The poor are provided for partly by voluntary subscription and partly by the pro ceeds of their own labor in the poor-houses erected for the reception of persons in want. There are partially self-supporting reformatories at Emden and Celle, while Ha:loves, Hameln. Gottingen, Luneburg, Emden, and Hildeshchn have all their separate houses of detention and poor-houses.
administration of the law was presided over by a special ministry. Criminal cases have, since been tried before sworn juries.
GOVCI'Mlient.—Hanover was a sovereign kingdom from 1814 to 1866. The monarchy was hereditary in the male line, and the administration was conducted by a responsible ministry with two representative chambers, whose concurrence was essential to the exercise of certain prerogatives of the crown. The upper of the two chambers consisted of the princes of the blood-royal; several mediatized princes; and other members of the higher nobility; four members nominated by the king; and fifty other members. Half the number of the elected representatives retired every third year. The lower chamber consisted of 2 of the members of the ministry nominated by time king, 2 deputies appointed by the chamber itself, 38, representatives of towns and boroughs, and 44 members for the country districts. There were, moreover, 7 provincial assemblies, whose concurrence and assent were necessary for the.promulgation of laws and the levying of taxes within their several districts.
The highest department of government was the council of state. The cabinet, which, after 1848, wds composed of responsible members, comprhied 7 ministers, each of whom presided over a special department of the administration: The chambers were summoned every 2 years, but the diet or landing was septennial. The monetary systeal, and the weights and measures of Hanover, were the same as those adopted by the German Zollverein (q.v.).
People. —The Hanoverians arc a mixed race; those inhabiting the northeastern and central provinces are mostly Saxons, but those on the coast are of Frisic origin; those on the west of the Ems, Dutch; and those in the southern provinces, Thuringians and Franconians. Platt-Deutsch, or low German, is commonly spoken in all the rural dis tricts excepting those bordering upon the Netherlands, in which Dutch is the ordinary form of speech; while high German, as in every other part of Germany, is the lan guage of the educated and higher classes.
.//Wou.—The country at present included in the kingdom of Hanover was occupied in remote ages by Saxon tribes, which, after a long-continued struggle under their leader Witikind, submitted to the dominion of Charlemagne, and embraced Christianity. Hanover continued to form part of the Frankish empire until the time of tile emperor Ludvig the German, when Ludolf of Meissen incorporated it in the duchy of Saxony. In 951 the emperor Otho I., who had inherited Saxony from his father, Henry I., the hereditary duke. bestowed it on Hermann Billing, on the extinction of whose family in 1106, it passed to Lothaire of Supplinburg. By the marriage of Lothaire with Riehenza of Nordheim, new territories were added to the duchy, which passed to the family of the Guelphs through their descendant Gertrude, who married Henry the proud, of Bavaria. Henry the lion, the son of the latter, did much to advance the civilization
and commerce of his subjects by conferring rights and privileges upon various towns which had advocated his cause; but when he felt under the him of the empire, a period of anarchy and confusion succeeded, which at first threatened the ruin of the country. When Henry lost the duchy of Saxony, he retained his hereditary lands of Brunswick and Luneburg through the special favor of the emperor.
The reformation early found adherents among thd burgher and populations of Hanover. but as the new doctrines were strongly opposed by many of the chief magis trates and the majority of the nobles, their formal introduction was made the subject of violent altercations between the opposite parties, until the conversion of Ernest 1. of Luneburg in 1535 gave support and stability to the cause of Protestantism.
The line of Brunswick-Uneburg began with William the younger, who, in the partition which he and his elder brother Henry (the founder of the Brunswick house) made of the dominions of their father, Ernest I., obtained in 1569 the duchies of Luneburg and Celle (Zell). William died in 1592, leaving seven sons, who, with h view of avoiding the further dismembering of their patrimony, agreed that the eldest should succeed, but that one only of their number should marry. The lot of marriage fell upon the sixth brother, George, who died in 1641, in the reign of his fourth brother, duke Frederick, the last survivor of the family. On the death of Frederick iu 1643, Christian Lewis, the eldest son of duke George, succeeded his uncle, and in accordance with the family compact, took, as his portion of the inheritance, LtIneburg, Gruben hagen, Dicpholz, and Hove, with Celle for his residence; while his next brother, George William, obtained fia.lenburg and Gottingen, with Hanover for his residence, and thus gave origin to the lines of Celle and Hanover, which were again merged in one after the death of duke George William, third son of duke George, who, dying without male heirs, was succeeded by his kinsman and son-in-law, the elector, George Lewis of Hanover, who ascended the throne of England as George I. (q.v.) on the death of queen Anne in 1714, as the nearest Protestant heir of the deceased sovereign, being son of the elettress, Sophia, daughter of Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, and grand-daughter of James I. of England. Duke George William of Celle deserves notice for his warlike and active administration, and for the part which he took in all the momentous affairs of his age; thus he sent auxiliaries to Venice, to aid the republic against the Turks, co operated with the duke of Brunswick to reduce his insurgent capital; entered into an alliance with the emperor aeminst France and Sweden; sent an army into Hungary to resist the Turks; and in 1688 lent troops and money to William of Orange against James II. of England.