JEFFERSONVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Clark county, Indiana, U.S.A., situated on the N. bank of the Ohio river, opposite Louisville, Kentucky, with which it is connected by several bridges. Pop. (1890), 10,666; (1900), 10,774, of whom 1818 were of negro descent and 615 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 10,412. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-western, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, and by three inter-urban electric lines. It is attractively situated on bluffs above the river, which at this point has a descent (known as the falls of the Ohio) of 26 ft. in 2 m. This furnishes good water power for manufacturing purposes both at Jeffersonville and at Louisville. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $4,526,443, an increase of 20% since 1900. The Indiana reformatory (formerly the Southern Indiana penitentiary) and a large supply dépôt of the United States army are at Jeffersonville. General George Rogers Clark started (June 24, 1778) on his expedition against Kaskaskia and Vincennes from Corn Island (now completely washed away) opposite what is now Jeffersonville. In 1786 the United States government established Fort Finney (built by Captain Walter Finney), afterwards re-named Fort Steuben, on the site of the present city; but the fort was abandoned in 1791, and the actual beginning of Jeffersonville was in 1802, when a part of the Clark grant (the site of the present city) was transferred by its original owner, Lieut. Isaac Bowman, to three trustees, under whose direction a town was laid out. Jeffersonville was incorporated as a town in 1815, and was chartered as a city in 1839.
JEFFREY, FRANCIS JEFFREY, Lord (1773-1850), Scottish judge and literary critic, son of a depute-clerk in the Court of Session, was born at Edinburgh on the 23rd of October 1773. After attending the high school for six years, he studied at the university of Glasgow from 1787 to May 1789, and at Queen’s College, Oxford, from September 1791 to June 1792. He had begun the study of law at Edinburgh before going to Oxford, and now resumed his studies there. He became a member of the speculative society, where he measured himself in debate with Scott, Brougham, Francis Horner, the marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Kinnaird and others. He was admitted to the Scotch bar in December 1794, but, having abandoned the Tory principles in which he had been educated, he found that his Whig politics seriously prejudiced his legal prospects. In consequence of his lack of success at the bar he went to London in 1798 to try his fortune as a journalist, but without success; he also made more than one vain attempt to obtain an office which would have secured him the advantage of a small but fixed salary. His marriage with Catherine Wilson in 1801 made the question of a settled income even more pressing. A project for a new review was brought forward by Sydney Smith in Jeffrey’s flat in the presence of H. P. Brougham (afterwards Lord Brougham), Francis Horner and others; and the scheme resulted in the appearance on the 10th of October 1802 of the first number of the Edinburgh Review. At the outset the Review was not under the charge of any special editor. The first three numbers were, however, practically edited by Sydney Smith, and on his leaving for England the work devolved chiefly on Jeffrey, who, by an arrangement with Constable, the publisher, was eventually appointed editor at a fixed salary. Most of those associated in the undertaking were Whigs; but, although the general bias of the Review was towards social and political reforms, it was at first so little of a party organ that for a time it numbered Sir Walter Scott among its contributors; and no distinct emphasis was given to its political leanings until the publication in 1808 of an article by Jeffrey himself on the work of Don Pedro Cevallos on the French Usurpation of Spain. This article expressed despair of the success of the British arms in Spain, and Scott at once withdrew his subscription, the Quarterly being soon afterwards started in opposition. According to Lord Cockburn the effect of the first number of the Edinburgh Review was “electrical.” The English reviews were at that time practically publishers’ organs, the articles in which were written by hackwriters instructed to praise or blame according to the publishers’ interests. Few men of any standing consented to write for them. The Edinburgh Review, on the other hand, enlisted a brilliant and independent staff of contributors, guided by the editor, not the publisher. They received sixteen guineas a sheet (sixteen printed pages), increased subsequently to twenty-five guineas in many cases, instead of the two guineas which formed the ordinary London reviewer’s fee. Further, the review was not limited to literary criticism. It constituted itself the accredited organ of moderate Whig public opinion. The particular work which provided the starting-point of an article was in many cases merely the occasion for the exposition, always brilliant and incisive, of the author’s views on politics, social subjects, ethics or literature. These general principles and the novelty of the method ensured the success of the undertaking even after the original circle of exceptionally able men who founded it had been dispersed. It had a circulation, great for those days, of 12,000 copies. The period of Jeffrey’s editorship extended to about twenty-six years, ceasing with the ninety-eighth number, published in June 1829, when he resigned in favour of Macvey Napier.
Jeffrey’s own contributions, according to a list which has the sanction of his authority, numbered two hundred, all except six being written before his resignation of the editorship. Jeffrey wrote with great rapidity, at odd moments of leisure and with little special preparation. Great fluency and ease of diction, considerable warmth of imagination and moral sentiment, and a sharp eye to discover any oddity of style or violation of the accepted canons of good taste, made his criticisms pungent and effective. But the essential narrowness and timidity of his general outlook prevented him from detecting and estimating latent forces, either in politics or in matters strictly intellectual and moral; and this lack of understanding and sympathy accounts for his distrust and dislike of the passion and fancy of Shelley and Keats, and for his praise of the half-hearted and elegant romanticism of Rogers and Campbell. (For his treatment of the lake poets see [Wordsworth, William].)
A criticism in the fifteenth number of the Review on the morality of Moore’s poems led in 1806 to a duel between the two authors at Chalk Farm. The proceedings were stopped by the police, and Jeffrey’s pistol was found to contain no bullet. The affair led to a warm friendship, however, and Moore contributed to the Review, while Jeffrey made ample amends in a later article on Lalla Rookh (1817).
Jeffrey’s wife had died in 1805, and in 1810 he became acquainted with Charlotte, daughter of Charles Wilkes of New York, and great-niece of John Wilkes. When she returned to America, Jeffrey followed her, and they were married in 1813. Before returning to England they visited several of the chief American cities, and his experience strengthened Jeffrey in the conciliatory policy he had before advocated towards the States. Notwithstanding the increasing success of the Review, Jeffrey always continued to look to the bar as the chief field of his ambition. As a matter of fact, his literary reputation helped his professional advancement. His practice extended rapidly in the civil and criminal courts, and he regularly appeared before the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, where his work, though not financially profitable, increased his reputation. As an advocate his sharpness and rapidity of insight gave him a formidable advantage in the detection of the weaknesses of a witness and the vulnerable points of his opponent’s case, while he grouped his own arguments with an admirable eye to effect, especially excelling in eloquent closing appeals to a jury. Jeffrey was twice, in 1820 and 1822, elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow. In 1829 he was chosen dean of the faculty of advocates. On the return of the Whigs to power in 1830 he became lord advocate, and entered parliament as member for the Perth burghs. He was unseated, and afterwards returned for Malton, a borough in the interest of Lord Fitzwilliam. After the passing of the Scottish Reform Bill, which he introduced in parliament, he was returned for Edinburgh in December 1832. His parliamentary career, which, though not brilliantly successful, had won him high general esteem, was terminated by his elevation to the judicial bench as Lord Jeffrey in May 1834. In 1842 he was moved to the first division of the Court of Session. On the disruption of the Scottish Church he took the side of the seceders, giving a judicial opinion in their favour, afterwards reversed by the house of lords. He died at Edinburgh on the 26th of January 1850.
Some of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review appeared in four volumes in 1844 and 1845. This selection includes the essay on “Beauty” contributed to the Ency. Brit. The Life of Lord Jeffrey, with a Selection from his Correspondence, by Lord Cockburn, appeared in 1852 in 2 vols. See also the Selected Correspondence of Macvey Napier (1877); the sketch of Jeffrey in Carlyle’s Reminiscences, vol. ii. (1881); and an essay by Lewis E. Gates in Three Studies in Literature (New York, 1899).
JEFFREYS, GEORGE JEFFREYS, 1st Baron (1648-1689), lord chancellor of England, son of John Jeffreys, a Welsh country gentleman, was born at Acton Park, his father’s seat in Denbighshire, in 1648. His family, though not wealthy, was of good social standing and repute in Wales; his mother, a daughter of Sir Thomas Ireland of Bewsey, Lancashire, was “a very pious good woman.” He was educated at Shrewsbury, St Paul’s and Westminster schools, at the last of which he was a pupil of Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge; but he left the university without taking a degree, and entered the Inner Temple as a student in May 1663. From his childhood Jeffreys displayed exceptional talent, but on coming to London he occupied himself more with the pleasures of conviviality than with serious study of the law. Though he never appears to have fallen into the licentious immorality prevalent at that period, he early became addicted to hard drinking and boisterous company. But as the records of his early years, and indeed of his whole life, are derived almost exclusively from vehemently hostile sources, the numerous anecdotes of his depravity cannot be accepted without a large measure of scepticism. He was a handsome, witty and attractive boon-companion, and in the taverns of the city he made friends among attorneys with practice in the criminal courts. Thus assisted he rose so rapidly in his profession that within three years of his call to the bar in 1668, he was elected common serjeant of the city of London. Such advancement, however, was not to be attained even in the reign of Charles II. solely by the aid of disreputable friendships. Jeffreys had remarkable aptitude for the profession of an advocate—quick intelligence, caustic humour, copious eloquence. His powers of cross-examination were masterly; and if he was insufficiently grounded in legal principles to become a profound lawyer, nothing but greater application was needed in the opinion of so hostile a critic as Lord Campbell, to have made him the rival of Nottingham and Hale. Jeffreys could count on the influence of respectable men of position in the city, such as Sir Robert Clayton and his own namesake Alderman Jeffreys; and he also enjoyed the personal friendship of the virtuous Sir Matthew Hale. In 1667 Jeffreys had married in circumstances which, if improvident, were creditable to his generosity and sense of honour; and his domestic life, so far as is known, was free from the scandal common among his contemporaries. While holding the judicial office of common serjeant, he pursued his practice at the bar. With a view to further preferment he now sought to ingratiate himself with the court party, to which he obtained an introduction possibly through William Chiffinch, the notorious keeper of the king’s closet. He at once attached himself to the king’s mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth; and as early as 1672 he was employed in confidential business by the court. His influence in the city of London, where opposition to the government of Charles II. was now becoming pronounced, enabled Jeffreys to make himself useful to Danby. In September 1677 he received a knighthood, and his growing favour with the court was further marked by his appointment as solicitor-general to James, duke of York; while the city showed its continued confidence in him by electing him to the post of recorder in October 1678.
In the previous month Titus Oates had made his first revelations of the alleged popish plot, and from this time forward Jeffreys was prominently identified, either as advocate or judge, with the memorable state trials by which the political conflict between the Crown and the people was waged during the remainder of the 17th century. The popish plot, followed by the growing agitation for the exclusion of the duke of York from the succession, widened the breach between the city and the court. Jeffreys threw in his lot with the latter, displaying his zeal by initiating the movement of the “abhorrers” (q.v.) against the “petitioners” who were giving voice to the popular demand for the summoning of parliament. He was rewarded with the coveted office of chief justice of Chester on the 30th of April 1680; but when parliament met in October the House of Commons passed a hostile resolution which induced him to resign his recordership, a piece of pusillanimity that drew from the king the remark that Jeffreys was “not parliament-proof.” Jeffreys nevertheless received from the city aldermen a substantial token of appreciation for his past services. In 1681 he was created a baronet. In June 1683 the first of the Rye House conspirators were brought to trial. Jeffreys was briefed for the crown in the prosecution of Lord William Howard; and, having been raised to the bench as lord chief justice of the king’s bench in September, he presided at the trials of Algernon Sidney in November 1683 and of Sir Thomas Armstrong in the following June. In the autumn of 1684 Jeffreys, who had been active in procuring the surrender of municipal charters to the crown, was called to the cabinet, having previously been sworn of the privy council. In May 1685 he had the satisfaction of passing sentence on Titus Oates for perjury in the plot trials; and about the same time James II. rewarded his zeal with a peerage as Baron Jeffreys of Wem, an honour never before conferred on a chief justice during his tenure of office. Jeffreys had for some time been suffering from stone, which aggravated the irritability of his naturally violent temper; and the malady probably was in some degree the cause of the unmeasured fury he displayed at the trial of Richard Baxter (q.v.) for seditious libel—if the unofficial ex parte report of the trial, which alone exists, is to be accepted as trustworthy.