Their conduct was exceedingly well-bred, And gave no outward signs of inward strife, Until at length the smothered fire broke out, And put the business past all kind of doubt. Byron. Lat. ex EXCEL', v. a. & v. n. Ex'CELLENCE, n. s. EX'CELLENCY, EXCELLENT, adj.d Fr. exceller; cellere, from εw, beyond, and кɛɛi, to run.- -Minsheu. Το EXCELLENTLY, surpass; exceed in good qualities; overpower: as a neuter verb, to be eminent or superior: excellence, and excellency, mean the state of superiority or greatness: and the latter is a common title of honor bestowed on ambassadors and principal commanders, civil and military. Reuben, unstable as water, thou shalt not excel. He is excellent in power and in judgment. So fairely dight when she in presence came, Spenser. Faerie Queene. Id. Is it not wonderful, that base desires should so extinguish in men the sense of their own excellency, as to make them willing that their souls should be like the souls of beasts, mortal and corruptible with their bodies? Hooker. Then to Silvia let us sing, Shakspeare. She loves him with that excellence, Id. Id. That angels love good men with. They humbly shew unto your excellence, To have a goodly peace concluded of. It is not only in order of nature for him to govern that is the more intelligent; but there is no less required, courage to protect, and, above all, honesty and probity to abstain from injury: so fitness to govern is a perplexed business. Some men, some nations, excel in the one ability, some in the other. Bacon's Holy War. Rules and precepts doe then help after they have bin laboured and polisht by practice; but if those rules may be made cleere and chrystalline afore-hand, it would be the more excellent, because they would lesse stand in need of diligence, labour, and exercise after. Id. On Learning. The conscience of a man's excellency will abide no limits; but spurs him forth to win admiration abroad. Bp. Hall. Ceremony keeps up things: 'tis like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt, and the spirit lost. Selden. Prior. How heroes rise, how patriots set, Thy father's bloom and death may tell ; Excelling others, these were great; Thou greater still, must these ercel. Let those teach others, who themselves excel; And censure freely, who have written well. Pope. That was excellently observed, says I, when I read a passage in an author where his opinion agreed with mine. Swift. Though ambiguities are the first excellence of animpostor, they are the last of a wit. Young. Every one is apt to set the greatest value upon that kind of knowledge in which he imagines he himself most excels; and to undervalue all other in comparison of it. Maws. He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances. Hume. Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labour. Sir J. Reynolds. It is the great excellence of Shakspeare, that he drew his scenes from nature, and from life. Johnson. Osborne will never acknowledge the smallest degree of excellence in any production of mine. Franklin. EXCENTRIC. See ECCENTRIC. EXCENTRIC CIRCLE, or EXCENTRIC, in the ancient Ptolemaic astronomy, was the orbit of the planet itself, which it was supposed to describe about the earth, and to be excentric with it; called also the deferent. See ASTRONOMY. EXCENTRIC EQUATION, in the ancient astronomy, is an angle made by a line drawn from the centre of the earth, with another line drawn from the centre of the excentric, to the body or place of any planet. This is the same with the prosthaphæresis; and is equal to the difference, accounted in an arch of the ecliptic, between the real and apparent place of the sun or planet. See ASTRONOMY. EXCEPT, v. a., n. s., & Fren. excepter; Spanish, eceptuar; Italian, eccettare; Lat. excipere, i. e er, from, and caTo pere, to take. exclude, omit, or take from a list; to specify as an omission. As a neuter verb, to object; make objections. As a preposition (originally the passive participle of the verb), except means, exclusively of; unless; provided that. Exception is either the act of excluding; the thing or person excluded; the form or manner (as an objection, cavil, &c.), or the motive of exclusion. Exceptionable is, liable to objection; doubtful in a degree. Exceptioner, he who makes objections. Exceptious, cavilling; peevish. Exceptive is, including an exception. Exceptless, general; universal; making no exception. But when he saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest, that he is excepted which did put all things under him. Cor. He may have exceptions peremptory against the jurors, of which he then shall shew cause. Spenser. Your assertion hath drawn us to make search whether these be just exceptions against the customs of our church, when ye plead that they are the same which the church of Rome hath, or that they are not the same which some other reformed churches have devised. Hooker. Preface. Richard except, those whom ye fight against, Had rather have us win than him they follow. It is necessary to know our duty, because 'tis necessary for us to do it; and it is impossible to do it, exTillotson. cept weknow it May I not live without controul and awe, Excepting still the letter of the law? Dryden's Pers. A succession which our author could not except against. Locke. Folly is freakish and humourous, impertinent and obstreperous, inconstant and inconsistent, peevish and exceptious; and consequently fastidious to society, and productive of aversation and disrespect. Barrow. Friendly admonition-being delivered in an imperiously insulting way-becomes unsavory and odious. and both in shew and effect resembles a froward, malicious exceptiousness. Id. They are so supercilious, sharp, troublesome, fierce, and exceptious, that they are not only short of the true Pope. Every act of parliament was not previous to what it enacted unless those two, by which the earl of Stafford and Sir John Fenwick lost their heads, may pass for exceptions. Swift. Exceptive propositions will make complex syllogisms: as, None but physicians came to the consultation, the nurse is no physician; therefore the nurse came not to the consultation. Watts's Logick. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. Goldsmith Their visible aim is not to inform your judgment, but display their own; you have many things to query and except against; but their loquacity gives you no room; and their good sense, set off to so much advantage, strikes a modest man dumb. Mason. Such rare exceptions, shining in the dark, An unguent or pap, prepared with an open vessel to exern it into. Ray on the Creation. Lat. excerptio, excerpo ; er and carpo, to crop. To pick out or select. Ver EXCERP', or EXCERPT, v. a. EXCERPTION, N. S. EXCERPTOR, n. s. Times have consumed his works, saving some few excerptions. Raleigh. In your reading excerp, and note in your books such things as you like. Hales. I have not been surreptitious of whole pages together out of the doctor's printed volumes. I am no such excerptor. Barnard. EXCESS'. See EXCEED. EXCESS, in arithmetic and geometry, is the difference between any two unequal numbers or quantities, or that which is left after the less is taken from or out of the greater. EXCHANGE', v. a. & n.s. Į A compound of EXCHANGER, n. s. Sex and CHANGE, which see. To give or take reciprocally one thing for another: it takes with before the party with whom the bargain or agreement to exchange is made; and for before the thing taken in exchange. They shall not sell of it, neither exchange nor alienate the first fruits. Ezek. xlviii. 14. I have bills for money by exchange, Shakspeare. Being acquainted with the laws and fashions of his own country, he has something to exchange with those abroad. Id. He that uses the same words sometimes in one, and sometimes in another signification, ought to pass, in the schools, for as fair a man, as he does in the market and exchange who sells several things under the same name. Id. Whilst bullion may be had for a small price more than the weight of our current cash, these exchangers generally choose rather to buy bullion than run the risk of melting down our coin, which is criminal by the law. Id. Rowe. Here then exchange we mutually forgiveness. So may the guilt of all my broken vows, My perjuries to thee be all forgotten. The world is maintained by intercourse; and the whole course of nature is a great exchange, in which one good turn is, and ought to be, the stated price of another. South. They lend their corn, they make exchanges; they are always ready to serve one another. Addison. Take delight in the good things of this world, so as to remember that we are to part with them, and to exchange them for more excellent and durable enjoy Atterbury. ments. The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet in Ispahan, would drink sherbet, and eat a mess of rice together. Shenstone. SIR ANTH. Let her foreclose, Jack; let her foreclose they are not worth redeeming; besides, you have an angel's vow in exchange, I suppose, so there can be no loss there. Sheridan. EXCHANGE, in architecture, a place in most trading cities, wherein the merchant, negociants, agents, bankers, brokers, interpreters, and other persons concerned in commerce, meet on certain days, and at certain hours, to confer together of matters relating to exchanges, remittances, payments, adventures, assurances, freightments, and other mercantile negociations, both by sea and land. In Holland, the ci-devant Flanders, and burses; at Paris and Lyons, places de change; several cities of France, these places are called and in the Hanse towns, colleges of merchants. These assemblies are held with so much exactness, and merchants and negociants are so indispensably required to attend them, that absence alone makes a man suspected of bankruptcy. The most considerable exchanges in Europe, are that of Amsterdam, and that of London, called the Royal Exchange. Even in the time of the ancient Romans, there were places for the merchants to meet, in most of the considerable cities of the empire. That said by some to have been built at Rome, A. U. C. 259, and A. A. C. 493, under the consulate of Appius Claudius and Publius Servilius, was called collegium mercatorum; of which it is said there are still some remains, called by the modern Romans loggia, the lodge; and now, usually, the Place of St. George. This notion of a Roman exchange is supposed to be founded on Livy's words, lib. ii.; viz. Certamen consulibus inciderat, uter dedicaret Mercurii ædem. Senatus à se rem ad populum rejecit: utri eorum dedicatio jussu populi data esset, eum præesse annonæ, mercatorum collegium instituere jussit. But it is certain that collegium never signified a building for a society in the purer ages of the Latin tongue; so that collegium mercatorum instituere must not be rendered to build an exchange for the merchants, but to incorporate the merchants into a company. As Mercury was the god of traffic, this ædes Mercurii seems to have been chiefly designed for the devotions of this company. EXCHANGE, in arithmetic. See ARITHMETIC, Index. The operations are only different applications of the rule of three, or of practice; to perform which it is necessary to know the value of the coins and monies of account of different countries, and their proportions to each other; for which see the various tables under the article MONEY. EXCHANGE, in ancient commerce, an agreement, whereby one thing was given for another. The first commerce carried on among men was by exchange; people furnished each other mutually with what things they wanted; but such exchanges were clogged with two considerable difficulties. 1. On account of the unequal value of commodities; and 2. because every body has not just what might accommodate the person with whom he would exchange. To remove these inconveniences, money was invented for a common medium; and, instead of exchanging, buying and selling were introduced. There are many nations among whom the primitive mode of exchange still obtains; and even the most civilised people must sometimes have recourse to this method. Such, e. g. is the trade of several cities of the north and Baltic Sea, where the French exchange their wines and brandies for wood, metals, hemp, and furs. 1 EXCHANGE, in modern commerce, is the receiving or paying of money in one country for the like sum in another, by bills of exchange. The Dunctuality of acquitting these obligations is essential to commerce; and no sooner is a merchant's accepted bill protested, than he is considered as a bankrupt. For this reason, the laws of most nations have given very extraordinary privileges to bills of exchange. Were the claims of merchants to linger under the formalities of courts of law when liquidated by bills of exchange, faith, confidence, and punctuality, would quickly disappear, and the great engine of commerce would be totally destroyed. A regular bill of exchange is a mercantile contract, in which four persons are concerned (see BILL), viz. 1. The drawer, who receives the value: 2. His debtor, in a distant place, upon whom the bill is drawn, and who must accept and pay it: 3. The person who gives value for the bill, to whose order it is to be paid: and 4. The person to whom it is ordered to be paid, creditor to the third. By this operation, reciprocal and equal debts, due in two distant parts, are paid by a sort of transfer of debtors and creditors. Thus A in London is creditor to B in Paris, value £100: C again in London is debtor to D in Paris for a like sum. By the operation of the bill of exchange, the London creditor is paid by the London debtor; and the Paris creditor is paid by the Paris debtor; consequently the two debts are paid, and no money is sent from London to Paris nor from Paris to London. In this example, A is the drawer, B is the accepter, C is the purchaser of the bill, and D receives the money. Two persons here receive the money, A and D; and two pay the money, B and C; which is just what must be done when two debtors and two creditors clear accounts. This is the plain principle of a bill of exchange; which, among other advantages, prevents all risk of loss by shipwreck, robbery, &c., which might happen from remitting payment in coin. But, when the reciprocal debts are not equal, there arises a balance on one side. Suppose London to owe Paris a balance, value £100. An exchanger, finding a demand for a bill upon Paris for £100, when Paris owes no more to London, sends £100 to his correspondent in Paris in coin, at the expense (suppose) of £1; and then, having become creditor on Paris, he can give a bill for the value of £100 upon his being repaid his expense, and paid for his risk and trouble. When merchants have occasion to draw and remit bills for the liquidation of their own debts active and passive, in distant parts, they meet upon 'Change; where (to continue the example) the creditors upon Paris, when they want money for bills, look out for those who are debtors to it. The debtors to Paris again, when they want bills for money, seek for those who are creditors upon it. This market is constantly attended by brokers, who relieve the merchant of the trouble of searching for those he wants. To the broker every one communicates his wants, so far as he finds it prudent; and, by going about among all the merchants, the broker discovers the side upon which the greater demand lies, for money or for bills. This renders secrecy very essential to individuals among the merchants. If the London merchants want to pay their debts to Paris, when there is a balance against London, it is their interest to conceal their debts, and especially the necessity they may be under to pay them: lest those who are creditors upon Paris should demand too high a price for the exchange above par. On the other hand, those who are creditors upon Paris, when Paris owes a balance to London, are as careful in concealing what is owing to them by Paris, lest those who are debtors to. Paris should avail themselves of the competition among the Paris creditors, to obtain bills for their money, below their value at par. A creditor upon Paris, who is pressed for money at London, will abate something of his debt, in order to get money for it. Thus the merchants upon 'Change, from their separate and jarring interests, are constantly interested in the state of the balance. Those who are creditors upon Paris, fear the balance due to London; those who are debtors to Paris dread a balance due to Paris. The brokers determine the course of the day; and the most intelligent merchants despatch their business before the fact is generally known. In this complicated operation, the interest of trade and of the nation is concerned in the proper method of paying and receiving the balances, and in preserving a just equality of profit and loss among all the merchants, relative to the real state of the balance. Such is the nature of these operations of exchange, that it is hardly possible for a merchant to carry on his business without the assistance of the brokers. When balances come to be paid, exchange becomes intricate; and merchants are so much employed in parti cular branches of business, that they are obliged to leave the liquidation of their debts to men who, naturally, also consider their own advantage. Whenever a balance is to be paid, that payment costs an additional expense to those of the place who owe it, over and above the value of the debt. If, therefore, this expense be a loss to the trading man, he must either be repaid by those whom he serves, that is, by the nation; or the trade he carries on will become less profitable. It is therefore plain, that the expense of high exchange upon paying a balance is a loss to a people, not to be compensated by enriching the few individuals among them who gain by contriving methods to pay it off. Whatever renders the profit upon trade precarious or uncertain is a loss to trade in general. EXCHANGE is sometimes also used for the agio, or profit allowed for the monies, advanced in any one's behalf. Thus it is a fixing of the actual and momentary value of money. Silver as a metal has a value like all other merchandise; and an additional value, as it is capable of becoming the sign of other merchandise. If it was no more than a mere merchandise, it would perhaps lose much of its nominal value. As a money, silver has a value which the prince in some respects can fix, but in others he cannot. The prince establishes a proportion between a quantity of silver, as a metal, and the same quantity, as money. He fixes the proportion between the several metals made use of as money; he establishes the weight and standard of every piece of money; in fine, he gives to every piece that ideal value already mentioned. The value of money in all these respects may be styled its positive value, because it may be fixed by law. The coin of every state has also a relative value as compared with the money of other countries. This relative value is established by the exchange, and greatly depends on its positive value. It is fixed by the current course of commerce, and by the general opinion and consent of merchants, but never by the decrees of the prince, because it is liable to incessant variations, depending on the accidental circumstances of trade, the money transactions between nations, the state of public credit, &c. Nations, in fixing this relative value, are chiefly guided by that country which possesses the greatest quantity of specie. If she has as much specie as all the others together, the others regulate theirs by her standard; and this regulation between all the others will nearly agree with the regulation made with this prin Course of Exchange. cipal nation. The relative abundance or scarcity of specie, in different countries, forms what is called the course of exchange, and this plenty or scarcity, on which the mutability of the course of exchange depends, is not real but relative; e. g. when the French have greater occasion for funds in Holland than the Dutch have for funds in France, specie is said to be common in France, and scarce in Holland; and vice versa. EXCHANGE, ARBITRATION OF. See ARITIMETIC, Index. EXCHANGE, BILL OF. See BILL. EXCHANGE, PAR of. When money of the same standard and weight in one country, yields money of the same standard and weight in another, the exchange is then said to be at par. Thus in the year 1744 the par between France and Holland was nearly at fifty-four gros to the French crown of three livres; when the exchange is above fifty-four gros, the French say it is high; when below fifty-four gros, it is low. When the exchange is below par between one country and another, the former loses as debtor and buyer, and gains as creditor and seller. Thus if France owes Holland a certain number of gros, the more of these there are in a crown the more crowns she has to pay; and as there must be the same number of gros to buy the same quantity of merchandise, while the exchange is low, every French crown is worth fewer gros. On the contrary, if France is creditor for a certain number of gros, the less of them there are in a crown the more crowns she will receive; and if France sells her merchandise in Holland for a certain number of gros, the more crowns will she receive, in proportion as each crown contains fewer of these gros. The same reasoning will apply, mutatis mutandis, to the commercial intercourse of other countries, and to any par of exchange. A merchant may send his stock into a foreign country, when the exchange is below par, without injuring his fortune; because, when it returns, he recovers what he had lost; but a prince, who sends only specie into a foreign country, which can never return, is always a loser. The par of exchange between Great Britain and the principal places in Europe, with which, in time of peace, we have commercial intercourse, may be thus exemplified from Lloyd's List, October 4th 1825. 12. 9 12. 9 12. 9 34. 3 140 25.20 39 341 1 m d 14 d 30 d d 12 S 2 m 2 m d 14 3 49 3 m d 45 3 m d 26. 30 3 m d Malta d Palermo Pence Ster. per Oz. 3 m Pence Ster. per Milree Pence Ster. per ditto |