(1365) placed beyond the husband’s control. As regards property accruing to the wife in Germany by succession, will or gift inter vivos, it is only separate property where the donor has deliberately stipulated exclusion of the husband’s right.
In France it seemed as if the system of community of property was ingrained in the institutions of the country. But a law of 1907 has brought France into line with other countries. This law gives a married woman sole control over earnings from her personal work and savings therefrom. She can with such money acquire personalty or realty, over the former of which she has absolute control. But if she abuses her rights by squandering her money or administering her property badly or imprudently the husband may apply to the court to have her freedom restricted.
American Law.—In the United States, the revolt against the common law theory of husband and wife was carried farther than in England, and legislation early tended in the direction of absolute equality between the sexes. Each state has, however, taken its own way and selected its own time for introducing modifications of the existing law, so that the legislation on this subject is now exceedingly complicated and difficult. James Schouler (Law of Domestic Relations) gives an account of the general result in the different states to which reference may be made. The peculiar system of Homestead Laws in many of the states (see Homestead and Exemption Laws) constitutes an inalienable provision for the wife and family of the householder.
HUSHI (Rumanian Huși), the capital of the department of Falciu, Rumania; on a branch of the Jassy-Galatz railway, 9 m. W. of the river Pruth and the Russian frontier. Pop. (1900) 15,404, about one-fourth being Jews. Hushi is an episcopal see. The cathedral was built in 1491 by Stephen the Great of Moldavia. There are no important manufactures, but a large fair is held annually in September for the sale of live-stock, and wine is produced in considerable quantities. Hushi is said to have been founded in the 15th century by a colony of Hussites, from whom its name is derived. The treaty of the Pruth between Russia and Turkey was signed here in 1711.
HUSKISSON, WILLIAM (1770–1830), English statesman and financier, was descended from an old Staffordshire family of moderate fortune, and was born at Birch Moreton, Worcestershire, on the 11th of March 1770. Having been placed in his fourteenth year under the charge of his maternal great-uncle Dr Gem, physician to the English embassy at Paris, in 1783 he passed his early years amidst a political fermentation which led him to take a deep interest in politics. Though he approved of the French Revolution, his sympathies were with the more moderate party, and he became a member of the “club of 1789,” instituted to support the new form of constitutional monarchy in opposition to the anarchical attempts of the Jacobins. He early displayed his mastery of the principles of finance by a Discours delivered in August 1790 before this society, in regard to the issue of assignats by the government. The Discours gained him considerable reputation, but as it failed in its purpose he withdrew from the society. In January 1793 he was appointed by Dundas to an office created to direct the execution of the Aliens Act; and in the discharge of his delicate duties he manifested such ability that in 1795 he was appointed under-secretary at war. In the following year he entered parliament as member for Morpeth, but for a considerable period he took scarcely any part in the debates. In 1800 he inherited a fortune from Dr Gem. On the retirement of Pitt in 1801 he resigned office, and after contesting Dover unsuccessfully he withdrew for a time into private life. Having in 1804 been chosen to represent Liskeard, he was on the restoration of the Pitt ministry appointed secretary of the treasury, holding office till the dissolution of the ministry after the death of Pitt in January 1806. After being elected for Harwich in 1807, he accepted the same office under the duke of Portland, but he withdrew from the ministry along with Canning in 1809. In the following year he published a pamphlet on the currency system, which confirmed his reputation as the ablest financier of his time; but his free-trade principles did not accord with those of his party. In 1812 he was returned for Chichester. When in 1814 he re-entered the public service, it was only as chief commissioner of woods and forests, but his influence was from this time very great in the commercial and financial legislation of the country. He took a prominent part in the corn-law debates of 1814 and 1815; and in 1819 he presented a memorandum to Lord Liverpool advocating a large reduction in the unfunded debt, and explaining a method for the resumption of cash payments, which was embodied in the act passed the same year. In 1821 he was a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the causes of the agricultural distress then prevailing, and the proposed relaxation of the corn laws embodied in the report was understood to have been chiefly due to his strenuous advocacy. In 1823 he was appointed president of the board of trade and treasurer of the navy, and shortly afterwards he received a seat in the cabinet. In the same year he was returned for Liverpool as successor to Canning, and as the only man who could reconcile the Tory merchants to a free trade policy. Among the more important legislative changes with which he was principally connected were a reform of the Navigation Acts, admitting other nations to a full equality and reciprocity of shipping duties; the repeal of the labour laws; the introduction of a new sinking fund; the reduction of the duties on manufactures and on the importation of foreign goods, and the repeal of the quarantine duties. In accordance with his suggestion Canning in 1827 introduced a measure on the corn laws proposing the adoption of a sliding scale to regulate the amount of duty. A misapprehension between Huskisson and the duke of Wellington led to the duke proposing an amendment, the success of which caused the abandonment of the measure by the government. After the death of Canning in the same year Huskisson accepted the secretaryship of the colonies under Lord Goderich, an office which he continued to hold in the new cabinet formed by the duke of Wellington in the following year. After succeeding with great difficulty in inducing the cabinet to agree to a compromise on the corn laws, Huskisson finally resigned office in May 1829 on account of a difference with his colleagues in regard to the disfranchisement of East Retford. On the 15th of September of the following year he was accidentally killed by a locomotive engine while present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway.
See the Life of Huskisson, by J. Wright (London, 1831).
HUSS (or Hus), JOHN (c. 1373–1415), Bohemian reformer and martyr, was born at Hussinecz,[1] a market village at the foot of the Böhmerwald, and not far from the Bavarian frontier, between 1373 and 1375, the exact date being uncertain. His parents appear to have been well-to-do Czechs of the peasant class. Of his early life nothing is recorded except that, notwithstanding the early loss of his father, he obtained a good elementary education, first at Hussinecz, and afterwards at the neighbouring town of Prachaticz. At, or only a very little beyond, the usual age he entered the recently (1348) founded university of Prague, where he became bachelor of arts in 1393, bachelor of theology in 1394, and master of arts in 1396. In 1398 he was chosen by the Bohemian “nation” of the university to an examinership for the bachelor’s degree; in the same year he began to lecture also, and there is reason to believe that the philosophical writings of Wycliffe, with which he had been for some years acquainted, were his text-books. In October 1401 he was made dean of the philosophical faculty, and for the half-yearly period from October 1402 to April 1403 he held the office of rector of the university. In 1402 also he was made rector or curate (capellarius) of the Bethlehem chapel, which had in 1391 been erected and endowed by some zealous citizens of Prague for the purpose of providing good popular preaching in the Bohemian tongue. This appointment had a deep influence on the already vigorous religious life of Huss himself; and one of the effects of the earnest and independent study of Scripture into which it led him was a profound conviction of the great value not only of the philosophical but also of the theological writings of Wycliffe.
This newly-formed sympathy with the English reformer did not, in the first instance at least, involve Huss in any conscious opposition to the established doctrines of Catholicism, or in any direct conflict with the authorities of the church; and for
- ↑ From which the name Huss, or more properly Hus, an abbreviation adopted by himself about 1396, is derived. Prior to that date he was invariably known as Johann Hussynecz, Hussinecz, Hussenicz or de Hussynecz.
