[1] Mr T. C. Smith estimates that probably not one in ten of even
professed abolitionists supported Birney; only in Massachusetts did
he receive as much as 1% of the total vote cast.
[2] Birney's vote was reduced by a disgraceful election trick by the
Whigs (the circulation of a forged letter on the eve of the
election); a trick to which he had exposed himself by an ingenuously
honest reception of Democratic advances in a matter of local
good-government in Michigan.
[3] E.g. Horace Greeley made the Whig charge; but in later life he
repeatedly attributed Clay's defeat simply to Clay's own letters; and
for Millard Fillmore's important opinion see footnote to KNOW NOTHING
PARTY.
LIBMANAN, a town of the province of Ambos Camarines, Luzon, Philippine
Islands, on the Libmanan river, 11 m. N.W. of Nueva Cáceres, the
capital. Pop. (1903) 17,416. It is about 4½ m. N.E. of the Bay of San
Miguel. Rice, coco-nuts, hemp, Indian corn, sugarcane, bejuco, arica
nuts and camotes, are grown in the vicinity, and the manufactures
include hemp goods, alcohol (from coco-nut-palm sap), copra, and
baskets, chairs, hammocks and hats of bejuco and bamboo. The Libmanan
river, a tributary of the Bicol, into which it empties 2 m. below the
town, is famous for its clear cold water and for its sulphur springs.
The language is Bicol.
LIBO, in ancient Rome, the name of a family belonging to the Scribonian
gens. It is chiefly interesting for its connexion with the Puteal
Scribonianum or Puteal Libonis in the forum at Rome,[1] dedicated or
restored by one of its members, perhaps the praetor of 204 B.C., or the
tribune of the people in 149. In its vicinity the praetor's tribunal,
removed from the comitium in the 2nd century B.C., held its sittings,
which led to the place becoming the haunt of litigants, money-lenders
and business people. According to ancient authorities, the Puteal
Libonis was between the temples of Castor and Vesta, near the Porticus
Julia and the Arcus Fabiorum, but no remains have been discovered. The
idea that an irregular circle of travertine blocks, found near the
temple of Castor, formed part of the puteal is now abandoned.
See Horace, _Sat._ ii. 6. 35, _Epp._ i. 19. 8; Cicero, _Pro Sestio_,
8; for the well-known coin of L. Scribonius Libo, representing the
puteal of Libo, which rather resembles a _cippus_ (sepulchral
monument) or an altar, with laurel wreaths, two lyres and a pair of
pincers or tongs below the wreaths (perhaps symbolical of Vulcanus as
forger of lightning), see C. Hülsen, _The Roman Forum_ (Eng. trans. by
J. B. Carter, 1906), p. 150, where a marble imitation found at Veii is
also given.