one can deny the heroism of the men whose
lives were sacrificed in this ill-starred expedition. But it is admitted
that the leaders were not bushmen and had had no experience in exploration.
Disunion and disobedience to orders, from the highest to the lowest,
brought about the worst results, and all that now remains to tell the story
of the failure of this vast undertaking is a monument to the memory of the
foolhardy heroes, from the chisel of Charles Summers, erected on a
prominent site in Melbourne.

BURKE, WILLIAM (1792-1829), Irish criminal, was born in Ireland in 1792.
After trying his hand at a variety of trades there, he went to Scotland
about 1817 as a navvy, and in 1827 was living in a lodging-house in
Edinburgh kept by William Hare, another Irish labourer. Towards the end of
that year one of Hare's lodgers, an old army pensioner, died. This was the
period of the body-snatchers or Resurrectionists, and Hare and Burke, aware
that money could always be obtained for a corpse, sold the body to Dr
Robert Knox, a leading Edinburgh anatomist, for L7, 10s. The price obtained
and the simplicity of the transaction suggested to Hare an easy method of
making a [v.04 p.0836] profitable livelihood, and Burke at once fell in
with the plan. The two men inveigled obscure travellers to Hare's or some
other lodging-house, made them drunk and then suffocated them, taking care
to leave no marks of violence. The bodies were sold to Dr Knox for prices
averaging from L8 to L14. At least fifteen victims had been disposed of in
this way when the suspicions of the police were aroused, and Burke and Hare
were arrested. The latter turned king's evidence, and Burke was found
guilty and hanged at Edinburgh on the 28th of January 1829. Hare found it
impossible, in view of the strong popular feeling, to remain in Scotland.
He is believed to have died in England under an assumed name. From Burke's
method of killing his victims has come the verb "to burke," meaning to
suffocate, strangle or suppress secretly, or to kill with the object of
selling the body for the purposes of dissection.

See George Macgregor, _History of Burke and Hare and of the Resurrectionist
Times_ (Glasgow, 1884).

BURLAMAQUI, JEAN JACQUES (1694-1748), Swiss publicist, was born at Geneva
on the 24th of June 1694. At the age of twenty-five he was designated
honorary professor of ethics and the law of nature at the university of
Geneva. Before taking up the appointment he t