auget de Montyon (1909).
MONUMENT (Lat. monumentum or monimentum; from monere, to advise, bring to mind, remind; the German equivalent is Denkmal), literally that which serves to keep alive the memory of a person, an event, or a period. The word is thus applied to a column, statue, or building erected for that particular purpose,
as “The Monument” (i.e. of the Great Fire) in London; to all
the various memorials which man throughout the ages has
raised over the buried dead, the barrows and cairns of prehistoric
times, the representation of the living figure of the dead,
brasses, busts, &c., or the varying forms, allegorical or otherwise,
taken by the tombstones of the modern cemetery. In a wider
sense “monument” is used of all survivals of a past age, in
which sense it may include all the vestiges of prehistoric man,
dolmens, menhirs, remains of lake-dwellings, stone-circles, and
the like, buildings large and small, cities, castles, palaces, and
examples of domestic architecture, which have any interest,
historic or artistic, as well as movable artistic or archaeological
treasures, which exist in private or public collections, or which
are discovered by excavation, &c. In a more restricted sense
the word “monument” is also applied to a comprehensive
treatise on any particular subject—such as the Monumenta
typographica, or an historical collection such as the Monumenta
Germaniae historica. In the English law of conveyancing a
“monument” is an object fixed in the soil, whether natural or
artificial, and referred to in a document, and used as evidence for
the delineation of boundaries or the situation of a particular plot
of land, &c.
For a description of various kinds of monuments see such articles as Archaeology; Stone Monuments; Effigies, Monumental; Brasses; Sculpture; many particular monuments, such as Stonehenge, are treated under their respective names, or in the articles on the towns, &c., in which they stand.
The present article deals with the preservation, by government action, local or central, of the evidences and remains of past history and civilization, and, incidentally, with similar action extended to sites and places of natural beauty and interest, which the Germans call Naturdenkmäler, natural monuments. The important work of G. Baldwin Brown, The Care of Ancient Monuments, published in 1905, is practically the only book in English on this subject. It contains a most ample bibliography for each country and gives many references to various periodicals in different languages. In 1897 was issued a report (C. 8443, Miscell. Reports, 2) from British representatives abroad as to “the statutory provisions existing in foreign countries for the preservation of historical buildings.” Reference also should be made to The Care of Natural Monuments (1909), by H. Conwentz, Prussian State Commissioner for the Care of Natural Monuments.
The chief question at issue is, how far does the national
