JOUFFROY D’ABBANS, CLAUDE, MARQUIS DE, is claimed by the French as the first inventor of the steamboat; he made a paddle-steamer ply on the Rhone in 1783, but misfortunes due to the Revolution hindered his progress, till he was forestalled by Fulton on the Seine in 1803 (1751-1832).

JOUGS, an iron collar hung by a chain in some public place, was fastened round a culprit’s neck, who was thus exposed in a sort of pillory; in use in Scotland from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

JOULE, JAMES PRESCOTT, a celebrated physicist, born at Salford; was a pupil of Dalton’s, and devoted his time to physical and chemical research; made discoveries in connection with the production of heat by voltaic electricity, demonstrated the equivalence of heat and energy, and established on experimental grounds the doctrine of the conservation of energy (1818-1889).

JOURDAN, JEAN BAPTISTE, COMTE VON, marshal of France, born at Limoges; gained for the Republic the victory of Fleurus in 1794, but was in 1795 defeated at Hoechst, and subsequently by the Archduke Charles of Austria; served under Napoleon, and became Governor of the Hotel des Invalides under Louis Philippe (1762-1833).

JOWETT, BENJAMIN, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, born at Camberwell; was a fellow and tutor of his college till his election to the mastership in 1870; his name will always be associated with Balliol College, where his influence was felt, and made the deepest impression; he wrote an article “On the Interpretation of Scripture” in the “Essays and Reviews,” and a commentary on certain epistles of St. Paul, but he achieved his greatest literary successes by his translations of Plato’s “Dialogues,” the “History” of Thucydides, and the “Politics” of Aristotle (1817-1893).

JUAN, DON, a poem of Byron’s, a work which, as Stopford Brooke remarks, “was written in bold revolt against all the conventionality of social morality, religion, and politics, and in which—­escaped from his morbid self, he ran into the opposite extreme—­he claimed for himself and others absolute freedom of individual act and thought in opposition to the force of society which tends to make all men after one pattern.”

JUAN FERNANDEZ, a mountainous island 3000 ft. high, off the Chilian coast, 420 m.  W. of Valparaiso; was the lonely residence of ALEXANDER SELKIRK (1704-1709) (q. v.); was used as a penal settlement from 1819 to 1835, and is inhabited by a few seal and sea-lion hunters.

JUAREZ, BENITO, president of Mexico, born in Oaxaca, of Indian extraction; was elected to the Presidency twice over, in 1861 and 1867 (1806-1872).

JUBA, a great river rising in the Abyssinian mountains and flowing S. into the Indian Ocean, with a town of the same name at its mouth; marks the northern limit of British East Africa.

JUBILEE, a festival among the Jews every fiftieth year in celebration of their emancipation from Egypt.

JUBILEE, YEAR OF, a year during which it was required that all land which had passed out of the original owner’s hands during the 50 years preceding should be restored, all who during that time had been forced to sell their liberty should be released, and all debts contracted in that period should be remitted, a requirement, however, which does not appear to have been very rigorously or regularly observed.