VOLUME VII SLICE X David, St to Demidov (continued 5)

Registration of Mortgages and Charges.—A company is bound, under the Companies Act 1862, to keep a register of mortgages and charges, but the register is only open for the inspection of persons who have actually become creditors of the company, not of persons who may be thinking of giving it credit, and the legislature recognizing its inadequacy provided in the Companies Act 1900 (§ 4 of act of 1908) for a public register at Somerset House of all mortgages and charges of certain specified classes by a company. If not registered within twenty-one days from their creation such mortgages and charges are made void—so far as they are securities—against the liquidator and any creditor of the company, but the debenture-holders retain the rights of unsecured creditors. An extension of the time for registering may be granted by the court, but it will only be without prejudice to the rights of third persons acquired before actual registration. These provisions for registration as amended are contained in the Companies Act 1908 (§ 93).

Debentures Registered and to Bearer.—Debentures are, for purposes of title and transfer, of two kinds—(1) registered debentures, and (2) debentures to bearer. Registered debentures are transferable only in the books of the company. Debentures to bearer are negotiable instruments and pass by delivery. Coupons for interest are attached. Sometimes debentures to bearer are made exchangeable for registered debentures and vice versa.

Redemption.—A company generally reserves to itself a right of redeeming the security before the date fixed by the debenture for repayment; and accordingly a power for that purpose is commonly inserted in the conditions. But as debenture-holders, who have got a satisfactory security, do not wish to be paid off, the right of redemption is often qualified so as not to arise till (say) five years after issue, and a premium of 5% is made payable by way of bonus to the redeemed debenture-holder. Sometimes the number of debentures to be redeemed each year is limited. The selection is made by drawings held in the presence of the directors. A sinking fund is a convenient means frequently resorted to for redemption of a debenture debt, and is especially suitable where the security is of a wasting character, leaseholds, mining property or a patent. Such a fund is formed by the company setting apart a certain sum each year out of the profits of the company after payment of interest on the debentures. Redeemed debentures may in certain cases be reissued; see Companies Act 1908 (§ 104).

Debenture Stock.—Debenture stock bears the same relation to debentures that stock does to shares. “Debenture stock,” as Lord Lindley states (Companies, 5th ed., 195), “is merely borrowed capital consolidated into one mass for the sake of convenience. Instead of each lender having a separate bond or mortgage, he has a certificate entitling him to a certain sum, being a portion of one large loan.” This sum is not uniform, as in the case of debentures, but variable. One debenture-stockholder, for instance, may hold £20 of the debenture stock, another £20,000. Debenture stock is usually issued in multiples of £10 or sometimes of £1, and is made transferable in sums of any amount not involving a fraction of £1. It is this divisibility of stock, whether debenture or ordinary stock, into quantities of any amount, which constitutes in fact its chief characteristic, and its convenience from a business point of view. It facilitates dealing with the stock, and also enables investors with only a small amount to invest to become stockholders. The property comprised in this security is generally the same as in the case of debentures. Debenture stock created by trading companies differs in various particulars from debenture stock created by public companies governed by the Companies Clauses Act. The debenture stock of trading companies is created by a contract made between the company and trustees for the debenture-stockholders. This contract is known as a debenture-stockholders’ trust deed, and is analogous in its provisions to the trust deed above described as used to secure debentures. By such a deed the company acknowledges its indebtedness to the trustees, as representing the debenture-stockholders, to the amount of the sum advanced, covenants to pay it, and conveys the property by way of security to the trustees with all the requisite powers and provisions for enabling them to enforce the security on default in payment of interest by the company or on the happening of certain specified events evidencing insolvency. The company further, in pursuance of the contract, enters the names of the subsisting stockholders in a register, and issues certificates for the amount of their respective holdings. These certificates have, like debentures, the conditions of the security indorsed on their back. Debenture stock is also issued to bearer. A deed securing debenture stock requires an ad valorem stamp.

Debenture Scrip.—Debentures and debenture stock are usually made payable in instalments, for example 10% on application, 10% on allotment and the remainder at intervals of a few months. Until these payments are complete the securities are not issued, but to enable the subscriber to deal with his security pending completion the company issues to him an interim scrip certificate acknowledging his title and exchangeable on payment of the remaining instalments for debentures or debenture stock certificates. If a subscriber for debentures made default in payment the company could not compel him specifically to perform his contract, the theory of law being that the company could get the loan elsewhere, but this inconvenience is now removed (see § 105 of the Companies Act 1908).

Remedies.—When debenture-holders’ security becomes enforceable there are a variety of remedies open to them. These fall into two classes—(1) remedies available without the aid of the court; (2) remedies available only with the aid of the court.

1. If there is a trust deed, the trustees may appoint a receiver of the property comprised in the security, and they may also sell under the powers contained in the deed, or under § 25 of the Conveyancing Act 1881. Sometimes, where there is no trust deed, similar powers—to appoint a receiver and to sell—are inserted in the conditions indorsed on the debentures.

2. The remedies with the aid of the court are—(a) an action by one or more debenture-holders on behalf of all for a receiver and to realize the security; (b) an originating summons for sale or other relief, under Rules of Supreme Court, 1883, O. lv. r. 5A; (c) an action for foreclosure where the security is deficient (all the debenture-holders must be parties to this proceeding); (d) a winding-up petition. Of these modes of proceeding, the first is by far the most common and most convenient. Immediately on the issue of the writ in the action the plaintiff applies for the appointment of a receiver to protect the security, or if the security comprises a going business, a receiver and manager. In due course the action comes on for judgment, usually on agreed minutes, when the court directs accounts and inquiries as to who are the holders of the debentures, what is due to them, what property is comprised in the security, and gives leave to any of the parties to apply in chambers for a sale. If the company has gone into liquidation, leave must be obtained to commence or continue the action, but such leave in the case of debenture-holders is ex debito justitiae. A debenture-holder action when the company is in winding up is always now transferred to the judge having the control of the winding-up proceedings. The administration of a company’s assets in such actions by debenture-holders (debenture-holders’ liquidations, as they are called) has of late encroached very much on the ordinary administration of winding up, and it cannot be denied that great hardship is often inflicted by the floating security on the company’s unsecured creditors, who find that everything belonging to the company, uncalled capital included, has been pledged to the debenture-holders. The conventional answer is that such creditors might and ought to have inspected the company’s register of mortgages and charges. The matter was fully considered by the departmental board of trade committee which reported in July 1906, but the committee, looking at the business convenience of the floating charge, saw no reason for recommending an alteration in the law.

Reconstruction.—When a company reconstructs, as it often does in these days, the rights of debenture-holders have to be provided for. Reconstructions are mainly of two kinds—(1) by arrangement, under the Joint Stock Companies Arrangement Act 1870, amended in 1900 and 1907, incorporated in act of 1908 (§ 120), and (2) by sale and transfer of assets, either under § 192 of the act of 1908, or under a power in the company’s memorandum of association. By the procedure provided under (1) a petition for the sanction of the court to a scheme is presented, and the court thereupon directs meetings of creditors, including debenture-holders, to be held. A three-fourths majority in value of debenture-holders present at the meeting in person or by proxy binds the rest. Debenture-holders claiming to vote must produce their debentures at or before the meeting. Under the other mode of reconstruction—sale and transfer of assets—there is usually a novation, and the debenture-holders accept the security of the new company in the shape of debentures of equivalent value or—occasionally—of fully paid preference shares.

A point in this connexion, which involves some hardship to debenture-holders, may here be adverted to. It is a not uncommon practice for a solvent company to pass a resolution to wind up voluntarily for the purpose of reconstructing. The effect of this is to accelerate payment of the security, and the debenture-holders have to accept their principal and interest only, parting with a good security and perhaps a premium which would have accrued to them in a year or two. The company is thus enabled by its own act to redeem the reluctant debenture-holder on terms most advantageous to itself. To obviate this hardship, it is now a usual thing in a debenture-holders’ trust deed to provide—the committee of the London Stock Exchange indeed require it—that a premium shall be paid to the debenture-holders in the event of the security becoming enforceable by a voluntary winding up with a view to reconstruction.

Public Companies.—Public companies, i.e. companies incorporated by special act of parliament for carrying on undertakings of public utility, form a class distinct from trading companies. The borrowing powers of these companies, the form of their debenture or debenture stock, and the rights of the debenture-holders or debenture-stockholders, depend on the conjoint operation of the companies’ own special act and the Companies Clauses Acts 1845, 1863 and 1869. The provisions of these acts as to borrowing, being express, exclude any implicit power of borrowing. The first two of the above acts relate to mortgages and bonds, the last to debenture stock. The policy of the legislature in all these acts is the same, namely, to give the greatest facilities for borrowing, and at the same time to take care that undertakings of public utility which have received legislative sanction shall not be broken up or destroyed, as they would be if the mortgagees or debenture-holders were allowed the ordinary rights of mortgagees for realizing their security by seizure and sale. Hence the legislature has given them only “the fruit of the tree,” as Lord Cairns expressed it. The debenture-holders or the debenture-stockholders may take the earnings of the company’s undertaking by obtaining the appointment of a receiver, but that is all they can do. They cannot sell the undertaking or disorganize it by levying execution, so long as the company is a going concern; but this protecting principle of public policy will not be a bar to a debenture-holder, in his character of creditor, presenting a petition to wind up the company, if it is no longer able to fulfil its statutory objects. Railway companies have further special legislation, which will be found in the Railway Companies Powers Act 1864, the Railways Construction Facilities Act 1864 and the Railway Securities Act 1866.

Municipal Corporations and County Councils.—These bodies are authorized to borrow for their proper purposes on debentures and debenture stock with the sanction of the Local Government Board. See the Municipal Corporations Act 1882, the Local Authorities’ Loans Act 1875, and the Local Government (England and Wales) Act 1888.

United States.—In the United States there are two meanings of debenture—(1) a bond not secured by mortgage; (2) a certificate that the United States is indebted to a certain person or his assigns in a certain sum on an audited account, or that it will refund a certain sum paid for duties on imported goods, in case they are subsequently exported.

Authorities.—E. Manson, Debentures and Debenture Stock (London, 2nd ed., 1908); Simonson, Debentures and Debenture Stock (London, 2nd ed., 1902); Palmer, Company Precedents (Debentures) (3rd ed., London, 1907).

(E. Ma.)

DEBORAH (Heb. for “bee”), the Israelite heroine in the Bible through whose encouragement the Hebrews defeated the Canaanites under Sisera. The account is preserved in Judges iv.-v., and the ode of victory (chap. v.), known as the “Song of Deborah,” is held to be one of the oldest surviving specimens of Hebrew literature. Although the text of this Te Deum has suffered (especially in vv. 8-15) its value is without an equal for its historical contents. It is not certain that the poem was actually composed by Deborah (v. 1); ver. 7, which can be rendered “until thou didst arise, O Deborah,” is indecisive. The poem consists of a series of rapidly shifting scenes; the words are often obscure, but the general drift of the whole can be easily followed. After the exordium, the writer describes the approach of Yahweh from his seats in Seir and Edom in the south to the help of his people—the language is reminiscent of Ps. lxviii. 7 sqq., Hab. iii. 3 seq. 12 seq. In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath the land had been insecure, the people were disarmed, and neither shield nor spear was to be seen among their forty thousand (cf. 1 Sam. xiii. 19-22, and for the number Josh. iv. 13). Then follows, apparently, a summons to magnify Yahweh. After an apostrophe to Deborah and Barak, the son of Abinoam, the meeting of the clans is vividly portrayed. Ephraim, with Benjamin behind him (for the wording, cf. Hos. v. 8), Machir (here the tribe of Manasseh) and Zebulun, Issachar and Naphtali, pour down into the valley of the Kishon. Not all the tribes were represented. Reuben was wavering, Gilead (i.e. Gad) remained beyond the Jordan, and Dan’s interests were apparently with the sea-going Phoenicians (see Dan); their conduct is contrasted with the reckless bravery of Zebulun and Naphtali. Judah is nowhere mentioned; it lay outside the confederation. The Canaanite kings unite at Taanach by Megiddo, an ancient battlefield probably to be identified with Lejjūn. The heavens joined the fight against Sisera (cf. the appeal in Josh. x. 12 seq.), a storm rages, and the enemy are swept away in the flood. Meroz, presumably on the line of flight, is bitterly cursed for its inaction: “they came not to the help of Yahweh.” In vivid contrast to this is the conduct of one of the Kenites: “blessed of all women is Jael, of all the nomad women is she blessed.” The poem recounts how the fleeing king craves water, she gives him milk, and (as he drinks) she fells him (perhaps with a tent-peg); “at her feet he sank down, he fell, he lay, where he sank he lay overcome.” The last scene paints the mother of Sisera impatiently awaiting the king. Her attendants confidently picture him dividing the booty—a maiden or two for each man, and richly embroidered cloth for himself. With inimitable strength the poet suddenly drops the curtain—“so perish thine enemies, all of them, Yahweh! But let them that love him be as the sun when it rises in its might.”

The historical background of this great event is unknown. The Israelite confederation consists of central Palestine with the (east-Jordanic) Machir, and the northern tribes with the exception of Dan and Asher. This has suggested to some an invasion from the coast, or from the north by way of the coast, since had Dan and Asher fallen into the hands of the enemy, this would probably have been referred to in some way. Sisera is scarcely a Semitic name; a “Hittite” origin has been suggested.1 Shamgar son of Anath seems equally foreign; the latter is the name of a Syrian goddess and the former recalls Sangara, a Hittite chief of Carchemish in the 9th century. The context suggests that Shamgar is a foreign oppressor (ver. 6), but he appears to have been converted subsequently into one of the “judges” of Israel (iii. 31), perhaps with the idea of bringing their total up to twelve.

The prose version (iv.) contains new and conflicting details. Deborah, whose home is placed under “Deborah’s palm” between Ramah and Bethel, summons Barak from Kadesh-Naphtali to collect Naphtali and Zebulun, 10,000 strong, and to meet Sisera (who is here the general of a certain Jabin, king of Hazor) at Mt. Tabor. But Sisera marches south to Kishon, and after his defeat flees north through Israelite territory, past Hazor to the neighbourhood of Kadesh. His death, moreover, is differently described (iv. 21, v. 25-27), and Jael “who with inhospitable guile smote Sisera sleeping” (Milton) is guilty of an act which has possibly originated from a misunderstanding of the poem. In the prose narrative Jabin has nothing to do with the fight, whereas in Josh. xi. he is at the head of an alliance of north Canaanite kings who were defeated by Joshua at the waters of Merom. It would seem that certain elements which are inconsistent with the representation in Judg. v. belonged originally to the other battle. Kadesh, for example, might be a natural meeting-place for an attack upon Hazor, and the designation “Jabin’s general,” applied to Sisera, is probably due to the attempt to harmonize the two distinct stories. Moreover, Deborah, who is associated with the tribe of Issachar (v. 15), appears to have been confused with Rebekah’s nurse, whose tomb lay near Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 5). Some more northerly place seems to be required, and it has been pointed out that the name corresponds with Daberath (modern Dabūrīyeh) at the foot of Tabor, on the border of Zebulun and Issachar. At all events, to represent her as a prophetess, judging the people of Israel (iv. 4 seq.), ill accords with both the older account (v.) and the general situation reflected in the earlier narratives in the book of Judges.

For fuller details see G. A. Cooke, History and Song of Deborah (1892), the commentaries on Judges and the histories of Israel. Cheyne, Critica Biblica, pp. 446-464, offers many new textual emendations. Paton (Syria and Palestine, p. 158 sqq.) suggests that the battle was against the Hittites (Sisera, a successor of Shamgar). See also L. W. Batten, Journ. Bibl. Lit. (1905) pp. 31-40 (who regards Judg. v. and Josh. xi. as duplicates); Winckler, Gesch. Israels, ii. 125-155; Keilinschr. u. d. Alte Test.(3) p. 218; and Ed. Meyer, Israeliten, pp. 272 sqq., 487 sqq.

(S. A. C.)

1 The term “Hittite” is here used as a loose but convenient designation for closely related groups of N. Syria; see Hittites.

DEBRECZEN, a town of Hungary, capital of the county of Hajdu, 138 m. E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 72,351. It is the principal Protestant centre in Hungary, and bears the name of “Calvinistic Rome.” Debreczen is one of the largest towns of Hungary, and is situated in the midst of a sandy but fertile plain. It consists of the inner old town, and several suburbs, which stretch out irregularly into the plain. The walls of the old town have given place to a broad boulevard and several open commons, beautifully laid out. The most prominent of its public buildings is the principal Protestant church, built at the beginning of the 19th century, which ranks as the largest in the country, but has no great architectural pretensions. In its immediate neighbourhood is the Protestant Collegium, for theology and law, which is one of the most frequented institutions of its kind in Hungary, being attended by over two thousand students. This college was founded in 1531, and possesses a rich library and other scientific collections. The town hall, the Franciscan church, the Piarist monastery and college, and the theatre are also worthy of mention. Amongst its educational establishments it includes an agricultural academy. The industries of the town are various, but none is of importance enough to give it the character of a manufacturing centre. Its tobacco-pipes, sausages and soap are widely known. It carries on an active trade in cattle, horses, corn and honey, while four well-attended fairs are held annually. The municipality of Debreczen owns between three hundred and four hundred square miles of the adjoining country, which possesses all the characteristics of the Hungarian puszta, and on which roam large herds of cattle.

The town is of considerable antiquity, but owes its development to the refugees who flocked from the villages plundered by the Turks in the 15th century. In 1552 it adopted the Protestant faith, and it had to suffer in consequence, especially when it was captured in 1686 by the imperial forces. In 1693 it was made a royal free city. In 1848-1849 it formed a refuge for the national government and legislature when Budapest fell into the hands of the Austrians; and it was in the great Calvinist church that, on Kossuth’s motion (April 14th, 1849) the resolution was passed declaring the house of Habsburg to have forfeited the crown of St Stephen. On the 3rd of July the town was captured by the Russians.

DEBT (Lat. debitum, a thing owed), a definite sum due by one person to another. It may be created by contract, by statute or by judgment. Putting aside those created by statute, recoverable by civil process, debts may be divided into three classes, (1) judgment debts, (2) specialty debts, and (3) simple contract debts. As to judgment debts, it is sufficient to say that, when by the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction an order is made that a sum of money be paid by one of two parties to another, such a debt is not only enforceable by process of court, but it can be sued upon as if it were an ordinary debt. A specialty debt is created by deed or instrument under seal. Until 1869 specialty debts had preference under English law over simple contract debts in the event of the bankruptcy or death of the debtor, but this was abolished by the Administration of Estates Act of that year. The main difference now is that a specialty debt may, in general, be created without consideration, as for example by a bond (a gratuitous promise under seal), and that a right of action arising out of a specialty debt is not barred if exercised any time within twenty years, whereas a right of action arising out of a simple contract debt is barred unless exercised within six years. (See Limitation, Statutes of.) Any other debt than a judgment or specialty debt, whether evidenced by writing or not, is a simple contract debt. There are also certain liabilities or debts which, for the convenience of the remedy, have been made to appear as though they sprang from contract, and are sometimes termed quasi-contracts. Such would be an admission by one who is in account with another that there is a balance due from him. Such an admission implies a promise to pay when requested and creates an actionable liability ex contractu. Or, when one person is compelled by law to discharge the legal liabilities of another, he becomes the creditor of the person for the money so paid. Again, where a person has received money under circumstances which disentitle him to retain it, such as receiving payment of an account twice over, it can generally be recovered as a debt.

At English common law debts and other choses in action were not assignable (see Chose), but by the Judicature Act 1873 any absolute assignment of any debt or other legal chose in action, of which express notice in writing is given to the debtor, trustee or other person from whom the assignor would have been entitled to receive or claim such debt, is effectual in law. Debts do not, as a general rule, carry interest, but such an obligation may arise either by agreement or by mercantile usage or by statute. The discharge of a debt may take place either by payment of the amount due, by accord and satisfaction, i.e. acceptance of something else in discharge of the liability, by set-off (q.v.), by release or under the law of bankruptcy (q.v.). It is the duty of a debtor to pay a debt without waiting for any demand, and, unless there is a place fixed on either by custom or agreement, he must seek out his creditor for the purpose of paying him unless he is “beyond the seas.” Payment by a third person to the creditor is no discharge of a debt, as a general rule, unless the debtor subsequently ratifies the payment. When a debtor tenders the amount due to his creditor and the creditor refuses to accept, the debt is not discharged, but if the debtor is subsequently sued for the debt and continues willing and ready to pay, and pays the amount tendered into court, he can recover his costs in the action. A creditor is not bound to give change to the debtor, whose duty it is to make tender in lawful money the whole amount due, or more, without asking for change. (See Payment.) A debtor takes the risk if he makes payment through the post, unless the creditor has requested or authorized that mode of payment. The payment of a debt is sometimes secured by one person, called a surety, who makes himself collaterally liable for the debt of the principal. (See Guarantee.) The ordinary method of enforcing a debt is by action. Where the debt does not exceed £100 the simplest procedure for its recovery is that of the county court, but if the debt exceeds £100 the creditor must proceed in the high court, unless the cause of action has arisen within the jurisdiction of certain inferior courts, such as the mayor’s court of London, the Liverpool court of passage, &c. When judgment has been obtained it may be enforced either by process (under certain conditions) against the person of the debtor, by an execution against the debtor’s property, or, with the assistance of the court, by attaching any debt owed to the debtor by a third person. Where a debtor has committed any act of bankruptcy a creditor or creditors whose aggregate claims are not less than £50 may proceed against him in bankruptcy (q.v.). Where the debtor is a company or corporation registered under the companies acts, the creditor may petition to have it wound up. (See Company.)

Imprisonment for debt, the evils of which have been so graphically described by Dickens, was abolished in England by the Debtors Act 1869, except in cases of default of payment of penalties, default by trustees or solicitors and certain other cases. But in cases where a debt or instalment is in arrear and it is proved to the satisfaction of the court that the person making default either has or has had since the date of the order or judgment the means to pay the sum in respect of which he has made default and has refused or neglected to pay, he may be committed to prison at the discretion of the judge for a period of not more than forty-two days. In practice, a period of twenty-one days is usually the maximum period ordered. Such an imprisonment does not operate as a satisfaction or extinguishment of the debt, and no second order of commitment can be made against him for the same debt, although where the court has made an order or judgment for the payment of the debt by instalments a power of committal arises on default of payment of each instalment. In Ireland imprisonment for debt was abolished by the Debtors Act (Ireland) 1872, and in Scotland by the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1880. In France it was abolished in 1867, in Belgium in 1871, in Switzerland and Norway in 1874, and in Italy in 1877. In the United States imprisonment for debt was universal under the common law, but it has been abolished in every state, except in certain cases, as where there is any suspicion of fraud or where the debtor has an intention of removing out of the state to avoid his debts. (See also Contract; Bankruptcy.)

DEBUSSY, CLAUDE ACHILLE (1862- ), French composer, was born at St Germain-en-Laye on the 22nd of August 1862, and educated at the Paris Conservatoire under Marmontel, Lavignac, Massenet and Guiraud. There between 1874 and 1884 he gained many prizes for solfège, pianoforte playing, accompanying, counterpoint and fugue, and, in the last-named year, the coveted Grand Prix de Rome by means of his cantata L’Enfant prodigue. In this composition already were thought to be noticeable the germs of unusual and “new” talent, though in the light of later developments it is not very easy to discern them, for then Debussy had not come under the influence which ultimately turned his mind to the system he afterwards used, not only with peculiar distinction but also with particular individual and complete success. Nevertheless, the mind had clearly been prepared by nature for the reception of this influence when it should arise; for, in order to fulfil that condition of the Prix de Rome which entails the submitting periodically of compositions to the judges, Debussy sent to them his symphonic suite Printemps, to which the judges took exception on the ground of its formlessness. Following in the wake of Printemps came La damoiselle élue for solo, female voice and orchestra—a setting of a French version of Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damosel”—which in the eyes of the judges was even more unorthodox than its predecessor, though, be it said, fault was found as much with the libretto as with the music. Both works were denied the customary public performance.

The Rome period over, Debussy returned to Paris, whence shortly he went to Russia, where he came directly under the influence referred to above. In Russia he absorbed the native music, especially that of Moussorgsky, who, recently dead, had left behind him the reputation of a “musical nihilist,” and on his return to Paris Debussy devoted himself to composition, the stream of his muse being even in 1908 as fluent as twenty years before. To him public recognition was slow in coming, but in 1893 the Société Nationale de Musique performed his Damoiselle élue, in 1894 the Ysaye Quartet introduced the string quartet, while in the same year the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune was heard, and brought Debussy’s name into some prominence. As time passed the prominence grew, until the climax of Debussy’s creative career was reached by the production at the Opéra Comique on the 30th of April 1902 of his masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande. Herein lay the whole strength of Debussy’s system, the perfection of his appeal to the mind and imagination as well as to the emotions and senses. Since its production the world has been enriched by La Mer, and by the Ariettes oubliées, but the lyric drama remains on its own lofty pedestal, a monument of elusive and subtle beauty, of emphatic originality and of charm. In an Apologia Debussy has declared that in composing Pelléas he “wanted to dispense with parasitic musical phrases. Melody is, if I may say so, almost anti-lyric, and powerless to express the constant change of emotion or life. Melody is suitable only for the chanson, which confirms a fixed sentiment. I have never been willing that my music should hinder, through technical exigencies, the change of sentiment and passion felt by my characters. It is effaced as soon as it is necessary that these should have perfect liberty in their gestures or in their cries, in their joy, or in their sorrow.”

The list of Debussy’s works is a lengthy one. Several of them have been referred to already. Among the others, of which the complete list is too long to print here, are the dances for chromatic harp or pianoforte; Images; incidental music to King Lear; the Petite Suite; Trois Nocturnes; innumerable songs, as Proses Lyriques (text by Debussy); two series of Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes; Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire; many pianoforte pieces.

In 1891 Debussy was appointed critic of the Revue Blanche. In his first notice he expressed his faith thus: “I shall endeavour to trace in a musical work the many different emotions which have helped to give it birth, also to demonstrate its inner life. This, surely, will be accounted of greater interest than the game which consists in dissecting it as if it were a curious timepiece.”

As to the theories, so much debated, of this remarkable musician—probably in the whole range of musical history there has not appeared a more difficult theorist to “place.” Unquestionably Debussy has introduced a new system of colour into music, which has begun already to exert widespread influence. Roughly, Debussy’s system may be summarized thus:

His scale basis is of six whole tones (enharmonic), as (1) middle C, D, E, G♭, A♭, B♭, which are of excellent sound when superimposed in the form of two augmented unrelated triads.

B♭ G♭ or enharmonically D A♯ F♯ D

A♭ E C G♯ E C

used frequently incomplete (i.e. by the omission of one note) by Debussy.

E C A F♯ D

Now, upon the basis of an augmented triad a tune may be played above it provided that it be based upon the six-tone scale, and a fugue may be written, the re-entry of the subject of which may be made upon any note of the scale, and the harmony will be complete. To associate this scale with the ordinary diatonic scale let a major 9th be taken, e.g.: one may conventionally flatten or sharpen the fifth of this (A becoming ♯ or ♭ as desired): if both the flattened and sharpened fifths be taken in the one chord this chord is arrived at:

E C B♭ A♭ F♯ D (A♯ enharmonically altered to B♭)

which is composed of the notes of the aforesaid scale (1), and Debussy thereby proves his case to belong to the “primitifs.” It will be noticed that chords of the 9th in sequence and in all forms occur in Debussy’s music as well as the augmented triad harmonics, where the melodic line is based on the tonal scale. This, in all likelihood, is the outcome of Debussy’s instinctive feeling for the association of his so-called discovery with the ordinary scale. The “secret,” it may be added, comes not from Annamese music as has been frequently stated, but probably from Russia, where certainly it was used before Debussy’s rise.

(R. H. L.)

DECADE (from Gr. δέκα, ten), a group or series containing ten members, particularly a period of ten years. In the new calendar made at the time of the French Revolution in 1793, a decade of ten days took the place of the week. The word is also used of the divisions containing ten books or parts into which the history of Livy was divided.

DECAEN, CHARLES MATHIEU ISIDORE, Count (1769-1832), French soldier, was born at Caen on the 13th of April 1769. He was educated for the bar, but soon showed a strong preference for the military career, in which he quickly made his way during the wars of the French Revolution under Kléber, Marceau and Jourdan, in the Rhenish campaigns. In 1799 he became general of division, and contributed to the success of the famous attack by General Richepanse on the Austrian flank and rear at Hohenlinden (December 1800). Becoming known for his Anglophobe tendencies, he was selected by Napoleon early in the year 1802 for the command of the French possessions in the East Indies. The secret instructions issued to him bade him prepare the way, so that in due course (September 1804 was hinted at as the suitable time) everything might be ready for an attack on the British power in India. Napoleon held out to him the hope of acquiring lasting glory in that enterprise. Decaen set sail with Admiral Linois early in March 1803 with a small expeditionary force, touched at the Cape of Good Hope (then in Dutch hands), and noted the condition of the fortifications there. On arriving at Pondicherry he found matters in a very critical condition. Though the outbreak of war in Europe had not yet been heard of, the hostile preparations adopted by the Marquis Wellesley caused Decaen to withdraw promptly to the Isle of France (Mauritius), where, during eight years, he sought to harass British trade and prepare for plans of alliance with the Mahratta princes of India. They all came to naught. Linois was captured by a British squadron, and ultimately, in 1811, Mauritius itself fell to the Union Jack. Returning to France on honourable terms, Decaen received the command of the French troops in Catalonia. The rest of his career calls for no special mention. He died of the cholera in 1832.

See M. L. E. Gautier, Biographie du général Decaen (Caen, 1850).

(J. Hl. R.)

DECALOGUE (in patristic Gr. ἡ δεκάλογος, sc. βἰβλος or νομοθεσία), another name for the biblical Ten Commandments, in Hebrew the Ten Words (Deut. iv. 13, x. 4; Ex. xxxiv. 28), written by God on the two tables of stone (Ex. xxiv. 12, xxxii. 16), the so-called Tables of the Revelation (E.V. “tables of testimony,” Ex. xxxiv. 29), or Tables of the Covenant (Deut. ix. 9, 11, 15). These tables were broken by Moses (Ex. xxxii. 19), and two new ones were hewn (xxxiv. 1), and upon them were written the words of the covenant by Moses (xxxiv. 27 sqq.) or, according to another view, by God himself (Deut. iv. 13, ix. 10). They were deposited in the Ark (Ex. xxv. 21; 1 Kings viii. 9). In Deuteronomy the inscription on these tables, which is briefly called the covenant (iv. 13), is expressly identified with the words spoken by Jehovah (Yahweh) out of the midst of the fire at Mt. Sinai or Horeb (according to the Deuteronomic tradition), in the ears of the whole people on the “day of the assembly,” and rehearsed in v. 6-21. In the narrative of Exodus the relation of the “ten words” of xxxiv. to the words spoken from Sinai, xx. 2-17, is not so clearly indicated, and it is generally agreed that the Pentateuch presents divergent and irreconcilable views of the Sinaitic covenant.

As regards the Decalogue, as usually understood, and embodied in the parallel passages in Ex. xx. and Deut. v., certain preliminary points of detail have to be noticed. The variations in the parallel texts are partly verbal, partly stylistic (e.g. “Remember the Sabbath day,” Ex.; but “observe,” &c., Deut.), and partly consist of amplifications or divergent explanations. Thus the reason assigned for the institution of the Sabbath in Exodus is drawn from the creation, and agrees with Gen. ii. 3. In Deuteronomy the command is based on the duty of humanity to servants and the memory of Egyptian bondage. Again, in the tenth commandment, as given in Exodus, “house” means house and household, including the wife and all the particulars which are enumerated in ver. 17. In Deuteronomy, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife,” comes first, and “house” following in association with field is to be taken in the literal restricted sense, and another verb (“thou shalt not desire”) is used.

The construction of the second commandment in the Hebrew text is disputed, but the most natural sense seems to be, “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image; (and) to no visible shape in heaven, &c., shalt thou bow down, &c.” The third commandment might be rendered, “Thou shalt not utter the name of the Lord thy God vainly,” but it is possible that the meaning is that Yahweh’s name is not to be used for purposes of sorcery.

The order of the commandments relating to murder, adultery and stealing varies in the Vatican text of the Septuagint, viz. adultery, stealing, murder, in Ex.; adultery, murder, stealing, in Deut. The latter is supported by several passages in the New Testament (Rom. xiii. 9; Mark x. 19, A.V.; Luke xviii. 20; contrast Matt. xix. 18), and by the “Nash Papyrus.”1 It may be added that the double system of accentuation of the Decalogue in the Hebrew Bible seems to preserve traces of the ancient uncertainty concerning the numeration.

Divisions of the Decalogue.—The division current in England and Scotland, and generally among the Reformed (Calvinistic) churches and in the Orthodox Eastern Church, is known as the Philonic division (Philo, de Decalogo, §12). It is sometimes called by the name of Origen, who adopts it in his Homilies on Exodus. On this scheme the preface, Ex. xx. 2, has been usually taken as part of the first commandment. The Church of Rome and the Lutherans adopt the Augustinian division (Aug., Quaest. super Exod., lxxi.), combining into one the first and second commandments of Philo, and splitting his tenth commandment into two. To gain a clear distinction between the ninth and tenth commandments on this scheme it has usually been felt to be necessary to follow the Deuteronomic text, and make the ninth commandment, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.2 As few scholars will now claim priority for the text of Deuteronomy, this division may be viewed as exploded. But there is a third scheme (the Talmudic) still current among the Jews, and not unknown to early Christian writers, which is still a rival of the Philonic view, though less satisfactory. Here the preface, Ex. xx. 2, is taken as the first “word,” and the second embraces verses 3-6.

See further Nestle, Expository Times (1897), p. 427. The decision between Philo and the Talmud must turn on two questions. Can we take the preface as a separate “word”? And can we regard the prohibition of polytheism and the prohibition of idolatry as one commandment? Now, though the Hebrew certainly speaks of ten “words,” not of ten “precepts,” it is most unlikely that the first word can be different in character from those that follow. But the statement “I am the Lord thy God” is either no precept at all, or only enjoins by implication what is expressly commanded in the words “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Thus to take the preface as a distinct word is not reasonable unless there are cogent grounds for uniting the commandments against polytheism and idolatry. But that is far from being the case. The first precept of the Philonic scheme enjoins monolatry, the second expresses God’s spiritual and transcendental nature. Accordingly Kuenen does not deny that the prohibition of images contains an element additional to the precept of monolatry, but, following De Goeje, regards the words from “thou shalt not make unto thyself” down to “the waters under the earth” as a later insertion in the original Decalogue. Unless this can be made out, the Philonic scheme is clearly best, and as such it is now accepted by most scholars.

How were the ten words disposed on the two tables? The natural arrangement (which is assumed by Philo and Josephus) would be five and five. And this, as Philo recognized, is a division appropriate to the sense of the precepts; for antiquity did not look on piety towards parents as a mere precept of probity, part of one’s duty towards one’s neighbour. The authority of parents and rulers is viewed in the Old Testament as a delegated divine authority, and the violation of it is akin to blasphemy (cf. Ex. xxi. 17 and Lev. xx. 9 with Lev. xxiv. 15, 16, and note the formula of treason, 1 Kings xxi. 13).

We have thus five precepts of piety on the first table, and five of probity, in negative form, on the second, an arrangement which is accepted by the best recent writers. But the current view of the Western Church since Augustine has been that the precept to honour parents heads the second table. The only argument of weight in favour of this view is that it makes the amount of writing on the two tables less unequal, while we know that the second table as well as the first was written on both sides (Ex. xxxii. 15). But we shall presently see that there may be another way out of this difficulty.

Date.—It is much disputed what the original compass of the Decalogue was. Did the whole text of Ex. xx. 2-17 stand on the tables of stone? The answer to this question must start from the reason annexed to the fourth commandment, which is different in Deuteronomy. But the express words “and he added no more,” in Deut. v. 22, show that there is no conscious omission by the Deuteronomic speaker of part of the original Decalogue, which cannot therefore have included the reason annexed in Exodus. On the other hand the reason annexed in Deuteronomy is rather a parenetic addition than an original element dropped in Exodus. Thus the original fourth commandment was simply “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”3 When this is granted it must appear not improbable that the elucidations of other commandments may not have stood on the tables, and that Nos. 6-9 have survived in their original form. Thus in the second commandment, “Thou shalt not bow down to any visible form,” &c., is a sort of explanatory addition to the precept “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image.” And so the promise attached to the fifth commandment was probably not on the tables, and the tenth commandment may have simply been, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house,” which includes all that is expressed in the following clauses. Such a view gets over the difficulty arising from the unequal length of the two halves of the Decalogue.

It is quite another question whether there is any idea in the Decalogue which can be as old as Moses. It is urged by many critics that Moses cannot have prohibited the worship of Yahweh by images; for the subsequent history shows us a descendant of Moses as priest in the idolatrous sanctuary of Dan. There were teraphim in David’s house, and the worship of Yahweh under the image of a calf was the state religion of the kingdom of Ephraim. Even Moses himself is said to have made a brazen serpent which, down to Hezekiah’s time, continued to be worshipped at Jerusalem. It is argued from these facts that image-worship went on unchallenged, and that this would not have been possible had Moses forbidden it. The argument is supported by others of great cogency. Although the literary problems of the chapters which narrate the law-giving on Mt. Sinai are extremely intricate, it is generally agreed that Ex. xx. cannot be ascribed to the oldest source, and if, in accordance with many critics, this chapter is ascribed to the Elohist or Ephraimite school, its incorporation can scarcely be older than the middle of the 8th century, and is probably later. With this, the condemnation of adultery in Gen. xx. 1-17 (contrast xii. 10-20, xxvi. 6-11) is in harmony, and the prohibition of the worship of the heavenly bodies is aimed at a form of idolatry which is frequently alluded to in the times of the later kings. The lofty ethics (e.g. tenth commandment) is in itself no sound criterion, whilst the external form of the laws, though characteristic of later codes, need not be taken as evidence of importance. But the general result of a study of the Decalogue as a whole, in connexion with Israelite political history and religion, strongly supports, in fact demands, a post-Mosaic origin, and modern criticism is chiefly divided only as to the approximate date to which it is to be ascribed. The time of Manasseh (cf. especially its contact with Micah vi. 6-8) has found many adherents, but an earlier period, about 750 B.C. (time of Amos and Hosea), is often held to satisfy the main conditions; the former, however, is probably nearer the mark.

The Decalogue of Exodus xxxiv.—In the book of Exodus the words written on the tables of stone are nowhere expressly identified with the ten commandments of chap. xx. In xxv. 16, xxxi. 18, xxxii. 15, we simply read of “the testimony” inscribed on the tables, and it seems to be assumed that its contents must be already known to the reader. The expression “ten words” first occurs in xxxiv. 28, in a passage which relates the restoration of the tables after they had been broken. But these “ten words” are called “the words of the covenant,” and so can hardly be different from the words mentioned in the preceding verse as those in accordance wherewith the covenant was made with Israel. And again, the words of ver. 27 are necessarily the commandments which immediately precede in vv. 12-26. Accordingly many recent critics have sought to show that Ex. xxxiv. 12-26 contains just ten precepts forming a second decalogue.4

These consist not of precepts of social morality, but of several laws of religious observance closely corresponding to the religious and ritual precepts of Ex. xxi.-xxiii. The number ten is not clearly made out, and the individual precepts are somewhat variously assigned. They prohibit (1) the worship of other gods, (2) the making of molten images; they ordain (3) the observance of the feast of unleavened bread, (4) the feast of weeks, (5) the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, and (6) the seventh-day rest; to Yahweh belong (7) the firstlings, and (8) the first-fruits of the land; they forbid also (9) the offering of the blood of sacrifice with leaven, (10) the leaving-over of the fat of a feast until the morning, and (11) the seething of a kid in its mother’s milk. This scheme ignores the command to appear thrice in the year before Yahweh which recapitulates Nos. 3-5, and the decade is obtained by omitting No. 6, which some hold to be out of place. Others include “none shall appear before me empty-handed” (xxxiv. 20), and unite Nos. 4-5, 9 and 10. C. F. Kent (Beginnings of Heb. Hist. pp. 183 sqq.) obtains a decalogue from scattered precepts in Ex. xx.-xxiii., which corresponds with Nos. 2, 7, 6, 3 and 5 (in one), 9 and 10 (in one), 11 above, and adds (a) the building of an altar of earth (xx. 24), (b) offering from the harvest and wine-press (xxii. 29), (c) firstlings of animals (xxii. 29 sqq.; cf. No. 7, and xxxiv. 19); (d) prohibition against eating torn flesh (xxii. 31).5 The so-called Yahwist Decalogue in xxxiv. presupposes a rather more primitive stage in society, partly nomadic and partly agricultural; No. 6 is suitable only for agriculturists and cannot have originated among nomads. The whole may be summed up in a sentence:—“Worship Yahweh and Yahweh alone, without images, let the worship be simple and in accord with the old usage; forbear to introduce the practices of your Canaanitish neighbours” (Harper). It would seem to represent more precisely a Judaean standpoint (cf. the simpler customs of the Rechabites, q.v.).

If such a system of precepts was ever viewed as the basis of the covenant with Israel, it must belong to a far earlier stage of religious development than that of Ex. xx. This is recognized by Wellhausen, who says that our decalogue stands to that of Ex. xxxiv. as Amos stood to his contemporaries, whose whole religion lay in the observance of sacred feasts. To those accustomed to look on the Ten Words written on the tables of stone as the very foundation of the Mosaic law, it is hard to realize that in ancient Israel there were two opinions as to what these “Words” were. The hypothesis that Ex. xxxiv. 10-26 originally stood in a different connexion, and was misplaced at some stage in the redaction of the Hexateuch, does not help us, since it would still have to be admitted that the editor to whom we owed the present form of the chapter identified this little code of religious observances with the Ten Words. Were this the case the editor, to quote Wellhausen, “introduced the most serious internal contradiction found in the Old Testament.”6

The Decalogue in Christian Theology.—Following the New Testament, in which the “commandments” summed up in the law of love are identified with the precepts of the Decalogue (Mark x. 19; Rom. xiii. 9; cf. Mark xii. 28 ff.), the ancient Church emphasized the permanent obligation of the ten commandments as a summary of natural in contradistinction to ceremonial precepts, though the observance of the Sabbath was to be taken in a spiritual sense (Augustine, De spiritu et litera, xiv.; Jerome, De celebratione Paschae). The medieval theologians followed in the same line, recognizing all the precepts of the Decalogue as moral precepts de lege naturae, though the law of the Sabbath is not of the law of nature, in so far as it prescribes a determinate day of rest (Thomas, summa, Ima IIdae, qu. c. art. 3; Duns, Super sententias, lib. iii. dist. 37). The most important medieval exposition of the Decalogue is that of Nicolaus de Lyra; and the 15th century, in which the Decalogue acquired special importance in the confessional, was prolific in treatises on the subject (Antoninus of Florence, Gerson, &c.).

Important theological controversies on the Decalogue begin with the Reformation. The question between the Lutheran (Augustinian) and Reformed (Philonic) division of the ten commandments was mixed up with controversy as to the legitimacy of sacred images not designed to be worshipped. The Reformed theologians took the stricter view. The identity of the Decalogue with the eternal law of nature was maintained in both churches, but it was an open question whether the Decalogue, as such (that is, as a law given by Moses to the Israelites), is of perpetual obligation. The Socinians, on the other hand, regarded the Decalogue as abrogated by the more perfect law of Christ; and this view, especially in the shape that the Decalogue is a civil and not a moral law (J. D. Michaelis), was the current one in the period of 18th-century rationalism. The distinction of a permanent and a transitory element in the law of the Sabbath is found, not only in Luther and Melanchthon, but in Calvin and other theologians of the Reformed church. The main controversy which arose on the basis of this distinction was whether the prescription of one day in seven is of permanent obligation. It was admitted that such obligation must be not natural but positive; but it was argued by the stricter Calvinistic divines that the proportion of one in seven is agreeable to nature, based on the order of creation in six days, and in no way specially connected with anything Jewish. Hence it was regarded as a universal positive law of God. But those who maintained the opposite view were not excluded from the number of the orthodox. The laxer conception found a place in the Cocceian school.

Literature.—Geffcken, Über die verschiedenen Eintheilungen des Dekalogs und den Einfluss derselben auf den Cultus; W. Robertson Smith, Old Test. Jew. Church, pp. 331-345, where his earlier views (1877) in the Ency. Brit. are largely modified (cf. also Eng. Hist. Rev. (1888) p. 352); Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures (1892), Appendix I; W. R. Harper, Internat. Crit. Comm. on Amos and Hosea, pp. 58-64 (on the position of the Decalogue in early pre-prophetic religion of Israel); C. A. Briggs, Higher Criticism of Hexat.2 pp. 189-210; see also the references under Exodus.

(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)

1 A Hebrew fragment probably of the 2nd century A.D., in the University Library, Cambridge, containing the Decalogue with several variant readings; see S. A. Cook, Proceed. Soc. Bibl. Archaeology (1903), pp. 34-56; F. C. Burkitt, Jewish Quarterly Review (1903), pp. 392-408; N. Peters, D. älteste Abschrift d. zehn Gebote (1905).

2 So, for example, Augustine, l.c., Thomas, Summa (Prima Secundae, qu. c. art. 4), and recently Sonntag and Kurtz. Purely arbitrary is the idea of Lutheran writers (Gerhard, Loc. xiii. § 46) that the ninth commandment forbids concupiscentia actualis, the tenth conc. originalis.

3 It is generally assumed that the addition in Exodus is from a hand akin to Gen. ii. 2 sqq.; Ex. xxxi. 17 (P.).

4 So Hitzig (Ostern und Pfingsten im zweiten Dekalog, Heidelberg, 1838), independently of a previous suggestion of Goethe in 1783, who in turn appears to have been anticipated by an early Greek writer (Nestle, Zeit. für alt-test. Wissenschaft (1904), pp. 134 sqq.).

5 See also W. E. Barnes, Journ. Theol. Stud. (1905), pp. 557-563.

6 The last three sentences of this paragraph are taken almost bodily from Robertson Smith’s later views (Old Testament in the Jewish Church2, pp. 335 seq.).

DE CAMP, JOSEPH (1858- ), American portrait and figure painter, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1858. He was a pupil of Frank Duveneck and of the Royal Academy of Munich; became a member of the society of Ten American Painters, and a teacher in the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; and painted important mural decorations in the Philadelphia city hall.

DECAMPS, ALEXANDRE GABRIEL (1803-1860), French painter, was born in Paris on the 3rd of March 1803. In his youth he travelled in the East, and reproduced Oriental life and scenery with a bold fidelity to nature that made his works the puzzle of conventional critics. His powers, however, soon came to be recognized, and he was ranked along with Delacroix and Vernet as one of the leaders of the French school. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he received the grand or council medal. Most of his life was passed in the neighbourhood of Paris. He was passionately fond of animals, especially dogs, and indulged in all kinds of field sports. He died on the 22nd of August 1860 in consequence of being thrown from a vicious horse while hunting at Fontainebleau. The style of Decamps was characteristically and intensely French. It was marked by vivid dramatic conception, by a manipulation bold and rapid, sometimes even to roughness, and especially by original and startling use of decided contrasts of colour and of light and shade. His subjects embraced an unusually wide range. He availed himself of his travels in the East in dealing with scenes from Scripture history, which he was probably the first of European painters to represent with their true and natural local background. Of this class were his “Joseph sold by his Brethren,” “Moses taken from the Nile,” and his scenes from the life of Samson, nine vigorous sketches in charcoal and white. Perhaps the most impressive of his historical pictures is his “Defeat of the Cimbri,” representing with wonderful skill the conflict between a horde of barbarians and a disciplined army. Decamps produced a number of genre pictures, chiefly of scenes from French and Algerine domestic life, the most marked feature of which is humour. The same characteristic attaches to most of his numerous animal paintings. He painted dogs, horses, &c., with great fidelity and sympathy; but his favourite subject was monkeys, which he depicted in various studies and sketches with a grotesque humour that could scarcely be surpassed. Probably the best known of all his works is “The Monkey Connoisseurs,” a clever satire of the jury of the French Academy of Painting, which had rejected several of his earlier works on account of their divergence from any known standard. The pictures and sketches of Decamps were first made familiar to the English public through the lithographs of Eugène le Roux.

See Moreau’s Decamps et son œuvre (Paris, 1869).

DECAPOLIS, a league of ten cities (δέκα πόλεις) with their surrounding district, situated with one exception on the eastern side of the upper Jordan and the Sea of Tiberias. Being essentially a confederation of cities it is impossible precisely to fix Decapolis as a region with definite boundaries. The names of the original ten cities are given by Pliny; these are as follows: Damascus, Philadelphia, Raphana, Scythopolis (= Beth-Shan, now Beisan, west of Jordan), Gadara, Hippos, Dion, Pella, Gerasa and Kanatha. Of these Damascus alone retains its importance. Scythopolis (as represented by the village of Beisan) is still inhabited; the ruins of Pella, Gerasa and Kanatha survive, but the other sites are unknown or disputed. Scythopolis, being in command of the communications with the sea and the Greek cities on the coast, was the most important member of the league. The league subsequently received additions and some of the original ten dropped out. In Ptolemy’s enumeration Raphana has no place, and nine, such as Kapitolias, Edrei, Bosra, &c., are added. The purpose of the league was no doubt mutual defence against the marauding Bedouin tribes that surrounded them. These were hardly if at all checked by the Semitic kinglings to whom the Romans delegated the government of eastern Palestine.

It was probably soon after Pompey’s campaign in 64-63 B.C. that the Decapolis league took shape. The cities comprising it were united by the main roads on which they lay, their respective spheres of influence touching, if not overlapping, one another. A constant communication was maintained with the Mediterranean ports and with Greece, and there was a vigorous municipal life which found expression in literature, in athletic contests, and in a thriving commerce, thus carrying a truly Hellenic influence into Perea and Galilee. From Josephus we learn that the cities were severally subject to the governor of Syria and taxed for imperial purposes; some of them afterwards came under Herod’s jurisdiction, but reserved the substantial rights granted them by Pompey.

The best account is in G. A. Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land, chap. xxviii.

(R. A. S. M.)

DECASTYLE (Gr. δέκα, ten, and στῦλος, column), the architectural term given to a temple where the front portico has ten columns; as in the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus, and the portico of University College, London. (See Temple.)

DECATUR, STEPHEN (1779-1820), American naval commander, was born at Sinnepuxent, Maryland, on the 5th of January 1779, and entered the United States navy as a midshipman in 1798. He was promoted lieutenant a year later, and in that rank saw some service in the short war with France. In 1803 he was in command of the “Enterprise,” which formed part of Commodore Preble’s squadron in the Mediterranean, and in February 1804 led a daring expedition into the harbour of Tripoli for the purpose of burning the U.S. frigate “Philadelphia” which had fallen into Tripolitan hands. He succeeded in his purpose and made his escape under the fire of the batteries with a loss of only one man wounded. This brilliant exploit earned him his captain’s commission and a sword of honour from Congress. Decatur was subsequently engaged in all the attacks on Tripoli between 1804 and 1805. In the War of 1812 his ship the “United States” captured H.M.S. “Macedonian” after a desperate fight, and in 1813 he was appointed commodore to command a squadron in New York harbour, which was soon blockaded by the British. In an attempt to break out in February 1815 Decatur’s flagship the “President” was cut off and after a spirited fight forced to surrender to a superior force. Subsequently he commanded in the Mediterranean against the corsairs of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli with great success. On his return he was made a navy commissioner (November 1815), an office which he held until his death, which took place in a duel with Commodore James Barron at Bladensburg, Md., on the 22nd of March 1820.

See Mackenzie, Life of Decatur (Boston, 1846).

DECATUR, a city and the county-seat of Macon county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the central part of the state, near the Sangamon river, about 39 m. E. of Springfield. Pop. (1890) 16,841; (1900) 20,754, of whom 1939 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 31,140. Decatur is served by the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, the Illinois Central, the Wabash (which maintains car shops here), and the Vandalia railways, and is connected with Danville, Saint Louis, Springfield, Peoria, Bloomington and Champaign by the Illinois Traction System (electric). Decatur has three large parks and a public library; and S.E. of Fairview Park, with a campus of 35 acres, is the James Millikin University (co-educational; Cumberland Presbyterian), founded in 1901 by James Millikin, and opened in 1903. The university comprises schools of liberal arts, engineering (mechanical, electrical, and civil), domestic economy, fine and applied arts, commerce and finance, library science, pedagogy, music, and a preparatory school; in 1907-1908 it had 936 students, 440 being in the school of music. Among the city’s manufactures are iron, brass castings, agricultural implements, flour, Indian corn products, soda fountains, plumbers’ supplies, coffins and caskets, bar and store fixtures, gas and electric light fixtures, street cars, and car trucks. The value of the city’s factory products increased from $5,133,677 in 1900 to $8,667,302 in 1905, or 68.8%. The city is also an important shipping point for agricultural products (especially grain), and for coal taken from the two mines in the city and from mines in the surrounding country. The first settlement in Decatur was made in 1829, and the place was incorporated in 1836. On the 22nd of February 1856 a convention of Illinois editors met at Decatur to determine upon a policy of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. They called a state convention, which met at Bloomington, and which is considered to have taken the first step toward founding the Republican party in Illinois.

DECAZES, ÉLIE, Duc (1780-1860), French statesman, was born at Saint Martin de Laye in the Gironde. He studied law, became a judge in the tribunal of the Seine in 1806, was attached to the cabinet of Louis Bonaparte in 1807, and was counsel to the court of appeal at Paris in 1811. Immediately upon the fall of the empire he declared himself a Royalist, and remained faithful to the Bourbons through the Hundred Days. He made the personal acquaintance of Louis XVIII. during that period through Baron Louis, and the king rewarded his energy and tact by appointing him prefect of police at Paris on the 7th of July 1815. His marked success in that difficult position won for him the ministry of police, in succession to Fouché, on the 24th of September. In the interval he had been elected deputy for the Seine (August 1815) and both as deputy and as minister he led the moderate Royalists. His formula was “to royalize France and to nationalize the monarchy.” The Moderates were in a minority in the chamber of 1815, but Decazes persuaded Louis XVIII. to dissolve the house, and the elections of October 1816 gave them a majority. During the next four years Decazes was called upon to play the leading rôle in the government. At first, as minister of police he had to suppress the insurrections provoked by the ultra-Royalists (the White Terror); then, after the resignation of the duc de Richelieu, he took the actual direction of the ministry, although the nominal president was General J. J. P. A. Dessolle (1767-1828). He held at the same time the portfolio of the interior. The cabinet, in which Baron Louis was minister of finance, and Marshal Gouvion Saint Cyr remained minister of war, was entirely Liberal; and its first act was to suppress the ministry of police, as Decazes held that it was incompatible with the régime of liberty. His reforms met with the strong hostility of the Chamber of Peers, where the ultra-Royalists were in a majority, and to overcome it he got the king to create sixty new Liberal peers. He then passed the laws on the press, suppressing the censorship. By reorganization of the finances, the protection of industry and the carrying out of great public works, France regained its economic prosperity, and the ministry became popular. But the powers of the Grand Alliance had been watching the growth of Liberalism in France with increasing anxiety. Metternich especially ascribed this mainly to the “weakness” of the ministry, and when in 1819 the political elections still further illustrated this trend, notably by the election of the celebrated Abbé Grégoire, it began to be debated whether the time had not come to put in force the terms of the secret treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was this threat of foreign intervention, rather than the clamour of the “Ultras,” that forced Louis XVIII. to urge a change in the electoral law that should render such a “scandal” as Grégoire’s election impossible for the future. Dessolle and Louis, refusing to embark on this policy, now resigned; and Decazes became head of the new ministry, as president of the council (November 1819). But the exclusion of Grégoire from the chamber and the changes in the franchise embittered the Radicals without conciliating the “Ultras.” The news of the revolution in Spain in January 1820 added fuel to their fury; it was the foolish and criminal policy of the royal favourite that had once more unchained the demon of revolution. Decazes was denounced as the new Sejanus, the modern Catiline; and when, on the 13th of February, the duke of Berry was murdered, clamorous tongues loudly accused him of being an accomplice in the crime. Decazes, indeed, foreseeing the storm, at once placed his resignation in the king’s hands. Louis at first refused. “They will attack,” he exclaimed, “not your system, my dear son, but mine.” But in the end he was forced to yield to the importunity of his family (February 17th); and Decazes, raised to the rank of duke, passed into honourable exile as ambassador to Great Britain.

This ended Decazes’s meteoric career of greatness. In December 1821 he returned to sit in the House of Peers, when he continued to maintain his Liberal opinions. After 1830 he adhered to the monarchy of July, but after 1848 he remained in retirement. He had organized in 1826 a society to develop the coal and iron of the Aveyron, and the name of Decazeville was given in 1829 to the principal centre of the industry. He died on the 24th of October 1860.

His son, Louis Charles Élie Decazes, duc de Glücksberg (1819-1886), was born at Paris, and entered the diplomatic career. He became minister plenipotentiary at Madrid and at Lisbon, but the revolution of 1848 caused him to withdraw into private life, from which he did not emerge until in 1871 he was elected deputy to the National Assembly by the Gironde. There he sat in the right centre among the Orleanists, and was chosen by the duc de Broglie as minister of foreign affairs in November 1873. He voted with the Orleanists the “Constitutional Laws” of 1875, and approved of MacMahon’s parliamentary coup d’état on the 16th of May 1877. He was re-elected deputy in October 1877 by the arrondissement of Puget-Théniers, but his election was annulled by the chamber, and he was not re-elected. He died on the 16th of September 1886.

On the Duc Decazes see E. Daudet, Louis XVIII. et le duc Decazes (1899), and his “L’ambassade du duc Decazes” in the Revue des deux mondes for 1899.

DECAZEVILLE, a town of south-central France, in the department of Aveyron, 34 m. N.W. of Rodez by the Orleans railway. Pop. (1906) 9749. It possesses iron mines and is the centre of the coal-fields of the Aveyron, which supply the ironworks established by the Duc Decazes, minister of Louis XVIII. A statue commemorates the founder.

DECCAN (Sans. Dakshina, “the South”), a name applied, according to Hindu geographers, to the whole of the territories in India situated to the south of the river Nerbudda. In its more modern acceptation, however, it is sometimes understood as comprising only the country lying between that river and the Kistna, the latter having for a long period formed the southern boundary of the Mahommedan empire of Delhi. Assigning it the more extended of these limits, it comprehends the whole of the Indian peninsula, and in this view the mountainous system, consisting of the Eastern and Western Ghats, constitutes the most striking feature of the Deccan. These two mountain ranges unite at their northern extremities with the Vindhya chain of mountains, and thus is formed a vast triangle supporting at a considerable elevation the expanse of table-land which stretches from Cape Comorin to the valley of the Nerbudda. The surface of this table-land slopes from west to east, as indicated by the direction of the drainage of the country,—the great rivers, the Cauvery, Godavari, Kistna and Pennar, though deriving their sources from the base of the Western Ghats, all finding their way into the Bay of Bengal through fissures in the Eastern Ghats.

History.—The detailed and authentic history of the Deccan only begins with the 13th century A.D. Of the early history the main facts established are the Aryan invasion (c. 700 B.C.), the growth of the Maurya empire (250 B.C.) and the invasion (A.D. 100) of the Scythic tribes known as the Sakas, Pahlavas and Yavanas, which led to the establishment of the power of the Kshaharata satraps in western India. In addition to this, modern study of monuments and inscriptions has recovered the names, and to a certain extent the records, of a succession of dynasties ruling in the Deccan; of these the most conspicuous are the Cholas, the Andhras or Satavahanas, the Chalukyas, the Rashtrakutas and the Yadavas of Devagiri (Deogiri). (See India: History; Bombay; Presidency: History; Inscriptions: Indian.) In 1294 Ala-ud-Din Khilji, emperor of Delhi, invaded the Deccan, stormed Devagiri, and reduced the Yadava rajas of Maharashtra to the position of tributary princes (see Daulatabad), then proceeding southward overran Telingana and Carnata (1294-1300). With this event the continuous history of the Deccan begins. In 1307, owing to non-payment of tribute, a fresh series of Mussulman incursions began, under Malik Kafur, issuing in the final ruin of the Yadava power; and in 1338 the reduction of the Deccan was completed by Mahommed ben Tughlak. The imperial sway was, however, of brief duration. Telingana and Carnata speedily reverted to their former masters; and this defection on the part of the Hindu states was followed by a general revolt of the Mussulman governors, resulting in the establishment in 1347 of the independent Mahommedan dynasty of Bahmani, and the consequent withdrawal of the power of Delhi from the territory south of the Nerbudda. In the struggles which ensued, the Hindu kingdom of Telingana fell bit by bit to the Bahmani dynasty, who advanced their frontier to Golconda in 1373, to Warangal in 1421, and to the Bay of Bengal in 1472. On the dissolution of the Bahmani empire (1482), its dominions were distributed into the five Mahommedan states of Golconda, Bijapur, Ahmednagar, Bidar and Berar. To the south of these the great Hindu state of Carnata or Vijayanagar still survived; but this, too, was destroyed, at the battle of Talikota (1565), by a league of the Mahommedan powers. These latter in their turn soon disappeared. Berar had already been annexed by Ahmednagar in 1572, and Bidar was absorbed by Bijapur in 1609. The victories of the Delhi emperors, Akbar, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, crushed the rest. Ahmednagar was incorporated in the Mogul empire in 1598, Bijapur in 1686, and Golconda in 1688. The rule of the Delhi emperors in the Deccan did not, however, long survive. In 1706 the Mahrattas acquired the right of levying tribute in southern India, and their principal chief, the Peshwa of Poona, became a practically independent sovereign. A few years later the emperor’s viceroy in Ahmednagar, the nizam-al-mulk, threw off his allegiance and established the seat of an independent government at Hyderabad (1724). The remainder of the imperial possessions in the peninsula were held by chieftains acknowledging the supremacy of one or other of these two potentates. In the sequel, Mysore became the prize of the Mahommedan usurper Hyder Ali. During the contests for power which ensued about the middle of the 18th century between the native chiefs, the French and the English took opposite sides. After a brief course of triumph, the interests of France declined, and a new empire in India was established by the British. Mysore formed one of their earliest conquests in the Deccan. Tanjore and the Carnatic were shortly after annexed to their dominions. In 1818 the forfeited possessions of the Peshwa added to their extent; and these acquisitions, with others which have more recently fallen to the paramount power by cession, conquest or failure of heirs, form a continuous territory stretching from the Nerbudda to Cape Comorin. Its length is upwards of 1000 m., and its extreme breadth exceeds 800. This vast tract comprehends the chief provinces now distributed between the presidencies of Madras and Bombay, together with the native states of Hyderabad and Mysore, and those of Kolhapur, Sawantwari, Travancore, Cochin and the petty possessions of France and Portugal.

See J. D. B. Gribble, History of the Deccan (1896); Prof. Bhandarkar, “Early History of the Dekkan” (Bombay Gazetteer); Vincent A. Smith, Early History of India (2nd ed., Oxford, 1908), chap. xv. “The Kingdoms of the Deccan.”

DECELEA (Gr. Δεκελεία), an Attic deme, on the pass which led over the east end of Mt. Parnes towards Oropus and Chalcis. From its position it has a commanding view over the Athenian plain. Its eponymous hero, Decelus, was said to have indicated to the Tyndaridae, Castor and Pollux, the place where Theseus had hidden their sister Helen at Aphidnae; and hence there was a traditional friendship between the Deceleans and the Spartans (Herodotus ix. 73). This tradition, together with the advice of Alcibiades, led the Spartans to fortify Decelea as a basis for permanent occupation in Attica during the later years of the Peloponnesian War, from 413-404 B.C. Its position enabled them to harass the Athenians constantly, and to form a centre for fugitive slaves and other deserters. The royal palace of Tatoi has been built on the site.

See Peloponnesian War; also Judeich in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie.

DECEMBER (Lat. decem, ten), the last month of the year. In the Roman calendar, traditionally ascribed to Romulus, the year was divided into ten months, the last of which was called December, or the tenth month, and this name, though etymologically incorrect, was retained for the last or twelfth month of the year as now divided. In the Romulian calendar December had thirty days; Numa reduced the number to twenty-nine; Julius Caesar added two days to this, giving the month its present length. The Saturnalia occurred in December, which is therefore styled “acceptus geniis” by Ovid (Fasti, iii. 58); and this also explains the phrase of Horace “libertate Decembri utere” (Sat. ii. 7). Martial applies to the month the epithet canus (hoary), and Ovid styles it gelidus (frosty) and fumosus (smoky). In the reign of Commodus it was temporarily styled Amazonius, in honour of the emperor’s mistress, whom he had had painted as an Amazon. The Saxons called it winter-monath, winter month, and heligh-monath, holy month, from the fact that Christmas fell within it. Thus the modern Germans call it Christmonat. The 22nd of December is the date of the winter solstice, when the sun reaches the tropic of Capricorn.

DECEMVIRI (“the ten men”), the name applied by the Romans to any official commission of ten. The title was often followed by a statement of the purpose for which the commission was appointed, e.g. Xviri legibus scribundis, stlitibus judicandis, sacris faciundis.

I. Apart from such qualification, it signified chiefly the temporary commission which superseded all the ordinary magistrates of the Republic from 451 to 449 B.C., for the purpose of drawing up a code of laws. In 462 B.C. a tribune proposed that the appointment of a commission to draw up a code expressing the legal principles of the administration was necessary to secure for the plebs a hold over magisterial caprice. Continued agitation to this effect resulted in an agreement in 452 B.C. between patricians and plebeians that decemvirs should be appointed to draw up a code, that during their tenure of office all other magistracies should be in abeyance, that they should not be subject to appeal, but that they should be bound to maintain the laws which guaranteed by religious sanctions the rights of the plebs. The first board of decemvirs (apparently consisting wholly of patricians) was appointed to hold office during 451 B.C.; and the chief man among them was Appius Claudius. Livy (iii. 32) says that only patricians were eligible. Mommsen, however, held that plebeians were legally eligible, though none were actually appointed for 451. The decemvirs ruled with singular moderation, and submitted to the Comitia Centuriata a code of laws in ten headings, which was passed. So popular were the decemvirs that another board of ten was appointed for the following year, some of whom, if the extant list of names is correct, were certainly plebeians. These added two more to the ten laws of their predecessors, thus completing the Laws of the Twelve Tables (see Roman Law). But their rule then became violent and tyrannical, and they fell before the fury of the plebs, though for some reason, not easily understood, they continued to have the support of the patricians. They were forced to abdicate (449 B.C.), and the ordinary magistrates were restored.

II. The judicial board of decemvirs (stlitibus judicandis) formed a civil court of ancient origin concerned mainly with questions bearing on the status of individuals. They were originally a body of jurors which gave a verdict under the presidency of the praetor (q.v.), but eventually became annual minor magistrates of the Republic, elected by the Comitia Tributa.

III. The priestly board of decemvirs (sacris faciundis) was an outcome of the claim of the plebs to a share in the administration of the state religion. Five of the decemvirs were patricians, and five plebeians. They were first appointed in 367 B.C. instead of the patrician duumviri who had hitherto performed these duties. The board was increased to fifteen in the last century of the Republic. Its chief function was the care of the Sibylline books, and the celebration of the games of Apollo (Livy x. 8) and the Secular Games (Tac. Ann. xi. 11).

IV. Decemvirs were also appointed from time to time to control the distribution of the public land (agris dandis adsignandis; see Agrarian Laws).

Bibliography.—B. G. Niebuhr, History of Rome (Eng. trans.), ii. 309 et seq. (Cambridge, 1832); Th. Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. ii. c. 2, vol. i. pp. 361 et seq. (Eng. trans., new ed., 1894); Römisches Staatsrecht, ii. 605 et seq., 714 (Leipzig, 1887); A. H. J. Greenidge, Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time, p. 40 et seq., 263 (Oxford, 1901); J. Muirhead, Private Law of Rome, p. 73 et seq. (London, 1899); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, iv. 2256 et seq. (Kübler).

(A. M. Cl.)

DECHEN, ERNST HEINRICH KARL VON (1800-1889), German geologist, was born in Berlin on the 25th of March 1800, and was educated in the university in that city. He subsequently studied mining in Bochum and Essen, and was in 1820 placed in the mining department of the Prussian state, serving on the staff until 1864, and becoming director in 1841 when he was stationed at Bonn. In early years he made journeys to study the mining systems of other countries, and with this object he visited England and Scotland in company with Karl von Oeynhausen (1797-1865). In the course of his work he paid special attention to the coal-formation of Westphalia and northern Europe generally, and he greatly furthered the progress made in mining and metallurgical works in Rhenish Prussia. He made numerous contributions to geological literature; notably the following:—Geognostische Umrisse der Rheinländer zwischen Basel und Mainz mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das Vorkommen des Steinsalzes (with von Oeynhausen and La Roche), 2 vols. (Berlin, 1825); Geognostische Führer in das Siebengebirge am Rhein (Bonn, 1861); Die nutzbaren Mineralien und Gebirgsarten im deutschen Reiche (1873). But his main work was a geological map of Rhenish Prussia and Westphalia in 35 sheets on the scale of 1 : 80,000, issued with two volumes of explanatory text (1855-1882). He published also a small geological map of Germany (1869). He died at Bonn on the 15th of February 1889.

(H. B. W.)

DECIDUOUS (from Lat. decidere, to fall down), a botanical and zoological term for “falling in season,” as of petals after flowering, leaves in autumn, the teeth or horns of animals, or the wings of insects.

DECIMAL COINAGE.1 Any currency in which the various denominations of coin are arranged in multiples or submultiples of ten (Lat. decem), with reference to a standard unit, is a decimal system. Thus if the standard unit be 1 the higher coins will be 10, 100, 1000, &c., the lower .1, .01, .001, &c. In a perfect system there would be no breaks or interpolations, but the actual currencies described as “decimal” do not show this rigid symmetry. In France the standard unit—the franc—has the 10 franc and the 100 franc pieces above it; the 10 centime below it; there are also, however, 50 franc, 20 franc, 5 franc, 2 franc pieces as well as 50 and 20 centime ones. Similar irregularities occur in the German and United States coinages, and indeed in all countries in which a decimal system has been established. Popular convenience has compelled this departure from the strict decimal form.

Subject to these practical modifications the leading countries of the world (Great Britain and India are the chief exceptions) have adopted decimal coinage. The United States led the way (1786 and 1792) with the dollar as the unit, and France soon followed (1799 and 1803), her system being extended to the countries of the Latin Union (1865). The German empire (1873), the Scandinavian States (1875), Austria-Hungary (1870, developed in 1892) and Russia (1839 and 1897) are further adherents to the decimal system. The Latin-American countries and Japan (1871) have also adopted it.

In England proposals for decimalizing the coinage have long been under discussion at intervals. Besides the inconvenience of altering the established currency, the difficulty of choosing between the different schemes propounded has been a considerable obstacle. One plan took the farthing as a base: then 10 farthings = 1 doit (2½d.), 10 doits = 1 florin (2s. 1d.), 10 florins = 1 pound (20s. 10d.). The advantages claimed for this scheme were (1) the preservation of the smaller coins (the penny = 4 farthings); and (2) the avoidance of interference with the smaller retail prices. Its great disadvantage was the destruction of the existing unit of value—the pound—and the consequent disturbance of all accounts. A second proposal would retain the pound as unit and the florin, but would subdivide the latter into 100 “units” (or farthings reduced 4%) and introduce a new coin = 10 units (2.4d.). By it the unit of account would remain as at present, and the shilling (as 50 units) would continue in use. The alteration of the bronze and several silver coins, and the need of readjusting all values and prices expressed in pence, formed the principal difficulties. A third scheme, which was connected with the assimilation of English to French and American money, proposed the establishment of an 8s. gold coin as unit, with the tenpenny or franc and the penny (reduced by 4%) as subdivisions. The new coin would be equivalent to 10 francs or (by an anticipated reduction of the dollar) 2 dollars. None of these plans has gained any great amount of popular support.

For the general question of monetary scales see Money, and for the decimal system in reference to weights and measures see Metric System and Weights and Measures.

(C. F. B.)

1 For “decimal” in general see Arithmetic.

DECIUS, GAIUS MESSIUS QUINTUS TRAJANUS (201-251), Roman emperor, the first of the long succession of distinguished men from the Illyrian provinces, was born at Budalia near Sirmium in lower Pannonia in A.D. 201. About 245 the emperor Philip the Arabian entrusted him with an important command on the Danube, and in 249 (or end of 248), having been sent to put down a revolt of the troops in Moesia and Pannonia, he was forced to assume the imperial dignity. He still protested his loyalty to Philip, but the latter advanced against him and was slain near Verona. During his brief reign Decius was engaged in important operations against the Goths, who crossed the Danube and overran the districts of Moesia and Thrace. The details are obscure, and there is considerable doubt as to the part taken in the campaign by Decius and his son (of the same name) respectively. The Goths were surprised by the emperor while besieging Nicopolis on the Danube; at his approach they crossed the Balkans, and attacked Philippopolis. Decius followed them, but a severe defeat near Beroë made it impossible to save Philippopolis, which fell into the hands of the Goths, who treated the conquered with frightful cruelty. Its commander, Priscus, declared himself emperor under Gothic protection. The siege of Philippopolis had so exhausted the numbers and resources of the Goths, that they offered to surrender their booty and prisoners on condition of being allowed to retire unmolested. But Decius, who had succeeded in surrounding them and hoped to cut off their retreat, refused to entertain their proposals. The final engagement, in which the Goths fought with the courage of despair, took place on swampy ground in the Dobrudja near Abritum (Abrittus) or Forum Trebonii and ended in the defeat and death of Decius and his son. Decius was an excellent soldier, a man of amiable disposition, and a capable administrator, worthy of being classed with the best Romans of the ancient type. The chief blot on his reign was the systematic and authorized persecution of the Christians, which had for its object the restoration of the religion and institutions of ancient Rome. Either as a concession to the senate, or perhaps with the idea of improving public morality, Decius endeavoured to revive the separate office and authority of the censor. The choice was left to the senate, who unanimously selected Valerian (afterwards emperor). But Valerian, well aware of the dangers and difficulties attaching to the office at such a time, declined the responsibility. The invasion of the Goths and the death of Decius put an end to the abortive attempt.

See Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus, 29, Epit. 29; Jordanes, De rebus Geticis, 18; fragments of Dexippus, in C. W. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iii. (1849); Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. 10; H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit, i. (pt. 2), 1883.

DECIZE, a town of central France, in the department of Nièvre, on an island in the Loire, 24 m. S.E. of Nevers by the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 3813. The most important of its buildings is the church of Saint Aré, which dates in part from the 11th and 12th centuries; there are also ruins of a castle of the counts of Nevers. The town has a statue of Guy Coquille, the lawyer and historian, who was born there in 1523. Decize is situated at the starting-point of the Nivernais canal. The coal mine of La Machine, which belongs to the Schneider Company of Le Creusot, lies four miles to the north. The industries of Decize and its suburbs on both banks of the Loire include the working of gypsum and lime, and the manufacture of ceramic products and glass. Trade is in horses from the Morvan, cattle, coal, iron, wood and stone.

Under the name of Decetia the place is mentioned by Julius Caesar as a stronghold of the Aedui, and in 52 B.C. was the scene of a meeting of the senate held by him to settle the leadership of the tribe and to reply to his demand for aid against Vercingetorix. In later times it belonged to the counts of Nevers, from whom it obtained a charter of franchise in 1226.

DECKER, SIR MATTHEW, Bart. (1679-1749), English merchant and writer on trade, was born in Amsterdam in 1679. He came to London in 1702 and established himself there as a merchant. He was remarkably successful in his business life, gaining great wealth and having many honours conferred upon him. He was a director of the East India Company, sat in parliament for four years as member for Bishops Castle, and was high sheriff of Surrey in 1729. He was created a baronet by George I. in 1716. Decker’s fame as a writer on trade rests on two tracts. The first, Serious considerations on the several high duties which the Nation in general, as well as Trade in particular, labours under, with a proposal for preventing the removal of goods, discharging the trader from any search, and raising all the Publick Supplies by one single Tax (1743; name affixed to 7th edition, 1756), proposed to do away with customs duties and substitute a tax upon houses. He also suggested taking the duty off tea and putting instead a licence duty on households wishing to consume it. The second, an Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade, consequently of the value of the lands in Britain, and on the means to restore both (1744), has been attributed to W. Richardson, but internal evidence is strongly in favour of Decker’s authorship. He advocates the licence plan in an extended form; urges the repeal of import duties and the abolition of bounties, and, in general, shows himself such a strong supporter of the doctrine of free trade as to rank as one of the most important forerunners of Adam Smith. Decker died on the 18th of March 1749.

DECKER, PIERRE DE (1812-1891), Belgian statesman and author, was educated at a Jesuit school, studied law at Paris, and became a journalist on the staff of the Revue de Bruxelles. In 1839 he was elected to the Belgian lower chamber, where he gained a great reputation for oratory. In 1855 he became minister of the interior and prime minister, and attempted, by a combination of the moderate elements of the Catholic and Liberal parties, the impossible task of effecting a settlement of the educational and other questions by which Belgium was distracted. In 1866 he retired from politics and went into business, with disastrous results. He became involved in financial speculations which lost him his good name as well as the greater part of his fortune; and, though he was never proved to have been more than the victim of clever operators, when in 1871 he was appointed by the Catholic cabinet governor of Limburg, the outcry was so great that he resigned the appointment and retired definitively into private life. He died on the 4th of January 1891. Decker, who was a member of the Belgian academy, wrote several historical and other works of value, of which the most notable are Études historiques et critiques sur les monts-de-piété en Belgique (Brussels, 1844); De l’influence du libre arbitre de l’homme sur les faits sociaux (1848); L’Esprit de parti et l’esprit national (1852); Étude politique sur le vicomte Ch. Vilain XIIII (1879); Épisodes de l’hist. de l’art en Belgique (1883); Biographie de H. Conscience (1885).

DECLARATION (from Lat. declarare, to make fully clear, clarus), formerly, in an action at English law, the first step in pleading—the precise statement of the matter in respect of which the plaintiff sued. It was divided into counts, in each of which a specific cause of action was alleged, in wide and general terms, and the same acts or omissions might be stated in several counts as different causes of actions. Under the system of pleading established by the Judicature Act 1875, the declaration has been superseded by a statement of claim setting forth the facts on which the plaintiff relies. Declarations are now in use only in the mayor’s court of London and certain local courts of record, and in those of the United States and the British colonies in which the Common Law system of pleading survives. In the United States a declaration is termed a “complaint,” which is the first pleading in an action. It is divided into parts,—the title of the court and term; the venue or county in which the facts are alleged to have occurred; the commencement, which contains a statement of the names of the parties and the character in which they appear; the statement of the cause of action; and the conclusion or claim for relief. (See Pleading.)