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his pen by building, by zealous practice, on the foundation that we have assisted him to lay, by means of the copy-slips and the instructions that have been brought under his notice in the present series of lessons. In some future Lessons in Writing we will give specimens of the various styles of writing which are required for commercial purposes and for candidates for the Civil Service Examinations, etc.

HISTORIC SKETCHES.-XIII.

HOW A LONDON JURY A TRUE VERDICT GAVE, ACCORDING TO THE EVIDENCE.

JUST as there are many great men in the world who never get an opportunity of asserting themselves in it, so there are many memorable events in history which are seldom if ever mentioned. Some of these are important enough, not merely in a political but also in a social sense, and it is well not to suffer them to languish in the cold shade of oblivion. Such an event is the subject of the present sketch. It has been selected not only because of its intrinsic importance, but also as showing how great privileges may be won and valuable rights established by very humble

means.

In the report books of proceedings in the law courts in 1670 is an account of a scene in which the principal actors were the Recorder of London, King Charles's Attorney-General, and a citizen, Bushell, member of a jury. The case is called "Bushell's Case," and it is one of the most important possible, for upon it was established once and for ever the grand right of a juryman " a true verdict to give according to the evidence," without reference to whether that verdict was or was not accept able to the court to whom it was returned. Now-a-days, when juries are chosen with the utmost regard to the ends of justice, and with a single eye to perfect impartiality, and, when chosen, are treated with the fullest respect, neither being worried into verdicts nor molested after they have given them, we who have never seen a different state of things, are apt to suppose that there never was one, and to take it for granted that the thing which is, is the same that hath been. Let us look for a few minutes at "Bushell's case."

The circumstances under which Bushell, the juryman, came upon the scene were these:-Two Quakers, Penn and Mead, had thought fit to preach to the people from the steps of a house in Gracechurch Street. In the course of their address they had used language which was interpreted as conveying, and perhaps was meant to convey, animadversions upon the government. For this they were arrested, and, having been committed by a city magistrate on the charge of stirring up a riot, were put upon their trial. Like many of the charges preferred at that time by the over-zealous agents of the government, the accusation was an extravagant one, and considerable sympathy was shown by the Londoners in favour of the prisoners. If what the two men had said amounted to sedition, then, it was felt, no man could safely talk politics even in the mildest way; and it was further felt that the prosecution was a tyrannical act on the part of the government, and people were getting rather tired of the thing. Notwithstanding such was the case-popular sympathy at that time was but a whet to the prosecuting spirit of the crown lawyers-the trial was urged, and it came on before the Recorder of London at the Old Bailey.

The following scene, illustrative of the manner in which prisoners were treated under Charles II., presented itself on the entrance of Penn and Mead into the court:--After the manner of their brethren, the two Friends kept their hats on in the presence of the judge, as they would have done in the presence of the king himself. The gaoler rudely knocked their hats off, whereupon the Recorder, not with a view to rebuking the man's roughness, but to having a preliminary fling at the prisoners, ordered him to replace them. Being put in the dock, the prisoners were thus addressed by their judge:

RECORDER: Do you know where you are?

PENN: Yes.

RECORDER: Do you not know it is the king's court? PENN: I know it to be a court, and I suppose it to be the king's court.

RECORDER: Do you not know there is respect due to the

court?

PENN: Yes.

RECORDER: Why do you not pay it then?

PENN: I do.

RECORDER: Why do you not pull off your hat then? PENN: Because I do not believe that to be any respect. RECORDER: Well, the court sets forty marks apiece upon your heads, as a fine for the contempt of the court.

PENN: I desire it might be observed that we came into the court with our hats off (that is, taken off), and if they have been put on since it was by order from the bench; and therefore not we, but the bench, should be fined.

After this the prisoners, undoubtedly with much pertinacity and some show of disrespect to the court, refused to plead to the indictment, which charged them with having caused a tumultuous assembly, until the questions they raised as to the legality of it in point of form should have been answered. The Recorder and the Lord Mayor tried in vain to silence them, resorting to threats, and abuse of a very coarse description, and not succeeding, the Recorder did in effect enter a plea of "not guilty" for them, and had them put upon their trial.

Among the jury was one man, Bushell, whose character for conduct displeasing to the court was already well known, and to whom several unworthy remarks had been made at the time he was sworn. Under his guidance the jury retired, and in a short time returned into court with a verdict acquitting Mead, and saying that Penn was "guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street." This verdict angered the court exceedingly. "Is that all ?" they asked the foreman. "That is all I have in commission," was the reply. "You had as good say nothing." Being further pressed, and also told, "the law of England will not allow you to part till you have given your verdict," the jury replied, "We have given in our verdict, and we can give in no other."

The Recorder refused to take such a verdict, and sent the jury back again to reconsider it. In half an hour's time they came back into court, and handed in a written verdict to the same effect as before, and signed by all of them. Upon this being received, the Lord Mayor rated the jury in these words:

:

MAYOR: What, will you be led by such a silly fellow as Bushell? An impudent, canting fellow. I warrant you, you shall come no more upon juries in haste. You are a foreman, indeed (addressing Bushell). I thought you had understood your place better.

RECORDER: Gentlemen, you shall not be dismissed till we have a verdict that the court will accept; and you shall be locked up, without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco. You shall not think thus to abuse the court. We will have a verdict by the help of God; or you shall starve for it.

The jury declined to alter their verdict, and Penn, one of the prisoners, claimed to have it recorded. "The agreement of twelve men is the verdict in law; and such a one being given by the jury, I require the clerk of the peace to record it, as he will answer at his peril. And if the jury bring in another verdict contradictory to this, I affirm they are perjured men in law;" and looking upon the jury, he said: "You are Englishmen ! Mind your privilege! Give not away your right!"

The court was adjourned till next morning at seven o'clock, the prisoners were sent back to Newgate, and the jury were ordered into the custody of those who swore to keep them without fire, food, drink, or any other accommodation till the adjourned sitting of the court.

While the jury are thus away in their retiring room, making up their minds what verdict they shall give-chafing, some of them, at the manner in which they have been treated by the court, and, under the guidance of their foreman, resolving that they will not submit to dictation, but act upon the exordium delivered to them by the prisoner as they quitted their box

let us consider for a moment what right it was for which they were contending, and the way in which that right was acquired.

Trial by jury was an old-established institution in England, as old, some think, as the Anglo-Saxon laws. Something like it is certainly to be found in the history which has come down to us of those times, but the jury system, as we understand it now, was the creation of a period subsequent to the Norman Conquest, 1066. Before that date the jury which tried causes consisted of a certain number of "compurgators" as they were called, that is to say, persons who did not give their opinion upon evidence adduced before them on oath, but who merely swore that they

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judges took upon themselves to revive the wicked old custom of polluting the very source of justice by intimidating those who had charge of it. Two Chief Justices of England, Hyde and Keeling, were especially guilty of this crime, and made themselves so notorious that the House of Commons came to a resolution to impeach the latter for his misconduct. He was suffered to speak for himself at the bar of the House, and to go free on promise of amendment.

believed what the defendant said under sanction of his oath. I would not have back at any price, nor to please any one, but the The form of procedure was simply this. A man accused of default, on civil or criminal process, was put on his oath if he chose to be so, and then swore he was innocent of the offence charged, or that his version of the case between him and the plaintiff was a true one. The compurgators, of whom the number varied from twelve to thirty-six, being also sworn, deposed to their belief in what the defendant had said, and, as they were commonly chosen from among the neighbours and acquaintance of the man, they were supposed to know something of the facts connected with his case, as well as to be able to form an estimate of the truth or falsehood of his statements. It can easily be imagined that such a tribunal was not one from which to expect strict justice, and the shortcomings of the system amounted in many instances to gross miscarriage of right. Nevertheless, it continued to be used with other systems till Henry II. (1154-1189) introduced the Norman form of trial by jury for civil causes, and Henry III., or rather those who represented him, introduced it about 1235 on criminal process.

The Norman-English jury was not like ours of to-day. Instead of deciding upon the case according to evidence for and against, and after hearing the summing-up of the judge, the jury included all those who under our system would be witnesses, and would be rigidly excluded from the jury for the very reason that they knew most of the facts. Then it was the duty of the sheriff to summon specially on the jury all those who were, or might be supposed to be, acquainted with the material points in the case, and these persons compared notes with their fellows, but without being subjected to any cross-examination, and gave their verdict according to what then appeared to them to be right. Common rumour, repetitions of what somebody else had said, unsifted testimony of various kinds, were received by these juries, and sometimes constituted all the evidence they had to guide them. All such would be utterly rejected now, and any person who had evidence to give would be summoned as a witness-would certainly be precluded from sitting on the jury. It was not till the twenty-third year of the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377) that witnesses, though still added to the jury, were not allowed to vote as to the verdict; and it was not till the eleventh year of Henry IV. (1399-1413) that they were made to give their evidence in open court, under the scrutiny of the judge, and without being associated in any way with the jury.

Under the Plantagenet princes (from Henry II., 1154, to Richard II., 1399), though the grand provision in Magna Charta— that no free man should be tried by any but his peers-was constantly disregarded, it does not appear that juries as such suffered any violence; but with the Tudor princes came in this, as in other respects, quite another order of things, and that which the Tudors did the Stuarts did likewise. Juries were called to account in the most direct and personal manner for verdicts given according to their conscience (some authorities, however, say they were frequently bribed), and were frequently reprimanded by the judge or the king's council, and sometimes cited before the Court of Star Chamber, where, if they did not repent, they were heavily fined and also imprisoned. Some of the fines imposed on individual jurymen were as much as £2,000, a ruinous amount in Queen Mary's reign (1553-1558), when such a fine was actually inflicted. Whether there was or was not any ground for the interference of the Star Chamber on the score of bribery of the jurors by the parties to suits, it is evident that the offence might have been punished by more regular means, and that the means actually adopted were liable to be grossly abused. As a matter of fact they were grossly abused, and the tyrannical conduct of the Star Chamber in dealing with juries was one of the chief causes which contributed to its downfall. When the Star Chamber was abolished by Act of Parliament in 1641, with an indignant protest against its ever having existed, and a solemn declaration that nothing of the kind should be permitted in the time to come, this evil practice of threatening and punishing juries, so as to compel them to give such verdicts as the Crown wished, was abolished also. During the civil war (1642-1648), and during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, (1648-1658) it was not heard of; jurymen were allowed to be responsible alone to God and their conscience, and gave their verdicts freely, no man making them afraid.

With the restoration of Charles II., in 1660, some of the old governmental vices were restored also. The Star Chamber men

In the face of this, and in spite of the expressed opinions of most of the legal luminaries of the day, including Lord Chief Justice Hale, the Recorder of London, in 1670, ventured, under the circumstances stated above, to fine the jury which acquitted Penn and Mead, and to commit Mr. Bushell to prison when he refused to pay. Here was what followed when the jury remained obstinate in their simple verdict of "not guilty," after having been browbeaten, threatened, and ridiculed, both by chief magistrate and Recorder, and after having been sent back three times to consider their verdict, which indeed they did alter to a simple verdict of "not guilty" as to both prisoners.

CLERK: Are you agreed upon your verdict?
JURY: Yes,

CLERK: Who shall speak for you?

JURY: Our foreman.

CLERK: What say you? Look upon the prisoners at the bar.
Is William Penn guilty of the matter whereof he stands indicted
in manner and form as aforesaid, or not guilty?
FOREMAN: William Penn is guilty of speaking in Gracechurch
Street.

MAYOR: To an unlawful assembly?

BUSHELL (the foreman): No, my lord, we give no other verdict than what we gave last night. We have no other verdict to give.

MAYOR: You are a factious fellow. I'll take a course with

you.

SIR T. BLOODWITH (alderman): I knew Mr. Bushell would not yield.

BUSHELL: Sir Thomas, I have done according to my conscience.

MAYOR That conscience of yours would cut my throat.
BUSHELL: No, my lord, it never shall.

MAYOR: But I will cut yours so soon as I can.
RECORDER: He has inspired the jury. He has the spirit of
divination. Methinks I feel him. I will have a positive verdict,
or you shall starve for it.

PENN: I desire to ask the Recorder one question. Do you allow of the verdict given of William Mead?

RECORDER: It cannot be a verdict, because you were indicted for a conspiracy, and one being found not guilty, and not the other, it could not be a verdict.

PENN: If not guilty be not a verdict, then you make of the
jury and Magna Charta but a mere nose of wax.
MEAD: HOW! Is not guilty no verdict?
RECORDER: No, it is no verdict.

After this fine judicial dictum there were other passages between the jury and the court, and the jury being once more asked as to William Penn's guilt, said, as before, that he was guilty of speaking in Gracechurch Street.

RECORDER: What is this to the purpose? I say I will have a verdict. (And speaking to Edward Bushell, said): You are & factious fellow. I will set a mark upon you; and whilst I have anything to do in the city I will have an eye upon you.

MAYOR: Have you no more wit than to be led by such a pitiful fellow? I will cut his nose.

PENN: It is intolerable that any jury should be thus menaced. Is this according to the fundamental laws? Are not they my proper judges by the Great Charter of England? What hope is there of ever having justice done when juries are threatened, and their verdicts rejected? I am concerned to speak, and grieved to see such arbitrary proceedings. Did not the Lieutenant of the Tower render one of them worse than a felon? And do you not plainly seem to condemn such for factious fellows who answer not your ends? Unhappy are those juries who are threatened to be fined, and starved, and ruined if they give not in verdicts contrary to their consciences.

RECORDER: My lord, you must take a course with that same fellow.

MAYOR: Stop his mouth. Gaoler, bring fetters, and stake brought him as her dower Tangier, in Marocco; Bombay, in him to the ground.

PENN: Do your pleasure. I matter not your fetters.

RECORDER: Gentlemen, we shall not be at this trade always with you. You will find the next session of parliament there will be a law made that those that will not conform shall not have the protection of the law. Mr. Lee, draw up another

verdict, that they may bring it in special. LEE: I cannot tell how to do it. JURY: We ought not to be retained, having all agreed, and set our hands to the verdict.

RECORDER: Your verdict is nothing. You play upon the court. I say you shall go together and bring in another verdict, or you shall starve, and I will have you carted about the city as in Edward the Third's time.

FOREMAN: We have given in our verdict, and all agreed to it; and if we give in another, it will be a force upon us to save our lives.

Finally the jury gave their verdict "not guilty" against both prisoners, and each one of them affirmed the same separately; whereupon the Recorder fined them forty marks each, and ordered them to be imprisoned till the fine should be paid. Imprisoned they were accordingly in the common gaol of Newgate, a noisome, filthy den, which was a disgrace to any country calling itself civilised. From Newgate, however, the spirit which had made itself felt in opposition to the oppressive conduct of the Recorder's Court made itself heard at the Court of King's Bench. A writ of Habeas Corpus* was sued out and made returnable immediately, and when the governor of Newgate brought up his prisoners it turned out that they were detained for non-payment of fines imposed upon them on account of their

verdict.

Chief Justice Vaughan, in one of the most learned and masterly judgments ever delivered, went into the whole matter. What he said may be found in the sixth volume of the State Trials, and in the collected judgments of the eminent Chief Justice. The studions who have opportunity will do well to seek the judgment there; but we have all an interest in the gist of what he said, and that can be reproduced without such careful search. He laid it down as law that the fines were illegal, and that the imprisonment consequent on them was necessarily illegal also. But he went on still further, and declared in effect that the Recorder had improperly refused to receive the verdict of the jury, and that the jury had an unquestionable right to give what verdict they pleased, the remedy for & stupid verdict being in the discretion of a judge to order a new trial on the ground of the verdict being contrary to the evidence; and for a corrupt verdict, in the power of any one to prosecute a Juryman for perjury if committed wilfully in the course of his duty as a juryman.

As the law was thus settled it has remained ever since, few occasions having arisen in which the rights of juries have been imperilled. To Edward Bushell and his fellow-citizens we are directly indebted for the establishment of the law upon this most satisfactory footing; and the occasion seemed to us so full of interest, and the principle gained so full of importance, that we have thought fit to make them the subject of this number of our Historic Sketches.

SYNOPSIS OF EVENTS IN THE LIFE AND REIGN OF
CHARLES II.

Charles II, the second son of Charles L. and Henrietta Maria of France, was the twenty-sirth king of England after the Norman Conquest, and the third of the Stuart Dynasty. He married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, who

A wait of Habeas Corpos is an order which a judre is obliged, under a penalty of £3, to send on petition of a prisoner, to the gacier who detains bin requning him to bring up the body of his priSober, and to show case why he detains him, so that the judge may be satisfied as to the propriety or otherwise of the detention, and may mit the prisoner to enroly or discharge him as be may see ft. This is a Ennish eniger a print safeguard against illegal or tyrannical imprisonment. When the Hadens Corpas Act is suspended, the writs

of course do not re

Born at St. James's Palace, May 29, 1639 1651

1672

Hindostan or India; and £300,000 in money. The first-named town was abandoned, in 1683, as a place not worth the exponse of holding by an armed force; while the second, now the capital of one of the five presidencies of British India, was handed over to the East India Company for a small annual quit-rent. Declaration of Indulgence in favour of the Papists Test Act passed. March, 1673 Marriage of Mary, daughter of the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) to William of Orange Treaty of Nimeguen Supposed Conspiracy of the Papists to assassinate the king and restore the Roman Catholic

Crowned at Scone Obliged to retire to Holland after the Battle of Worcester 1631 Returns to England May 29 1660 Trial of the Regicides, etc. . 1660 Revision of the Common Prayer Book

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1661 Act of Uniformity passed 1662 Bombay and Tangier added to

1662

the British dominions Dunkirk sold to Louis XIV. of France for £500,000 Oct. 17, 1662 War with the United Provinces of the Netherlands. 1664 The Great Plague 1665 The Great Fire of London

Ships in the Medway burnt by the Dutch

Peace of Breda

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1077 1678

religion Aug. 12, 1678 Murder of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey. .. Oct. 15, 1678 Murder of Archbishop Sharpe

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1666

May 27, 1679 Bridge

June 22, 1679

1667 1667

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1668 1672

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"Triple Alliance" of England,
Holland,and Sweden against
France
Jan. 28, 1668

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
War with Holland
Dutch defeated in the Battle
of Solebay or Southwold
Bay

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and Lord William Russell, 1683 May 28, 1672 Death of Charles II. Feb. 6, 1685 SOVEREIGNS CONTEMPORARY WITH CHARLES II. Denmark, Kings of. Frederick III. 1648 Christian V. 1670 France, King of. Louis XIV. 1643 Germany, Emperor of. Leopold I. 1658 Poland, King of. John II. (sometimes styled Casimir V.) 1649 Interregnum Michael

John III..

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1676

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LESSONS IN GEOMETRY.-XIII. In the last lesson (page 383) was given the method of drawing a triangle equal in superficial area to any regular four-sided enterin on the geometry of the circle, it only remains to show figures, such as a square, rectangle, or parallelogram; and, before the icarner how he may draw a triangle equal in superficial area to any given irregular four-sided figure, whether it be a trapezium or trapezoid (Defs. 31, 32, page 53), or to any maltilateral figure or polygon, whether regular or irregular; that is to say, having its sides and angles equal on the one hand, or having its sides and angles unequal on the other (Def. 33, page 53). It will be seen that either process is effected by the aid of the knowledge of certain geometrical facts in connection with the triangle which have been already explained.

PROBLEM XXXIII-To draw a triangle that shall be equal in superficial area to any given irregular quadrilateral figure.

Let ABCD (Fig. 46) be the given irregular quadrilateral figure; it is required to draw a triangle equal to it in superficis area. Draw B D. one of the diagonals of the irregular quadrilateral figure or trapezium A B C D, and produce the side c D, on which the figure stands, indefinitely towards E. Then through a draw AF parallel to the diagonal B D. and meeting C E in the point F. Join B F; the triangle B F C is equal to the trapezium A B C D. That this is true may be soon seen. After taking away the

common piece B CDK from the trapezium A B C D and the triangle B F C, we have the triangle ▲ K B, the remainder of the trapezium A B C D, and the triangle K F D, the remainder of the triangle B F C.

K

B

But these triangles are also parts of the triangles A D B, BF D, which are equal in area, since they are on the same base, B D, and between the same parallels A F, B D, and as the triangle K D B is common to both, the triangle A K B is equal to the triangle K F D. In the same manner, by drawing the diagonal AC of the trapezium A B C D, producing D C in the direction of G; drawing B H parallel to A c, and meeting D G in H; and lastly, joining A H, it may be shown that the triangle A D H is also equal in superficial area to the irregular quadrilateral figure A B C D. It will be useful for the student to repeat this construction as an exercise, taking the sides c B, B A, and A D in succession as the base of the trapezium A B C D, or the side on which it stands.

D

Fig. 46.

--

C

H G

PROBLEM XXXIV.—To draw a triangle that shall be equal in superficial area to any given multilateral figure or polygon.

First let us take a five-sided figure, as being next in order to a four-sided figure, as far as the number of its sides are concerned, and let A B C D E (Fig. 47) represent the five-sided figure or pentagon, to which it is required to draw a triangle equal in superficial area. From c, the apex of the pentagon, draw the straight lines C A, C E, to the points A, E, the extremities of the base on which it stands. By doing this we divide the pentagon ABCDE into three triangles A B C, CAE, and C ED. Produce the base A E indefinitely both ways in the direction of F and G, and through B and D draw the straight lines B H, D K, parallel to CA, CE respectively, and meeting the base ▲ E produced, in the points H and K. Join CH, CK; the triangle c H K is equal in superficial area to the pentagon A B C D E. That this is true may be seen as follows:-Of the three triangles A B C, CAE, and CE D, into which the pentagon was divided, the triangle C AE is common to both the pentagon and the triangle CH K. Of the remaining portions of the pentagon and triangle, the triangle ABC of the former is equal to the triangle C H A of the latter, because they are on the same base, A C, and between the same parallels; and for the reason the triangle CED of the pentagon is equal to the triangle CE K of the triangle.

Fig. 47.

same

The learner will find it useful to repeat this construction as an exercise, taking the sides A B, BC, C D and D E in succession, as the base on which the pentagon is supposed to stand.

That the learner may thoroughly understand the process of drawing a triangle equal in superficial area to a polygon having a great number of sides, and see that it is as easy as it is to draw a triangle equal in area to a pentagon, which has only five sides, we will take the irregular seven-sided figure, or heptagon

1

ABCDEFG (Fig. 48), and proceed to construct a triangle equal to it in area. As the figure is complicated, the lines which contain the heptagon and the triangle equivalent to it in area have been drawn thicker than the lines which are necessary in working out the process (as in Fig. 47), that the reader may the more readily distinguish the relative areas of the figures in question. The first step is to draw straight lines from A, the apex of the polygon, taking D E to represent its base, to the points C, D, E, F, or to each salient point of the polygon except the two immediately on the right and left of the apex. The straight lines A C, A D, A E, A F divide the polygon A B C D E F G into five unequal triangles, A B C, A C D, A DE, A E F, and AFG. The reader will note that however many may be the sides of the polygon, it is divided by this process into a number of triangles always less by two than the number of its sides. Thus in the figure below the number of triangles into which it is divided by drawing straight lines from its apex to its salient points is five, the number of its sides being seven; a dodecagon, or twelvesided figure, would be divided into ten triangles, and so on. Now-beginning with the triangle A B C, the highest triangle on the left side of the apex-by producing D C in the direction of P, indefinitely; drawing B H parallel to A c to meet C D produced in H; and joining A H; we get a triangle, A H C, equal to the triangle A B C, and by adding the polygon A C D E F G to each of these triangles, we find that we have a hexagon or sixsided figure, A H DE FG, equal in area to the original sevensided polygon A B C D E F G. By making the triangle A KD equal to the triangle AHD by the same construction, which we need not repeat, we get a pentagon, or fivesided figure, A K E F G, equal in area to the hexagon A H D E F G, and consequently to the original heptagon A B C DEFG. tinuing the process with making the triangle A F L equal to the triangle AF G, the highest triangle on the right side of the apex, we get an irregular quadrilateral figure, A K E L, equal to the pentagon A K E F G, the hexagon A H D E F G, and the heptagon ABCDEFG. Once more, by making by a similar construction the triangle A E M equal to the triangle A E L, we get at last a triangle, A K M, equal in area to the quadrilateral figure A K E L and the above-named pentagon and hexagon and the original heptagon A B C D E F G.

Con

Fig. 48.

E

The learner will find the value of this geometrical process in determining the areas of irregular polygons in mensuration. To calculate the area of the heptagon A B C D E F G, it would be divided as in the above figure into five triangles, and by an arithmetical process to be explained hereafter the superficial content of each triangle would be found, and the five results added together to obtain the area of the polygon. By reducing the area of the polygon to a triangle, its area can be found by one calculation instead of five, and a sum in compound addition; or, to ensure accuracy, both processes may be gone through, each proving a test whereby the correctness of the other may be ascertained.

As in the preceding propositions, let the learner repeat the above construction as an exercise, taking the sides E F, F G, GA, A B, B C, and C D in succession, as the base on which the polygon is supposed to stand, and the salient point which happens to be immediately opposite the base in each case as the apex.

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