DALKEY, a small port and watering-place of Co. Dublin, Ireland, in the south parliamentary division; 9 m. S.E. of Dublin by the Dublin & South-Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 3398. It is pleasantly situated on and about Sorrento Point, the southern horn of Dublin Bay. Dalkey Island, lying off the town, has an ancient ruined chapel, of the history of which nothing is certainly known, and a disused battery, which protected the harbour, a landing-place of some former importance. A castle in the town, of the 15th century, is restored to use as offices for the urban district council. There are also ruins of an old church, the dedication of which, like the island chapel, is ascribed to one St Begnet, perhaps a diminutive form of Bega, but the identity is not clear. Until the close of the 18th century Dalkey was notorious for the burlesque election of a “king,” a mock ceremony which became invested with a certain political importance.
DALLAS, ALEXANDER JAMES (1759-1817), American statesman and financier, was born on the island of Jamaica, West Indies, on the 21st of June 1759, the son of Dr Robert C. Dallas (d. 1774), a Scottish physician then practising there. Dr Dallas soon returned to England with his family, and Alexander was educated at Edinburgh and Westminster. He studied law for a time in the Inner Temple, and in 1780 returned to Jamaica. There he met the younger Lewis Hallam (1738-1808), a pioneer American theatrical manager and actor, who induced him to remove to the United States, and in 1783 he settled in Philadelphia, where he at once took the oath of allegiance to the United States, was admitted to practise law in 1785, and rapidly attained a prominent position at the bar. He was interested in the theatrical projects of Hallam, for whom he wrote several dramatic compositions, and from 1787 to 1789 he edited The Columbian Magazine. From 1791 to 1801 he was secretary of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Partly owing to his publication of an able pamphlet against the Jay treaty in 1795, he soon acquired a position of much influence in the Democratic-Republican party in the state. During the Whisky Insurrection he was paymaster-general of the state militia. His official position as secretary did not entirely prevent him from continuing his private law practice, and, with Jared Ingersoll, he was the counsel of Senator William Blount in his impeachment trial. Dallas was United States attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania from 1801 until 1814, a period marked by bitter struggles between the Democratic-Republican factions in the state, in which he took a leading part in alliance with Governor Thomas M’Kean and Albert Gallatin, and in opposition to the radical factions led by Michael Leib (1759-1822) and William Duane (1760-1835), of the Aurora. The quarrel led in 1805 to the M’Kean party seeking Federalist support. By such an alliance, largely due to the political ingenuity of Dallas, M’Kean was re-elected. In October 1814 President Madison appointed Dallas secretary of the treasury, to succeed George W. Campbell (1768-1848), whose brief and disastrous term had been marked by wholesale bank suspensions, and an enormous depreciation of state and national bank notes. The appointment itself inspired confidence, and Dallas’s prompt measures still further relieved the situation. He first issued new interest-bearing treasury notes of small denominations, and in addition proposed the re-establishment of a national bank, by which means he expected to increase the stability and uniformity of the circulating medium, and furnish the government with a powerful engine in the upholding of its credit. In spite of his already onerous duties, Dallas, with characteristic energy, served also as secretary of war ad interim from March to August 1815, and in this capacity successfully reorganized the army on a peace footing. Although peace brought a more favourable condition of the money market, Dallas’s attempt to fund the treasury notes on a satisfactory basis was unsuccessful, but a bill, reported by Calhoun, as chairman of the committee on national currency, for the establishment of a national bank, became law on the 10th of April 1816. Meanwhile (12th of February 1816) Dallas, in a notable report, recommended a protective tariff, which was enacted late in April, largely in accordance with his recommendation. Although Dallas left the cabinet in October 1816, it was through his efforts that the new bank began its operations in the following January, and specie payments were resumed in February. Dallas, who belonged to the financial school of Albert Gallatin, deserves to rank among America’s greatest financiers. He found the government bankrupt, and after two years at the head of the treasury he left it with a surplus of $20,000,000; moreover, as Henry Adams points out, his measures had “fixed the financial system in a firm groove for twenty years.” He retired from office to resume his practice of the law, but the burden of his official duties had undermined his health, and he died suddenly at Philadelphia on the 16th of June 1817. He was the author of several notable political pamphlets and state papers, and in addition edited The Laws of Pennsylvania, 1700-1801 (1801), and Reports of Cases ruled and adjudged by the Courts of the United States and of Pennsylvania before and since the Revolution (4 vols., 1790-1807; new edition with notes by Thomas J. Wharton, 1830). He wrote An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the War of 1812-15 (1815), which was republished by government authority in New York and London and widely circulated. He left in MS. an unfinished History of Pennsylvania.
His brother, Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824), was born in Jamaica, and lived at various times in the West Indies, the United States, England and France. He was an intimate friend of Lord Byron. He wrote Recollections of Lord Byron (1824), and several novels, plays and miscellaneous works.
See G. M. Dallas, Life and Writings of Alexander James Dallas (Philadelphia, 1871).
DALLAS, GEORGE MIFFLIN (1792-1864), American statesman and diplomat, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of July 1792. He graduated at Princeton in 1810 at the head of his class; then studied law in the office of his father, Alexander J. Dallas, the financier, and was admitted to the bar in 1813. In the same year he accompanied Albert Gallatin, as his secretary, to Russia, and in 1814 returned to the United States as the bearer of important dispatches from the American peace commissioners at Ghent. He practised law in New York and Philadelphia, was chosen mayor of Philadelphia in 1828, and in 1829 was appointed by President Jackson, whom he had twice warmly supported for the presidency, United States attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, a position long held by his father. From 1831 to 1833 he was a Democratic member of the United States Senate, in which he advocated a compromise tariff and strongly supported Jackson’s position in regard to nullification. On the bank question he was at first at variance with the president; in January 1832 he presented in the Senate a memorial from the bank’s president, Nicholas Biddle, and its managers, praying for a recharter, and subsequently he was chairman of a committee which reported a bill re-chartering the institution for a fifteen-year period. Afterwards, however, his views changed and he opposed the bank. From 1833 to 1835 Dallas was attorney-general of Pennsylvania, and from 1835 to 1839 was minister to Russia. During the following years he was engaged in a long struggle with James Buchanan for party leadership in Pennsylvania. He was vice-president of the United States from 1845 to 1849, but the appointment of Buchanan as secretary of state at once shut him off from all hope of party patronage or influence in the Polk administration, and he came to be looked upon as the leader of that body of conservative Democrats of the North, who, while they themselves chafed at the domination of Southern leaders, were disposed to disparage all anti-slavery agitation. By his casting vote at a critical period during the debate in the Senate on the tariff bill of 1846, he irretrievably lost his influence with the protectionist element of his native state, to whom he had given assurances of his support of the Tyler tariff of 1842. For several years after his retirement from office, he devoted himself to his law practice, and in 1856 succeeded James Buchanan as United States minister to England, where he remained until relieved by Charles Francis Adams in May 1861. During this trying period he represented his country with ability and tact, making every endeavour to strengthen the Union cause in Great Britain. He died at Philadelphia on the 1st of December 1864. He wrote a biographical memoir for an edition of his father’s writings, which was published in 1871.
His Diary of his residence in St Petersburg and London was published in Philadelphia in 1892.
DALLAS, a city and the county-seat of Dallas county, Texas, U.S.A., about 220 m. N.W. of Houston, on the E. bank of the Trinity river. Pop. (1880) 10,358; (1890) 38,067; (1900) 42,638, of whom 9035 were negroes and 3381 were foreign-born; (1910) 92,104. Area, about 15 sq. m. Dallas is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé, the Houston & Texas Central, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the St Louis South-western, the Texas & New Orleans, the Trinity & Brazos Valley, and the Texas & Pacific railways, and by interurban electric railways to Fort Worth and Sherman. The lower channel of the Trinity river has been greatly improved by the Federal government; but in 1908 the river was not navigable as far as Dallas. Among public buildings are the Carnegie library (1901), Dallas county court house, the city hall, the U.S. government building, St Matthew’s cathedral (Prot. Episc.), the cathedral of the Sacred Heart (Rom. Cath.), the city hospital, St Paul’s sanitarium (Rom. Cath.), and the Baptist Memorial sanitarium. Educational institutions include Dallas medical college (1901), the colleges of medicine and pharmacy of Baylor University, the medical college of South-western University (at Georgetown, Texas), Oak Cliff female academy, Patton seminary, St Mary’s female college (Prot. Episc.), and Holy Trinity college (Rom. Cath.). The city had in 1908 three parks—Bachman’s Reservoir (500 acres); Fair (525 acres)—the Texas state fair grounds, in which an annual exhibition is held—and City park (17 acres). Lake Cliff, Cycle and Oak Lawn parks are amusement grounds. A Confederate soldiers’ monument, a granite shaft 50 ft. high, was erected in 1897, with statues of R. E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, “Stonewall” Jackson and A. S. Johnston. Dallas was in 1900 the third city in population and the most important railway centre in Texas. It is a shipping centre for a large wheat, fruit and cotton-raising region, and the principal jobbing market for northern Texas, Oklahoma and part of Louisiana, and the biggest distributing point for agricultural machinery in the South-west. It is a livestock market, and one of the chief centres in the United States for the manufacture of saddlery and leather goods, and of cotton-gin machinery. It has flour and grist mills (the products of which ranked first in value among the city’s manufactures in 1905), wholesale slaughtering and meat-packing establishments, cooperage works, railway repair shops, cotton compresses, lumber yards, salt works, and manufactories of cotton-seed oil and cake, boots and shoes and cotton and agricultural machinery. In 1900 and 1905 it was the principal manufacturing centre in the state, the value of its factory product in 1905 being $15,627,668, an increase of 64.7% over that in 1900. The water-works are owned and operated by the city, and the water is taken from the Elm fork of Trinity river. There are several artesian wells. Dallas, named in honour of G. M. Dallas, was settled in 1841, and first chartered as a city in 1856. The city is governed, under a charter of 1907, by a mayor and four commissioners, who together pass ordinances, appoint nearly all city officers, and generally are responsible for administering the government. In addition a school board is elected by the people. The charter contains initiative and referendum provisions, provides for the recall of any elective city official, and prohibits the granting of any franchise for a longer term than twenty years.