MONTEFIORE, Joshua, author, born in London, England, 10 August, 1762; died in St. Albans, Vermont, 26 June, 1843. His father, Moses Vita, of an Italian Jewish family, came from Leghorn to England in 1758. Of the latter's nine sons, Joseph Elias, the fourth, was the father of Sir Moses Montefiore, the philanthropist. Joshua, who was the sixth, was graduated at Oxford, studied law, and in 1784 was admitted to practice. After following his profession in London, he joined, in 1791, a band of 275 adventurers who proposed to establish a colony on the coast of Africa, and took charge of the military arrangements of the expedition. The party occupied the island of Bulama and raised the British flag, but after several conflicts with the natives, and the refusal of Montefiore's associates to acquire the island by purchase, as he advised them to do, they were obliged to withdraw. On his return to England, Montefiore declined the honor of knighthood, and entered the army as a captain, being the first Jew to hold a military commission in England. After service in various parts of the world he resigned, came to the United States, and for some time published and edited in New York "Men and Measures," a, weekly political journal which was subventioned by the British government. He afterward resided at St. Albans, Vermont, until his death. Mr. Montefiore took a second wife in his seventy-third year, and had seven children by this marriage. He published " Commercial and Notarial Precedents" (London" Philadelphia, 1804)" "Commercial Dictionary," which was long a standard work (London, 1803, 2 eds. in the United States)" "Trader's Compendium United States Trader's Compendium Law of Copyright Synopsis of Mercantile Laws" (2d ed. by Clement C. Biddle, 1830)" "Law and Treatise on Book-keeping" (1831)" and " Laws of Land and Sea" (New York, 1831).