WORKS 
 
 ilNRY, LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 LIVES OF PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. 
 
WORKS 
 
 HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, 
 
 LIVES OF PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 OF THE TIME OF GEORGE IIL 
 
LIVES 
 
 PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 OF THE TIME OF GEORGE HI. 
 
 HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S., 
 
 MEHBKR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, AND OF 
 THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF NAPLES. 
 
 LONDON AND GLASGOW: 
 RICHARD GRIFFIN AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 
 
 1855. 
 

 GLASGOW: 
 PHINTXD BY BELL AND BAIX. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE reign of G-eorge III. may in some important respects 
 be justly regarded as the Augustan age of modern history. 
 The greatest statesmen, the most consummate captains, 
 the most finished orators, the first historians, all flourished 
 during this period. For excellence in these departments it 
 was unsurpassed in former times, nor had it even any 
 rivals, if we except the warriors of Louis XIV.'s day, one 
 or two statesmen, and Bolingbroke and Massillon as orators. 
 But its glories were not confined to those great departments 
 of human genius. Though it could show no poet like 
 Dante, Milton, Tasso, or Dryden ; no dramatist like Shak- 
 speare or Corneille; no philosopher to equal Bacon, Newton, 
 or Locke, it nevertheless in some branches, and these not 
 the least important of natural science, very far surpassed 
 the achievements of former days, while of political science, 
 the most important of all, it first laid the foundations, and 
 then reared the superstructure. The science of chemistry 
 almost entirely, of political economy entirely, were the 
 growth of this remarkable era; while even in the pure 
 mathematics a progress was made which nearly changed 
 its aspect since the days of Leibnitz 'and Newton. The 
 names of Black, Watt, Cavendish, Priestley, Lavoisier, 
 Davy, may justly be placed far above the Boyles, the 
 Stahls, the Hales, the Hookes of former times; while Euler, 
 (Jlairaut, D'Alernbert, Lagrange, La Place, must be ranked 
 
VI PEEFACE. 
 
 as analysts next after Newton himself, and above Descartes, 
 Leibnitz, or the Bernouillis ; and in economical science, 
 Hume, Smith, and Quesnai really had no parallel, hardly 
 any forerunner. It would also be vain to deny great poeti- 
 cal and dramatic genius to Goldsmith, Voltaire, Alfieri, 
 Monti, and the German school, how inferior soever to the 
 older masters of song. 
 
 But, above all, it must not be forgotten, that in our 
 times the mighty revolution which has been effected in 
 public affairs, and has placed the rights of the people 
 throughout the civilized world upon a new and a firm 
 foundation, was brought about, immediately indeed by the 
 efforts of statesmen, but prepared, and remotely caused, by 
 the labours of philosophers and men of letters. The 
 diffusion of knowledge among the community at large is 
 the work of our own age, and it has made all the conquests 
 of science both in recent and in older times of incalculably 
 greater value, of incomparably higher importance to the 
 interests of mankind, than they were while scientific study 
 was confined within the narrow circles of the wealthy and 
 the learned. 
 
 Having, therefore, on retiring from ofiice, more time left 
 for literary pursuits than professional and judicial duties 
 had before allowed me, I was not minded to waste, indolent 
 and inactive, or enslaved by lower occupations, that excel- 
 lent leisure : " Non fuit consilium socordia atque desidi 
 bonum otium conterere; neque vero agrum colendo, aut 
 venando, servilibus officiis intentum, setatem agere. Statu- 
 tum res gestas populi nostri carptim, ut quseque memoria 
 digna videbantur, perscribere ; eo magis quod mihi a spe, 
 metu, partibus reipublicse, animus liber erat." * For I 
 conceived that as portrait-painting is true historical painting 
 
 * Sail., Cat., cap. iv. 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 in one sense, so the lives of eminent men, freely written, 
 are truly the history of their times ; and that no more 
 authentic account of any age, its transactions, the springs 
 which impelled men's conduct, and the merits which differ- 
 ent actors in its scenes possessed, can be obtained than 
 by studying the biography of the personages who mainly 
 guided affairs, and examining their characters, which by 
 their influence they impressed upon the times they nourished 
 in. Such a work had moreover this advantage, that beside 
 preserving the memory of past events, and the likeness of 
 men who had passed from the stage, it afforded frequent 
 opportunities of inculcating the sound principles of an 
 enlightened and virtuous policy, of illustrating their ten- 
 dency to promote human happiness, of exhibiting their 
 power to exalt the genuine glory as well of individuals as of 
 nations. 
 
 Though I could entertain little doubt that this plan was 
 expedient, no one could more doubt than I did the capacity 
 brought to its execution, or feel more distrustful of the pen 
 held by a hand which had so long been lifted up only in 
 the contentions of the Senate and the Forum. My only 
 confidence was in the spirit of fairness and of truth with 
 which I entered on the performance of the task; and 1 
 now acknowledge with respectful gratitude the favour 
 which the work has hitherto, so far above its deserts, 
 experienced from the public, both at home, in spite of party 
 opposition, and abroad, where no such unworthy influence 
 could have place. It is fit that I also express my equal 
 satisfaction at the testimony which has been borne to its 
 strict impartiality by those whose opinions, and the opinions 
 of whose political associates, differed the most widely from 
 my own. That in composing the work I never made any 
 sacrifice of those principles which have ever guided my 
 public conduct, is certain ; that I never concealed them in 
 
Vlll PBEFACE. 
 
 the course of the book is equally true ; nay, this has been 
 made a charge against it, as if I was at liberty to write the 
 history of my own times, nay, of transactions in many of 
 which I had borne a forward part, and not show what my 
 own sentiments had been on those very affairs. But if my 
 opinions were not sacrificed to the fear that I might offend 
 the living by speaking plainly of the dead, so neither were 
 truth and justice ever sacrificed to those opinions. 
 
 The Statesmen of George the Third's age having thus 
 formed the subject of the volumes first published, I then 
 gave a more full and elaborate view of the Learned Men 
 who flourished in the same period. In my opinion, these, 
 the teachers of the age, covered it with still greater glory 
 than it drew from the Statesmen and the Warriors who 
 ruled its affairs. It was necessary to enter much more into 
 detail here than in the other branch of the work, because 
 a mere general description of scientific or of literary merit 
 is of exceedingly little value, conveying no distinct or pre- 
 cise idea of the subject sought to be explained. It appeared 
 the more necessary to discuss these matters minutely, 
 because upon some of them much prejudice prevailed, and 
 no attempt had hitherto been made to examine them com- 
 pletely, or even impartially. Of this a remarkable example 
 is afforded by the want of anything that deserves the name 
 of a Life of Voltaire, and by the great prejudices, both 
 favourable and unfavourable to him, which, among different 
 classes, exist on the subject. But it must also be observed 
 that Dr. Black's discoveries have been far from attaining 
 the reputation which they so well deserve as the foundation 
 of modern chemistry ; and justice to this illustrious philo- 
 sopher required that the consequences arising from his 
 modesty and his great indifference to fame should be coun- 
 teracted by a full history of his scientific labours, comparing 
 the state of the science as he found it with that in which 
 
PEEFACE, 1ST 
 
 he left it. My own personal acquaintance with some of 
 the great men whose history I ventured to write, enabled 
 me to throw additional light upon it ; and respecting one, 
 whom of course I could not have known, Mr. Hume, I ob- 
 tained information from good sources through the kindness 
 of friends. The materials of his life are, however, chiefly 
 to be sought in his writings, arid especially in his letters. 
 The same remark is applicable to the Life of Voltaire. 
 Those who have written it, like the Marquis de Condorcet, 
 without ever referring to the fourteen large volumes (con- 
 taining nine thousand closely-printed pages) of his Corres- 
 pondence, might just as well have undertaken to give a life 
 of Rousseau without consulting his ' Confessions,' or of 
 Hume, without reading his ' Autobiography.' I have, 
 besides, had access to valuable original documents both of 
 Voltaire, Robertson, and Cavendish ; to some respecting 
 Watt and Simson. 
 
 Scientific and literary history, the record of the progress 
 of science and of letters, and which is most usefully given 
 in the lives of their cultivators, serves two purposes ; the 
 one historical and critical, the other didactic. It is of 
 great importance to trace the progress of mankind in the 
 advancement of knowledge, and its diffusion ; to show by 
 what steps improvements have been made and applied ; to 
 estimate the relative merits of those whose claims upon 
 our gratitude are the most unquestionable ; and to ascertain 
 the position in which their labours have left the subjects of 
 those labours, with the aspect and extent of the region that 
 yet remains unexplored. But, it is hardly a less valuable 
 service of such works that they promote the knowledge of 
 the subject matter, both by exciting the desire of it, and 
 by facilitating its acquisition. The history of a philoso- 
 pher's life, that is, of his labours, the tracing of those steps 
 by which he advanced beyond his predecessors, the com- 
 
I PREFACE. 
 
 parison of the state of the science as he found it, with that 
 in which he left it, tends mightily to interest the reader, 
 to draw him towards the same inquiries, and to fix his views 
 more closely upon the details of the subject, if it has already 
 somewhat occupied his mind. In like manner, the recording 
 and the description of literary labours and merits, in con- 
 nexion with the historians, poets, and orators themselves, 
 has a powerful effect in making the reader familiar with 
 the subject, while it cultivates and refines his taste. 
 
 Under the head of Philosophers, it is unnecessary to 
 observe upon any of the lives except those of Adam Smith, 
 D'Alembert, and Simson, except to note, that those of 
 Black and Lavoisier give a full statement of the relative 
 merits of these great men, and of the conduct of the latter, 
 both with regard to Black and Priestley. But as many 
 persons entertain a prejudice against the pretensions, or it 
 may be, against the practical conclusions of the Political 
 Economists, they may be apprised that the subjects on 
 which the great and well-established fame of Adam Smith 
 is founded, are here treated without any of the exaggerations 
 wherewith speculative economists have been charged, and 
 that the Life, and the Analysis of his great work were 
 written long before the question respecting Free Trade 
 and the repeal of the Corn Laws had assumed a practical 
 form. Whatever touches that question, was composed as 
 a treatise upon a subject of science only, with the desire to 
 discover and to expound the truth, and without any view 
 to the interests of any party, the author, though he en- 
 tirely approved the repeal, yet neither agreeing with those 
 who hoped, nor with those who feared, so much from 
 its consequences. 
 
 The Lives of Simson and D'Alembert, are designed not 
 only to give the history of these eminent men the restora- 
 tion of the ancient geometry by the former, and the improve- 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 ment of the modern analysis by the latter but also to convey 
 a competent knowledge of those great methods ; while in 
 both lives, especially that of D'Alembert, there is further 
 presented a strong recommendation of mathematical pur- 
 suits, by showing the gratification which they are fitted 
 to bestow. Great as is the value of Montucla's History, 
 in the light of a didactic work, many readers have lamented 
 not more that he left it unfinished, and the latter half very 
 unsatisfactorily edited, than that he did not enter more 
 fully into the detailed statement of the subject, in several 
 of the earlier portions. 
 
 By such historical and critical works, then, the desire and 
 the acquisition of science is promoted ; and surely no more 
 important duty can be performed, than that of affording 
 both the excitement and the gratification, in however 
 moderate a degree. They who are wholly incapable of 
 advancing science themselves, may help others to the 
 knowledge of what the great masters have done ; and they 
 may do this best by not disdaining the office of elementary 
 explanation and discussion. Two thousand years ago, the 
 wisest of the ancients was said to have brought philoso- 
 phy down from heaven to earth ; certainly, he chiefly 
 valued himself on his constant efforts to stir up in men's 
 minds the desire of knowledge.* What he found necessary 
 with regard to the nature of the subject, we in our day may 
 perceive to be equally necessary because of the clouds in which 
 great men, almost unavoidably, involve their scientific 
 researches. The mathematical writings of Newton and his 
 immediate successors require to be made plain, and also to 
 be illustrated by comparative discussion, in order both to 
 show exactly what they accomplished, and to excite an in- 
 telligent curiosity respecting their labours. This has been 
 
 * Cic. Acad., Qu. i. 4, Tusc. v. 4. 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 the object both of the Life of D'Alembert, and of the 
 Analytical View of the Principia.* 
 
 The course of this work kept me for the most part, 
 at a distance from questions touching political affairs, or 
 the constitution and progress of society, but not always. 
 The reader will find that no opportunity has been left 
 unimproved, as far as I was capable of seizing it with 
 any- effect, for inculcating or illustrating the great doc- 
 trines of peace, freedom, and religious liberty. The 
 observations on historical composition in the Life of 
 Robertson, I especially consider as pointing to an improve- 
 ment in that department of letters, highly important to 
 the best interests of mankind, as well as to the character 
 of historians. 
 
 But although I had no political animosities to encoun- 
 ter, I feared my historical statements and my commentaries 
 on some lives, as those of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume, 
 might find enemies among the two great parties whose 
 principles came in question. The Free-thinkers might 
 object to the blame which I ventured to pronounce 
 upon their favourite authors ; the friends of the Church 
 might take exception to the praises occasionally bestowed. 
 It may, however, be expected from the justice of both these 
 conflicting bodies, that they will read with attention and 
 with calmness before they condemn. From the former 
 class I could expect no favour beyond what every one has a 
 
 * The Analytical View, first published in 1839, omitted the Second 
 and part of the Third Book. The whole is now nearly completed. The 
 object was to enable persons having little mathematical knowledge, beyond 
 elementary geometry and algebra, to follow the demonstrations of the fun- 
 damental propositions, and to understand by what kind of reasoning the 
 others are proved. That it was successful in this respect, there were un- 
 doubted proofs ; but the discussions with which the investigations were 
 interspersed had also a very material effect. 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 right to claim from avowed adversaries; a fair hearing was all 
 I desired. To the latter a few words might be addressed 
 in the spirit of respectful kindness, as to those with whom I 
 generally agree. 
 
 Whoever feels disposed to treat as impious any writer 
 that has the misfortune not to be among the great body of 
 believers, like the celebrated men above named, should bear 
 in mind that the author of these pages, while he does 
 justice to their great literary merits, has himself published, 
 whether anonymously or under his own name, nearly as 
 much in defence of religion as they did against it ; and if, 
 with powers so infinitely below theirs, he may hope to have 
 obtained some little success, and done some small service to 
 the cause of truth, he can only ascribe this fortune to the in- 
 trinsic merits of that cause which he has ever supported.* 
 He ventures thus to hope that no one will suspect him of 
 being the less a friend to religion, merely because he has 
 not permitted his sincere belief to make him blind regard- 
 ing the literary merit of men whose opinions are opposed 
 to his own. His censures of all indecorous, all unfair, all 
 ribald or declamatory attacks, however set off by wit or 
 graced by eloquence, he has never, on any occasion, been 
 slow to pronounce. 
 
 BROUGHAM, 3d January, 1855. 
 
 * It has given me a most heartfelt satisfaction to receive many com- 
 munications from persons both at home and abroad, which intimated their 
 having been converted from irreligious opinions by the ' Commentaries 
 and Illustrations of Paley,' published in 1835 and 1838. It must be 
 noted that the passage of the present work in which Dr. Lardner is men- 
 tioned as an orthodox writer, refers to the great question between 
 Christians and Infidels. He was an Unitarian, undoubtedly; but his 
 defence of Kevelation forms really the groundwork of Dr. Paley's 
 ' Evidences.' 
 
ONE VOLUME of the original publication was dedicated to the late 
 MR. JUSTICE WILLIAMS, " as a small memorial of ancient 
 friendship;" the other to PRINCE ALBERT, "in token of 
 respect for his encouragement of letters and the arts." The 
 French translation of the Lives of Voltaire and Rousseau, was 
 inscribed to LORD HOWDEN, " as a feeble testimony of old and 
 constant friendship." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 BLACK, 1 
 
 WATT, 25 
 
 PRIESTLEY, 68 
 
 CAVENDISH, 91 
 
 DAVY, .... ... 107 
 
 SIMSON, 123 
 
 ADAM SMITH, 166 
 
 ANALYTICAL VIEW OP THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, 207 
 
 LAVOISIER, 290 
 
 SIR JOSEPH BANKS, 334 
 
 D'ALEMBERT, 383 
 
 ADDITIONAL APPENDIX TO THE LIVES OF ADAM 
 
 SMITH AND SIR JOSEPH BANKS, . . . 468 
 
 NOTE TO THE LIYES OF CAVENDISH, WATT, AND 
 
 BLACK, 473 
 
 NOTE TO THE LIFE OF SIMSON, .... 483 
 
 INDEX, 489 
 
I UNIVERSITY I 
 
 PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE TIME OF GEORGE III. 
 
 BLACK. 
 
 THE physical sciences have few more illustrious names 
 to boast than that of Joseph Black. With all the habits 
 and the disciplined faculties of a true philosopher, with 
 the temper as well as the capacity of a sage, he possessed 
 that happy union of strong but disciplined imagination, 
 with powers of close undivided attention, and ample 
 resources of reasoning, which forms original genius in 
 scientific pursuits ; and, as all these qualities may be 
 combined in an individual without his happening to sig- 
 nalise his investigations of nature by any discovery, we 
 must add that his life was crowned with the good fortune 
 of opening to mankind new paths in which both himself 
 and his followers successfully trod, enlarging to an in- 
 calculable extent the bounds of human knowledge. The 
 modesty of his nature making him averse to publish his 
 speculations, and the genuine devotion to the investiga- 
 tion of truth, for its own sake, rendering him most open 
 in his communications with all who were engaged in 
 the same pursuits, his incontestable claim to be regarded 
 as the founder of modern chemistry has been oftentimes 
 overlooked; and, while some have endeavoured more or 
 less obscurely to mingle themselves with his discoveries, 
 others have thought it becoming to post-date the new 
 
 B 
 
2 BLACK. 
 
 system, that it might seem the produce of a somewhat 
 later age. The interests of truth and justice therefore 
 require that we should minutely examine the facts of 
 the case ; and, happily, the evidence is so clear that it 
 only requires an attentive consideration to remove all 
 doubt from the subject. I feel it a duty imperatively 
 cast upon me to undertake a task from which, did I 
 not regard it as less difficult than sacred, I might shrink. 
 But I had the great happiness of being taught by him- 
 self, having attended one of the last courses of lectures 
 which he delivered ; and the knowledge thus gained 
 cannot be turned to a better use than in recording 
 the glory and in vindicating the fame of my illustrious 
 master. 
 
 The story of a philosopher's life is soon told. Black 
 was born, in 1721, at Bordeaux, where his father, a 
 native of Belfast, was settled as a merchant : he was, 
 however, a Scotchman, and his wife too was of a Scot- 
 tish family, that of Gordon of Billhead, in Aberdeen- 
 shire, settled like Mr. Black at Bordeaux. The latter 
 was a person of extraordinary virtues, and a most 
 amiable disposition. The celebrated Montesquieu 
 honoured him with his especial regard ; and his son 
 preserved, as titles of honour in his family, the many 
 letters of the President to his parent. In one of them 
 he laments the intended removal of the Black family 
 as a thing he could not reconcile himself to, for his 
 greatest pleasure was seeing them often, and living 
 himself in their society. Though Mr. Black sent his 
 son, at the age of twelve, for some years to a school 
 in Ireland, he was removed to the College of Glasgow 
 in the year 1746, and ever after lived in that which 
 was, properly speaking, his native country. At that 
 college he studied under the celebrated Cullen, then 
 Professor of Anatomy and Lecturer on Chemistry ; and, 
 having removed in 1750 to Edinburgh for the benefit 
 of that famous medical school, he took his degree there 
 in 1754. In 1756 he was appointed to succeed Dr. 
 
BLACK. 3 
 
 Cullen in the chair of anatomy and chemistry at Glas- 
 gow, and he continued to teach there for ten years, 
 when he was appointed to the chemistry professorship 
 at Edinburgh. He then lectured for thirty years to 
 numerous classes, and retiring in 1796 lived till 1799, 
 and died on the 26th of November in that year. His 
 health never was robust ; it was indeed precarious at 
 all times from a weakness in the bronchia and chest, 
 but he prolonged life by a system of the strictest absti- 
 nence, frequently subsisting for days together on water- 
 gruel and diluted milk. He never was married ; but 
 he cherished with unvarying affection his near relatives, 
 who well deserved his care. His favourite niece, Miss 
 Burnet, a person of great sense and amiable temper, 
 was married to his friend and second cousin, Professor 
 Ferguson, the historian and moral philosopher. Dr. 
 Black lived in a select circle of friends, the most illus- 
 trious men of the times in science and in letters, Watt, 
 Button, .Hume, Robertson, Smith, and afterwards with 
 the succeeding generation of Scottish worthies, Robi- 
 son, Playfair, Stewart. Delighting to commune, to 
 speculate, and to investigate with them, he was care- 
 less of the fame which however he could not but be 
 sensible his labours must achieve. He was extremely 
 averse to publication, contemning the impatience with 
 which so many men of science hurry to the press, often 
 while their speculations are crude, and their inquiries 
 not finished. Nor could the reason often urged in 
 defence of this find much favour with one who seemed 
 never to regard the being anticipated by his fellow- 
 labourers as any very serious evil, so the progress of 
 science was secured. Except two papers, one in the 
 'London Philosophical Transactions' for 1775 on the 
 freezing of boiled water ; the other, in the second vol- 
 ume of the ' Edinburgh Transactions,' on the Iceland 
 hot springs ; he never published any work after that 
 of which we are now to speak, in 1755, and which, 
 but for the accidental occasion that gave rise to it, 
 
4 BLACK. 
 
 would possibly, like his other original speculations, 
 never have been given by himself to the press. 
 
 Upon taking his degree at Edinburgh College he 
 wrote and published a Latin Thesis, after the manner 
 of that as well as the foreign universities. The subject 
 was ' Magnesia, and the Acid produced by Food in the 
 Stomach' (De Acido e Cibis orto; et de Magnesia), and 
 it contained the outline of his discoveries already made. 
 Having sent some copies of this Thesis to his father at 
 Bordeaux, one was given to Montesquieu, who at once 
 saw the vast importance of the truths which it unfolded. 
 He called a few days after and said to Mr. Black, " I 
 rejoice with you, my very good friend : your son will 
 be the honour of your name and of your family." But 
 though the discoveries were sketched distinctly enough 
 in this writing, they were only given at large the fol- 
 lowing year in his celebrated work * Experiments on 
 Magnesia, Quicklime, and other Alkaline Substances/ 
 incontestably the most beautiful example of strict in- 
 ductive investigation since the 4 Optics' of Sir Isaac 
 Newton. His fervent admiration of that masterly work 
 was indicated by his giving it to Professor Robison, 
 then a student, and desiring him to " make it the model 
 of all his studies," recommending him at the same time 
 a careful study of the mathematics. It appears that 
 this important inquiry concerning the alkaline earths, 
 the results of which were destined to change the face 
 of chemical science, was suggested by the attempts 
 then making to find a solvent for the stone. I dis- 
 tinctly recollect Dr. Black, in his lectures, prefacing 
 the admirable and most interesting account which he 
 
 fave of his discoveries, with the statement that the 
 opes of finding a solvent which should not, like the 
 caustic alkalies, destroy the substance of the bladder 
 in melting the stone, first led him to this investigation. 
 Professor Robison has given a note from his memo- 
 randum-book indicating that he had at first fallen into 
 the notion of alkalies, when treated with quicklime, 
 
BLACK. 5 
 
 deriving from it their caustic quality; the common 
 belief (which gave rise to the term caustic) being that 
 lime obtained from the fire the quality of growing ex- 
 tremely hot, even to ignition when united with water. 
 But experiment soon corrected this idea ; for, having 
 exposed the caustic or quicklime to the air till it be- 
 came mild, he says, "Nothing escapes (meaning no 
 fire or heat) ; the cup rises considerably by absorbing 
 air." Another observation on the comparative loss of 
 weight sustained by chalk when calcined (in the fire), 
 and when dissolved in an acid, is followed by the ac- 
 count of a medical case, which the Professor knew to 
 have occurred in 1752. A third note follows, and 
 proves him to have now become possessed of the true 
 theory of causticity, namely, the expulsion of air, and 
 of mildness, namely, its absorption. The discovery 
 was therefore made as early as 1752 it was published 
 generally in 1754 it was given in its fullest details in 
 1755. At this time M. Lavoisier was a boy at school 
 nine years old when the discovery was made eleven 
 when it was published twelve when it was as fully 
 given to the world as its author ever delivered it. No 
 possibility therefore existed of that great man finding 
 out when he composed his great work that it was a 
 discovery of his own, as he did not scruple to describe 
 oxygen, though Dr. Priestley had first communicated 
 it to him in the year 1774 ; or that Black and he dis- 
 covered it about the same time, as he was in the habit 
 of stating with respect to other gases, with a convenient 
 degree of ambiguity just sufficient for self-defence, 
 should he be charged with unfair appropriation. Who 
 that reflects on the noble part which this great philo- 
 sopher acted, both in his life and in his death, can 
 avoid lamenting that he did not rest satisfied with the 
 fame really his due, of applying the discoveries in which 
 he had no kind of share, to the investigation of scien- 
 tific truths, as entirely the result of his extraordinary 
 faculty of generalization, and genius for philosophical 
 
6 BLACK. 
 
 research, as those discoveries, the materials of his in- 
 duction, were the undivided property of others ! 
 
 The capital discovery of Black, thus early made, and 
 to any share in which no one has ever pretended, was 
 that the causticity, as it was formerly termed upon a 
 false theory, of the alkalis and alkaline earths, was owing 
 to the loss of a substance with which they had been 
 combined, and that their reunion with this substance 
 again rendered them mild. But the nature of this sub- 
 stance was likewise ascertained by him, and its detection 
 forms by far the most important part of the discovery, 
 for it laid the foundation of chemical science. 'He 
 found that it was a permanently elastic fluid, like air 
 in some of its mechanical qualities, those of being 
 transparent or invisible, and incondensable, but differ- 
 ing entirely from the air of our atmosphere in its chemi- 
 cal properties. It was separated from alkaline substan- 
 ces by heat, and by the application of acids, which, 
 having a stronger elective affinity for them, caused it 
 to be precipitated, or to escape in the aeriform state ; 
 it was heavier than common air, and it gave a slight 
 acidulous flavour to water on being absorbed by it ; 
 hence the inference that it was an acid itself. A short 
 time afterwards (in 1757) he discovered that this pe- 
 culiar air is the same with that produced by the fer- 
 mentation of vegetable substances. This he ascer- 
 tained by the simple experiment of partially emptying 
 in a brewer's vat, where the fermenting process was 
 going on, the contents of a phial filled with lime-water. 
 On shaking the liquid that remained with the air that 
 had entered, he found it become turbid, from the lime 
 having entered into union with the air, and become 
 chalk. The same day he discovered by an experiment, 
 equally simple and equally decisive, that the air which 
 comes from burning charcoal is of the same kind. He 
 fixed a piece of charcoal in the broad end of a bellows 
 nozzle, unscrewed ; and putting that in the fire, he in- 
 serted the other end in a vessel filled with lime-water. 
 
BLACK. 7 
 
 The air that was driven through the liquid again pre- 
 cipitated the lime in the form of chalk. Finally, he 
 ascertained by breathing through a syphon filled with 
 lime-water, and finding the lime again precipitated, that 
 animals, by breathing, evolve air of this description. 
 
 The great step was now made, therefore, that the air 
 of the atmosphere is not the only permanently elastic 
 body, but that others exist, having perfectly different 
 qualities from the atmospheric air, and capable of los- 
 ing their elasticity by entering into chemical union 
 with solid or with liquid substances, from which being 
 afterwards separated, they regain the elastic or aeriform 
 state. He gave to this body the name of fixed air, to 
 denote only that it was found fixed in bodies, as well 
 as elastic and separate. He used the term "air" only 
 to denote its mechanical resemblance to the atmos- 
 pheric air, and not at all to imply that it was of the 
 same nature. No one ever could confound the two 
 substances together ; and accordingly M. Morveau, in 
 explaining some years afterwards the reluctance of 
 chemists to adopt the new theory of causticity, gives 
 as their excuse, that although this doctrine " admirably 
 tallies with all the phenomena, yet it ascribes to fixed 
 air properties which really make it a new body or ex- 
 istence" ("forment reellement un nouvel etre").* 
 
 In order to estimate the importance of this discovery, 
 and at the same time to show how entirely it altered 
 the whole face of chemical science, and how completely 
 the doctrine was original, we must now examine the 
 state of knowledge which philosophers had previously 
 attained upon the subject. 
 
 It has often been remarked that no great discovery 
 was ever made at once, except perhaps that of loga- 
 rithms ; all have been preceded by steps which con- 
 ducted the discoverer's predecessors nearly, though not 
 quite, to the same point. Some may possibly think 
 
 * Supplement to the ' Encyclopedic,' vol. ii., p. 274, published in 1777. 
 
8 BLACK. 
 
 that Black's discovery of fixed air affords no second 
 exception to this rule ; for it is said that Van Helmont, 
 who nourished at the end of the sixteenth and begin- 
 ning of the seventeeth century, had observed its evo- 
 lution during fermentation, and given it the name of 
 gas silvestre, spirit from wood, remarking that it caused 
 the phenomena of the Grotto del Cane, near Naples. 
 But though he as well as others had observed an aeri- 
 form substance to be evolved in fermentation and in 
 effervescence, there is no reason for affirming that they 
 considered it as differing from atmospheric air, except 
 by having absorbed, or become mixed with, certain 
 impurities. Accordingly, a century later than Van 
 Helmont, Hales, who made more experiments on air 
 than any other of the old chemists, adopts the com- 
 monly received opinion that all elastic fluids were only 
 different combinations of the atmospheric air with 
 various exhalations or impurities ;* and this was the 
 universal belief upon the subject, both of philosophers 
 and of the vulgar. 
 
 It is now fit that we see in what manner the subject 
 was treated by scientific men at the period immediately 
 preceding Black's discoveries. The article 'Air' in 
 the French 4 Encyclopedic' was published in 1751, and 
 
 * It may safely be affirmed that Van Helmont's observation, which lay 
 for a century and a half barren, threw no light of any value upon the sub- 
 ject. No one questions Newton's title to the discovery of the different 
 refrangibility of light, and the true theory of the rainbow ; yet, at the 
 beginning of the 17th century, Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of 
 Spalatro, had really made an ingenious and well-grounded experiment on 
 the similarity of the rainbow colours with those formed by the sun's rays 
 refracted twice and reflected once in a globe filled with water. The doc- 
 trine of universal gravitation was known to both Kepler and Galileo ; and 
 Boulland (Astronomia Philolaica, lib. i., 1645), distinctly stated his belief 
 or conjecture that it acted inversely as the squares of the distances. The 
 famous proposition of equal areas in equal times was known to Kepler. 
 The nearest approach to the Fluxional Calculus had been made by Har- 
 riott and Roberval and Fermat ; and to take but one other example, the 
 electrical explosion of the Leyden jar, discovered in 1747, obtained the 
 name of the coup-foudroyant, and was by Abbe Nollet conjectured to be 
 identical with lightning, Franklin's celebrated experiment being only made 
 in 1752. 
 
BLACK. 9 
 
 written by D'AIembert himself. It is, as might be 
 expected, able, clear, elaborate. He assumes the sub- 
 stance of the atmosphere to be alone entitled to the 
 name of air, and to be the foundation of all other per- 
 manently elastic bodies : " L'air elementaire, ou 1'air 
 proprement dit," he says. He describes it as " homo- 
 gene," and terms it " 1'ingredient fondamental de tout 
 Fair de I'atmosphere, et qui lui donne son nom." Other 
 substances or exhalations mix with it, he says, but these 
 he terms " passageres," passing vapours, and not per- 
 manent : the air alone (that is, the atmospheric air) he 
 calls " permanent," or permanently elastic (vol. i. p. 
 225). So little attention had the observation of Van 
 Helmont respecting the Grotto del Cane excited, that 
 we find a conjecture hazarded in the article * Grotte 7 
 (vol. vii. p. 968), which appeared in 1756. "peut- 
 etre respirent ils (les chiens), au lieu d'air, des vapeurs 
 minerales ;" but this was some time after Black's dis- 
 covery had taught us to distinguish such permanently 
 elastic vapours from atmospheric air. In the article 
 'Fermentation' (vol. vi. p. 523) we find Van Hel- 
 mont's doctrines of the connection between fermenta- 
 tion and digestion treated with ridicule, and those who 
 adopted them jocularly called the " fermentateurs." 
 
 A few years later, however, the face of things 
 changed. In the 'Supplement,' published in 1776, 
 
 TXTO TTnri ov oT-f i r I Q r\-v\ ' TTfVrtri A TV* Yirl o T*rkT>T*vi/"o "bf\ 
 
 we find an article on ' Fixed Air,' and a reference to 
 Dr. Black's discovery ; but nothing can be more indis- 
 tinct than the author, M. Morveau's, ideas respecting 
 it ; for he leaves us in doubt whether it be the atmos- 
 pheric air or a separate substance, and yet he states 
 that the phenomena of fermentation and putrefaction 
 are explained by the evolution or absorption of this 
 air, and that mineral waters derive from its presence 
 their flavour. An abstract of M. Venel's book had in 
 1765, under the head of 'Mineral Waters,' given this 
 explanation ; but instead of representing the air com- 
 bined with the water as a different substance, he calls 
 
10 BLACK. 
 
 it " veritable air et meme tres pure." We have, how- 
 ever, seen that, in the following year (1777), M. Mor- 
 veau's ideas were perfectly distinct on the subject; for 
 he treats it as a new substance, wholly different from 
 atmospheric air. The slowness with which Black's 
 doctrine made its way in France may be presumed 
 from Morveau's remark on causticity, already cited, 
 and also from this, that the article on 'Magnesia,' 
 published in 1765, dogmatically asserts Black to be in 
 error when he describes Epsom salts as yielding that 
 earth, "because," says the author, "those salts are 
 purely Seidlitian," " entierement Seidlitiens" (vol. x. 
 p. 858). In fact, Epsom salts, magnesia, limestone, 
 and sea-water are the great sources from which all 
 magnesia is obtained. The first of these substances is 
 in truth only a ccmbination of magnesia with sulphuric 
 acid. 
 
 The other discoveries to which Black's led were as 
 slowly disseminated as his own. Oxygen gas had been 
 discovered, in August, 1774, by Priestley, and soon 
 after by Scheele without any knowledge of Priestley's 
 previous discovery ; yet in 1777 Morveau, who wrote 
 the chemical articles in the ' Supplement,' never men- 
 tions that discovery, nor the almost equally important 
 discovery of Scheele, chlorine, made in 1774, nor that 
 of azote, discovered by Rutherford in 1772, nor hydro- 
 gen gas, the properties of which had been fully inves- 
 tigated by Cavendish as early as 1766. Lavoisier's 
 important doctrine, well entitled to be called a dis- 
 covery, of the true nature of combustion, had likewise 
 been published in 1774 in his ' Opuscules,' yet Mor- 
 veau doggedly adheres to his own absurd theory of 
 the air only being necessary to maintain those oscilla- 
 tions in which he holds combustion to consist ; and 
 finding that the increase of weight is always the result 
 of calcination as well as combustion, he satisfies him- 
 self with making a gratuitous addition to the hypo- 
 thesis of phlogiston, and supposes that this imaginary 
 
BLACK. 11 
 
 substance is endowed with positive levity ; nor does he 
 allude to the experiments of Lavoisier on gases, on 
 combustion, and on oxidation, further than to say that 
 he had for a considerable time been engaged in these 
 inquiries. It was not indeed till 1787 that he became 
 a convert to the sound and rational doctrine, and aban- 
 doned the fanciful hypothesis, simple and ingenious 
 though it be, of Stahl. Berthollet, the earliest con- 
 vert, had come over to the truth two years before. 
 Thus, discoveries had been made which laid the foun- 
 dation of a new science, and on which the attention of 
 all philosophers was bent ; yet the greatest scientific 
 work of the age made no more mention of them than 
 if Black, Cavendish, Priestley, and Scheele had not 
 been. The conjecture may be allowed to us, that if 
 any of these great things had been done in France, M. 
 Morveau would not have been suffered to preserve the 
 same unbroken silence respecting them, even if his 
 invincible prejudices in favour of the doctrine of phlo- 
 giston had disposed him to a course so unworthy of a 
 philosopher. 
 
 The detail into which I have entered, sufficiently 
 proves that the discovery of fixed air laid at once the 
 foundation of the great events in the chemical world 
 to which reference has just been made, because the 
 step was of incalculable importance by which we are 
 led to the fact that atmospheric air is only one of a 
 class of permanently elastic fluids. When D'Alembert 
 wrote the article ' Air,' in 1751, he gave the doctrine 
 then universally received, that all the other kinds of 
 air were only impure atmospheric air, and that this 
 fluid alone was permanently elastic, all other vapours 
 being only, like steam, temporarily aeriform. Once 
 the truth was made known that there are other gases 
 in nature, only careful observation was required to 
 find them out. Inflammable air was the next which 
 became the subject of examination, because, though it 
 had long been known, before Black's discovery it had 
 
12 BLACK. 
 
 been supposed only to be common air mixed with unc- 
 tuous particles. His discovery at once showed that it 
 was, like fixed air, a separate aeriform fluid, wholly 
 distinct from the air of the atmosphere. The other 
 gases were discovered somewhat later. But it is a 
 very great mistake to suppose that none of these were 
 known to Black, or that he supposed fixed air to be 
 the only gas different from the atmospheric. The na- 
 ture of hydrogen gas was perfectly known to him, and 
 both its qualities of being inflammable and of being so 
 much lighter than atmospheric air ; for as early as 1766 
 he invented the air balloon, showing a party of his 
 friends the ascent of a bladder filled with inflammable 
 air. Mr. Cavendish only more precisely ascertained 
 its specific gravity, and showed what Black could not 
 have been ignorant of, that it is the same, from what- 
 ever substance it is obtained. 
 
 But great as was the discovery of fixed air, and impor- 
 tant as were its consequences, the world was indebted 
 to its illustrious author for another scarcely less re- 
 markable, both from being so unexpected, and from 
 producing such lasting effects upon physical science. 
 About the year 1763 he meditated closely upon the 
 fact, that on the melting of ice more heat seems to 
 disappear than the thermometer indicates, and also that 
 on the condensation of steam an unexpected propor- 
 tion of heat becomes perceptible. An observation of 
 Fahrenheit, on the cooling of water below the tem- 
 perature of ice until it is disturbed, when it gives out 
 heat and freezes at once, appears also to have attracted 
 his careful consideration. He contrived a set of simple 
 but decisive experiments to investigate the cause of 
 these appearances, and was led to the discovery of 'latent 
 heat, or the absorption of heat upon bodies passing from 
 the solid to the fluid state, and from the fluid to the aeri- 
 form, the heat having no effect on surrounding bodies, 
 and being therefore insensible to the hand or to the 
 thermometer, and only by its absorption maintaining the 
 
BLACK. 13 
 
 body in the state which it has assumed, and which it 
 retains until, the absorbed heat being given out, and 
 becoming again sensible, the state of the body is 
 changed back again from fluid to solid, from aeriform 
 to fluid. He never published any account of this dis- 
 covery, but he explained it fully in his Lectures, both 
 at Glasgow and Edinburgh, and he referred to it in the 
 paper already mentioned, which was printed in the 
 4 Philosophical Transactions' for 1775. Well, then, 
 may we marvel that no mention whatever of latent 
 heat is made in the celebrated * Encyclopedic,' which 
 owed its chemical contributions to no less a writer and 
 experimentalist than Morveau. The doctrine of latent 
 heat, however, was immediately applied by all philo- 
 sophers to the production of the different airs which 
 were successively discovered. They were found to 
 owe their permanently elastic state to the heat absorbed 
 in their production from solid or fluid substances, and to 
 regain their fluid or solid state by combining either 
 together or with those substances, and in the act of 
 union giving out in a sensible form the heat which 
 while absorbed and latent, had kept them in the state 
 of elastic and invisible fluids.* 
 
 The third great discovery of Black was that which 
 has since been called the doctrine of specific heat, but 
 which he called the capacity of bodies for heat. Dif- 
 ferent bodies contain different quantities of heat in the 
 same bulk or weight ; and different quantities of heat 
 are required to raise different bodies to the same sen- 
 sible temperature. Thus, by Black's experiment, it 
 was found that a pound of gold being heated to 150, 
 and added to a pound of water at 50, the temperature 
 of both became not 100, the mean between the two, 
 but 55, the gold losing 95, and the water gaining 5, 
 
 * It is by no means impossible that one day we may be able to reduce 
 the phenomena of light within the theory of latent heat. It may be that 
 this body when absorbed, that is, fixed in substances, gives out heat ; as, 
 while passing 1 through diaphanous bodies and remaining unfixed, its heat is 
 not sensible. 
 
14 BLACK. 
 
 because the capacity of water for heat is nineteen times 
 that of gold. So twice as much heat is required to 
 raise water to any given point of sensible heat as to 
 raise mercury, the volumes of the two fluids compared 
 being equal. 
 
 The true doctrine of combustion, calcination of 
 metals, and respiration of animals, which Lavoisier 
 deduced from the experiments of Priestley and Scheele 
 upon oxygen gas, and of Cavendish on hydrogen gas, 
 and which has changed the whole aspect of chemical 
 science, was founded mainly upon the doctrines of 
 latent and specific heat. It was thus the singular fe- 
 licity of Black to have furnished both the pillars 
 upon which modern chemistry reposes, and to have 
 furnished them so long before any one attempted to 
 erect the superstructure, that no doubt could by any 
 possibility arise respecting the source of our increased 
 knowledge, the quarter to which our gratitude should 
 be directed. Fixed air was discovered in 1752, and 
 fully explained to the world in 1754 and 1755. 
 Latent heat was yearly, from 1763, explained to nu- 
 merous classes of students, before whom the experi- 
 ments that prove it were performed by the author's 
 own hands. Cavendish made his experiments on in- 
 flammable air in 1766; Priestley began his in 1768, 
 first publishing in 1772 ; and he discovered oxygen in 
 1774, in which year the nature of combustion was first 
 explained by Lavoisier, a boy at school when fixed air 
 was discovered, and having made no experiments nor 
 written any one line upon chemical subjects for seven 
 years after latent heat was discovered. 
 
 But we shall form a more striking idea to ourselves 
 of the revolution which Black thus effected in che- 
 mistry, if we attend a little to the state of that science 
 in general before he began his labours. We have 
 already seen the low condition of the knowledge then 
 possessed respecting aeriform fluids ; the general condi- 
 tion of the science was in the same proportion humble. 
 
BLACK. 15 
 
 The celebrated 'Preliminary Discourse,' to the 'En- 
 cyclopedic' makes hardly any mention of chemistry 
 among the sciences; and in the ' Arbre Encyclopedique,' 
 on which the authors (D' Alembert and Diderot) plume 
 themselves much, we find it not very distinctly repre- 
 sented, or in very good company. It is termed the 
 science of interior and occult qualities of bodies, its 
 objects being to imitate and rival nature, by decom- 
 posing, reviving, and transferring substances. It is 
 represented as holding among the sciences the place 
 which poetry occupies among other branches of litera- 
 ture. Its fruits are said to be alchemy, metallurgy, 
 natural magic, and chemistry properly so called, 
 which is stated to consist of pyrotechny and dyeing. 
 Strange to tell, pharmacy is not given as one of its 
 fruits, being referred wholly to the branch of medical 
 science. 
 
 But the state of chemistry is better understood by 
 the article itself in the ' Encyclopedic,' the elaborate 
 work of M. Venel of Montpelier, well known for his 
 researches concerning mineral springs, and author of 
 most of the chemical articles in the original work, 
 as M. Morveau was of those in the ' Supplement,' 
 and whose mistakes on the subject of magnesia, aris- 
 ing from prejudice, have already been mentioned. He 
 begins this article with lamenting the low condition of 
 his favourite science; " Elle est peu cultivee parmi nous. 
 Cette science n'est que tres mediocrement repandue, 
 meme parmi les savans, malgre la prevention, a 1'uni- 
 versalite des connaissances qui font aujourd'hui le gout 
 dominant. Les chemistes forment un peuple distinct, 
 tres-peu nombreux, ayant sa langue, ses mysteres, ses 
 loix, et vivent presque isoles au milieu d'un grand 
 peuple peu curieux de sa connaissance, n'entendant 
 presque rien de son Industrie." He then goes on to 
 show that this " incuriosite, soit reelle, soit simulee," 
 is yet extremely unphilosophical, inasmuch as it leads to 
 a rash condemnation ; and that those who know any 
 
16 BLACK 
 
 subject superficially may possibly be deceived in their 
 own judgment upon it, " the consequence of which has 
 been," he adds, "that owing to the prejudices enter- 
 tained against the nature and reach of the science, it 
 becomes a matter of no small difficulty or slight con- 
 troversy to say clearly and precisely what chemistry is. 
 Some make no distinction between the chemist and 
 the quack who seeks after the philosopher's stone 
 (souffleur) ; others think any one a chemist who has 
 a still for preparing perfumes or colours. Many con- 
 sider the compounding of drugs as containing the 
 whole of the art. Even men of science know scarcely 
 any thing about the chemists." " What natural phi- 
 losopher," he asks, " so much as ever names Becker or 
 Stahl ? Whereas those who, having other scientific 
 illustrations, as John Bernouilli and Boerhaave, have 
 written chemical works, or rather works on chemical 
 subjects, are very differently thought of; so that the for- 
 mer's work on ' Fermentation,' ana the latter's on ' Fire,' 
 are known, cited, and praised, while the far greater 
 views of Stahl on the same subjects only exist for a few 
 chemists." He then goes on to cite other proofs of the 
 low estimate formed of the science, and even the pre- 
 vailing impression of chemists being mere workmen ; 
 and concludes, that " the revolution which should raise 
 chemistry to the rank it merits, and place it on a 
 level with natural philosophy, can only be accom- 
 plished by a great, an enthusiastic, and a bold genius." 
 While waiting for the advent of this new Paracelsus, 
 he says, it must be his task to present chemistry 
 in a light which may show it worthy the notice of 
 philosophers, and capable of becoming something in 
 their hands. 
 
 If we go back to an earlier period, we shall find 
 that Lord Bacon, although he quite clearly perceived 
 that chemistry might one day be advanced to the rank 
 of a science (De Dig. et Aug. iii.), yet always treats the 
 chemistry of his day as merely empirical (Nov. Org. 
 
BLACK. 17 
 
 s. Ixiv. Ixxiii.*). But I have preferred taking the 
 account of chemical science from the * Encyclopedic,' 
 first, because it gives, if not the opinion or the testi- 
 mony of the learned body at large who prepared that 
 work, yet certainly an opinion and a testimony which 
 had the sanction of its more eminent members ; and, 
 secondly, because its date is at the eve of the great 
 revolution in natural science of which we are speaking. 
 The last passage which has been cited from that work 
 strikingly illustrates the low ebb at which chemical 
 science then was. It is certain that after the discov- 
 eries of Black had opened vast and new views of nature, 
 both as regards the operations of heat, the most power- 
 ful and universal of all agents, and as regards the con- 
 stitution of elastic fluids, the most unknown of the four 
 elements, no natural philosopher would have had the 
 hardihood to doubt if chemistry was an important 
 branch of his science, and no chemist would have 
 performed the superfluous task of vindicating its claim 
 to the title. 
 
 * " Itaque tails philosophia (in paucorum experimentorum argutiis et 
 obscuritate fundata) illis qui in hujusmodi experiments quotidie vevsantur 
 atque ex ipsis phantasmatis contaminarunt, probabilis videtur, et quasi 
 certa ; cseteris incredibilis et vana, cujus exemplar notabile est in chemicis 
 eorumque dogmatibus." 
 
 It must be added that beside the injustice here done to Van Helmont, 
 he goes on to rank Gilbert in the same empirical class, as he elsewhere does 
 a most incorrect view of Gilbert's induction, the most perfect by far of 
 any before Lord Bacon's age, and, though mixed with some hypothetical 
 reasoning, hardly in strictness excelled by any philosopher of after times. 
 I cannot come so near the remarkable sixty-fifth section of the ' Novum 
 Organum' without digressing so far from my subject as to cite the pro- 
 phetic warning given to some zealots without knowledge of our own times 
 against the " apotheosis errorum," the " pestis intellectus, si vanis accedat 
 veneratio." " Huic autem vanitati (adds the pious and truly Christian 
 sage) nonnulli ex modernis summa levitate ita indulserunt ut in primo 
 capitulo Geneseos et in libro Job et aliis scripturae locis philosophiam 
 naturalem fundari conati stint ; inter mortua qujerentes viva ; " a folly the 
 more to be deprecated, he says, because " ex divinarum et humanarum 
 malesana admistione non solum educitur philosophia phantastica, sed etiam 
 religio hseretica." His practical conclusion, therefore, is to render unto 
 faith the things alone which are faith's : " Admodum salutare, si mente 
 sobria, fidei tantum dentur quse fidei sunt." 
 
 C 
 
18 BLACK. 
 
 We have now gone through the whole of this in- 
 teresting subject, rather occupied in contemplating the 
 foundations of a new science than in tracing the exten- 
 sion of the boundaries which confine an old one. The 
 universal operation of heat, and the agency which, by 
 its absorption and its evolution, it exerts on the struc- 
 ture of all bodies, renders the discovery of its nature 
 and action in these respects, next to that of gravitation, 
 the most important step which has been made in the 
 progress of physical science. The new field opened to 
 philosophical inquiry by the discovery of the gaseous 
 bodies is only second to the former step in the import- 
 ance of its consequences. It is as objects of pure 
 science, the mere contemplation of scientific truth, 
 that we have been considering these great discoveries ; 
 yet they have amply contributed also to the advance- 
 ment of the arts. The illustrious improver of the steam 
 engine was too young to have joined in the experiments 
 on fixed air ; but in the course of those by which latent 
 heat was discovered, he had a constant and confidential 
 intercourse with Black, one of his earliest patrons ; 
 and although it is as certain that he did not owe to 
 that philosopher's suggestions any of the steps by which 
 his inventions were compassed, as it is that he had him- 
 self no share in Black's great discovery, it cannot be 
 doubted that the knowledge thus acquired of the true 
 nature of heat, of steam, of evaporation, and of con- 
 densation, contributed most essentially to his mighty 
 improvements. As for the gases, it would be difficult 
 to name the branch of art which has not in some 
 manner and to some extent gained by their discovery. 
 So that the great man whose history we are contem- 
 plating, had the satisfaction of seeing the triumphs of 
 his youth bear fruit in every direction, exalting the 
 power and increasing the comforts of mankind as well 
 as extending the bounds of their knowledge and en- 
 larging the range of their industry. He was but 
 twenty -four years old when he made his first discovery. 
 
BLACK. 19 
 
 and thirty-four when his second was added. He lived 
 to nearly fourscore, 
 
 It remains to consider him as a teacher ; and cer- 
 tainly nothing could be more admirable than the man- 
 ner in which for forty years he performed this useful 
 and dignified office. His style of lecturing was as 
 nearly perfect as can well be conceived ; for it had all 
 the simplicity which is so entirely suited to scientific dis- 
 course, while it partook largely of the elegance which 
 characterized all he said or did. The publication of 
 his lectures has conveyed an accurate idea of the 
 purely analytical order in which he deemed it best to 
 handle the subject with a view to instruction, consider- 
 ing this as most likely to draw and to fix the learner's 
 attention, to impress his memory, and to show him 
 both the connection of the theory with the facts, and 
 the steps by which the principles were originally as- 
 certained. The scheme of the lectures may thence be 
 apprehended the execution imperfectly ; for the dic- 
 tion was evidently, in many instances, extemporaneous, 
 the notes before the teacher furnishing him with little 
 more than the substance, especially of those portions 
 which were connected with experiments. But still 
 less can the reader rise from the perusal to any con- 
 ception of the manner. Nothing could be more suited 
 to the occasion ; it was perfect philosophical calmness ; 
 there was no effort ; it was an easy and a graceful con- 
 versation. The voice was low, but perfectly distinct 
 and audible through the whole of a large hall crowded 
 in every part with mutely attentive listeners ; it was 
 never at all forced any more than were the motions of 
 the hands, but it was anything rather than monotonous. 
 Perfect elegance as well as repose was the phrase by 
 which every hearer and spectator naturally, and as if 
 by common consent, described the whole delivery- 
 The accidental circumstance of the great teacher's as- 
 pect, I hope I may be pardoned for stopping to note, 
 while endeavouring to convey the idea of a philosophic 
 
20 BLACK, 
 
 discoverer. His features were singularly graceful, full 
 of intelligence, but calm as suited his manner and his 
 speech. His high forehead and sharp temples were 
 slightly covered, when I knew him, with hair of a 
 snow-white hue, and his mouth gave a kindly as well 
 as most intelligent expression to his whole features. 
 In one department of his lecture he exceeded any I 
 have ever known, the neatness and unvarying success 
 with which all the manipulations of his experiments 
 were performed. His correct eye and steady hand 
 contributed to the one; his admirable precautions, 
 foreseeing and providing for every emergency, secured 
 the other. I have seen him pour boiling water or boil- 
 ing acid from a vessel that had no spout into a tube, 
 holding it at such a distance as made the stream's 
 diameter small, and so vertical that not a drop was 
 spilt. While he poured he would mention this adap- 
 tation of the height to the diameter as a necessary 
 condition of success. I have seen him mix two sub- 
 stances in a receiver into which a gas, as chlorine, had 
 been introduced, the effect of the combustion being 
 perhaps to produce a compound inflammable in its 
 nascent state, and the mixture being effected by draw- 
 ing some string or wire working through the receiver's 
 sides in an air-tight socket. The long table on which 
 the different processes had been carried on was as 
 clean at the end of the lecture as it had been before 
 the apparatus was planted upon it. Not a drop of 
 liquid, not a grain of dust remained. 
 
 The reader who has known the pleasures of science 
 will forgive me if at the distance of half a century I 
 love to linger over these recollections, and to dwell on 
 the delight which I well remember thrilled me as we 
 heard this illustrious sage detail, after the manner I 
 have feebly attempted to pourtray, the steps by which 
 he made his discoveries, illustrating them with anec- 
 dotes sometimes recalled to his mind by the passages 
 of the moment, and giving their demonstration by 
 
BLACK. 21 
 
 performing before us the many experiments which 
 had revealed to him first the most important secrets 
 of nature. Next to the delight of having actually 
 stood by him when his victory was gained, we found 
 the exquisite gratification of hearing him simply, most 
 gracefully, in the most calm spirit of philosophy, with 
 the most perfect modesty, recount his difficulties, and 
 how they were overcome; open to us the steps by 
 which he had successfully advanced from one part to 
 another of his brilliant course; go over the same 
 ground, as it were, in our presence which he had for 
 the first time trod so many long years before ; hold 
 up perhaps the very instruments he had then used, 
 and act over again the same part before our eyes 
 which had laid the deep and broad foundations of his 
 imperishable renown. Not a little of this extreme 
 interest certainly belonged to the accident that he had 
 so long survived the period of his success that we 
 knew there sat in our presence the man now in his old 
 age reposing under the laurels won in his early youth. 
 But take it altogether, the effect was such as cannot 
 well be conceived. I have heard the greatest under- 
 standings of the age giving forth their efforts in its 
 most eloquent tongues have heard the commanding 
 .periods of Pitt's majestic oratory the vehemence of 
 Fox's burning declamation have followed the close- 
 compacted chain of Grant's pure reasoning been 
 carried away by the mingled fancy, epigram, and ar- 
 gumentation of Plunket ; but I should without hesi- 
 tation prefer, for mere intellectual gratification (though 
 aware how much of it is derived from association), to 
 be once more allowed the privilege which I in those 
 days enjoyed of being present while the first philo- 
 sopher of his age was the historian of his own dis- 
 coveries, and be an eye-witness of those experiments 
 by which he had formerly made them, once more per- 
 formed with his own hands. 
 
 The qualities which distinguished him as an inquirer 
 
22 BLACK. 
 
 and as a teacher followed him into all the ordinary affairs 
 of life. He was a person whose opinions on every sub- 
 ject were marked by calmness and sagacity, wholly free 
 from both passion and prejudice, while affectation was 
 only known to him from the comedies he might have 
 read. His temper in all the circumstances of life was 
 unruffled. This was perceived in his lectures when he 
 had occasion to mention any narrow prejudice or any 
 unworthy proceeding of other philosophers. One ex- 
 ception there certainly was, possibly the only one in 
 his life ; he seemed to have felt hurt at the objections 
 urged by a German chemist called Meyer to his doc- 
 trine of causticity, which that person explained by 
 supposing an acid, called by him acidum pingue^ to 
 be the cause of alkaline mildness. The unsparing 
 severity of the lecture in which Black exposed the ig- 
 norance and dogmatism of this foolish reasoner cannot 
 well be forgotten by his hearers, who both wondered 
 that so ill-matched an antagonist should have succeeded 
 where so many crosses had failed in discomposing the 
 sage, and observed how well fitted he was, should 
 occasion be offered, for a kind of exertion exceedingly 
 different from all the efforts that at other times he was 
 wont to make. 
 
 The soundness of his judgment on all matters, whe- 
 ther of literature or of a more ordinary description, 
 was described by Adam Smith, who said, he " had less 
 nonsense in his head than any man living." The ele- 
 gance of his taste, which has been observed upon as 
 shown in his lectures, was also seen in the efforts of 
 his pencil, which Professor Kobison compares to that 
 of Woollett. The neatness of his manipulations was 
 not confined to his experiments when investigating or 
 when lecturing. I have heard one who happened to 
 see him at his toilette describe the operations as per- 
 formed with exquisite neatness by a number of contri- 
 vances happily adapted to the saving of trouble and 
 avoiding uneasiness. His perfect equanimity has been 
 
 
BLACK. 23 
 
 adverted to, and it did not proceed from coldness of 
 disposition, for he was affectionately attached to his 
 friends. Having no family of his own, he may be said 
 to have fallen into those precise and regular habits 
 which sometimes raise in happier individuals a smile, 
 I stop not to inquire whether of envy or contempt, for 
 the single state. It was sometimes said, too, that his 
 habits were penurious. That the expenses of one who 
 had no love of pleasure and no fancy for ostentation 
 to gratify, must have been moderate, is certain ; but he 
 lived in the style and manner suited to one possessing 
 an ample income. The ground of the charge was, I 
 believe, that he was said to have a scale by him when 
 he received the fees of his students. I can answer for 
 the truth of this statement, for I well remember the 
 small brass instrument ; but I also recollect that he 
 said it became necessary from the quantity of light 
 gold which he used at first to receive unsuspected from 
 one class, particularly, of his pupils. There was 
 certainly no reason why he should pay a sum of forty 
 or fifty pounds yearly out of his income on this account. 
 Both Professor Ferguson and Professor Robison have 
 positively denied the charge of avarice, and have given 
 ample testimony even to his generous nature. While 
 he lived at Glasgow he lost three-fourths of his fortune 
 by the failure of a house in which it was invested ; and 
 though he had foreseen the catastrophe for two years, 
 he neither attempted to withdraw his funds, nor 
 altered in any respect his kind demeanour towards the 
 head of the firm, whom he knew. At Edinburgh he 
 more than once incurred great risks to help friends in 
 business. 
 
 The gradual decay of his strength brought about the 
 extinction of life without pain and without any discom- 
 posure. Professor Robison told me that he was sure 
 nothing could be more agreeable to his illustrious 
 friend's wishes than this end, as nothing was more 
 likely to vex and annoy him than the unavoidable 
 
24 BLACK. 
 
 accompaniments of a protracted illness and a sick-bed. 
 He often indeed expressed a wish that he might be 
 spared this suffering, and that wish was fully gratified. 
 It seemed, said the Professor, as if he waited calmly 
 until the last stroke of his pulse should be given. It 
 is certain that he passed from this life so quietly as 
 not to spill a cup of milk and water (a customary din- 
 ner with him) which he at the moment was holding 
 in his hand, and which rested on his knee. His atten- 
 dants saw him in this posture, and left the room sup- 
 posing him still alive. On returning soon after they 
 saw him exactly sitting as before, and found that he 
 had expired. 
 
(25) 
 
 WA TT. 
 
 THE intimacy of Mr. Watt with Dr. Black from his 
 earliest years has been already mentioned. When the 
 latter was a Professor at the University of Glasgow, 
 Watt, then a young man, was employed as mathe- 
 matical instrument maker to the Natural Philosophy 
 class, and was in daily communication with the Pro- 
 fessor while his experiments on heat, evaporation, and 
 condensation were carried on. I well remember him 
 afterwards, in his lectures at Edinburgh, mentioning 
 that his young coadjutor employed himself at the same 
 time in researches upon the nature of steam ; and it is 
 certain that his subsequent inventions were greatly 
 aided by the discoveries of Black respecting heat. To 
 the inquiries out of which these inventions arose, he 
 appears to have been led by the accident of having a 
 model of an engine to repair for the Professor of 
 Natural Philosophy. But, before examining the 
 foundations upon which his great and well-earned fame 
 rests, it is fit that we should first consider the state in 
 which he found the engine, which he almost created 
 anew. This is following the same course which has 
 been pursued with respect to the discoveries of Dr. 
 Black. 
 
 The power of steam is far too generally perceived in 
 the ordinary affairs of life to have wholly escaped the 
 observations of men at any period. The ancients ac- 
 cordingly were so far acquainted with it as to have 
 constructed an instrument, the Eeolipile, composed of a 
 metallic ball, which having some water in its bottom, 
 was placed in the fire, and the steam issuing through a 
 
26 WATT. 
 
 small orifice or tube with great force, could, they con- 
 ceived, blow a fire or even turn the vanes of a mill. No 
 use, however, seems ever to have been made of this phi- 
 losophical toy, nor does any attention appear to have 
 been paid to steam, as an agent, until 1615, when Sa- 
 lomon de Caus, a French engineer, published a work 
 on ' Moving Forces,' in which he describes a method 
 of raising water by partially heating it, that is, convert- 
 ing a portion of it into steam, and, by its expansive 
 force, driving the rest of the fluid through the tube con- 
 nected with the reservoir or chamber.* In 1663 the 
 Marquis of Worcester (known in our political his- 
 tory as Earl of Glamorgan, and as having been em- 
 ployed by Charles I. in 1646 to negotiate with the 
 Irish Catholics) published his ' Century of the Names 
 and Scantlings of Inventions,' of which Mr. Hume, in 
 his 'History' (vol. vii., note o), has been pleased to 
 say that it is " a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, 
 and impossibilities, showing what might be expected 
 from such a man." The better opinion seems to be, 
 that the historian had never read the book he thus de- 
 scribes ; but being anxious to relieve Charles I., from 
 the blame of his Ambassador's negotiation, which 
 proved the source of much outcry against the King, he 
 states the low opinion which the latter entertained of 
 Worcester's judgment as a proof that he never would 
 authorize him to act in so delicate a matter as religious 
 concessions without the privity of the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 and he is very ready to strengthen this view by show- 
 ing that the opinion was well founded. Be this, how- 
 ever, as it may, the ignorance and error is all on Hume's 
 
 * M. Arago is not entitled to complain of English writers for having 
 " aimed at expunging every French name from this important chapter in 
 the history of science." He says they at once gave up Lord Worcester's 
 claims on discovering that Salomon de Caus had preceded him. Now, 
 both Mr. Farey and Mr. Stuart have done ample justice to Caus in then- 
 works on the steam engine. As for Lord Worcester, Mr. Stuart (whose 
 history is far from accurate on this point) has both attacked and defended 
 his claims in his several works. 
 
WATT. 27 
 
 side, for the work is higly creditable to its author's 
 learning and ingenuity, and it undoubtedly contains a 
 proof that he had made one step in advance of Caus 
 towards the use of steam power. His Sixty-eighth 
 Invention is entitled " an admirable and most forcible 
 way to drive up water by fire." He describes his 
 having made a "constant fountain stream of water, 
 raised in the proportion of forty times the quantity of 
 that which he converted into steam ;" and he states 
 that the height to which he raised it was forty feet, 
 clearly showing that it was not on the principle of the 
 sucking-pump, which can only raise water thirty-three 
 feet. He expressly says, that while the atmospheric 
 pressure by which the sucking-pump acts is limited in 
 its operation, the force of steam which he employed 
 " hath no other boundary than the strength of the vessel 
 which contains it." Finally, he seems to have used a 
 cannon as his boiler, which indicates his having tried 
 the experiment on a large scale. The great doubt ex- 
 pressed by M. Arago, whether or not Lord Worcester 
 ever executed the design more or less clearly described 
 in his book, appears to me to have no foundation. The in- 
 ference arising from the description seems to remove 
 that doubt ; but we have external evidence more precise 
 and satisfactory still.* The travels in England of the 
 Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo de' Medicis, were 
 written by his Secretary, Magalotti, a man of some 
 scientific eminence ; and a translation into English was 
 published in 1821. The visit to London took place in 
 the year 1669 ; and it appears that the Grand Duke 
 " went to see, at Vauxhall, an engine or hydraulic ma- 
 chine invented by the Marquis of Worcester," and the 
 account which he gives of it tallies with Lord Worces- 
 ter's description of his " stupendous water-commanding 
 engine." 
 
 * See also the Marchioness of Worcester's correspondence with her Con- 
 fessor, communicated by the Beaufort family to Mr. Partington for his 
 edition of the " Century." 
 
28 WATT. 
 
 The account of Lord Worcester is far from being 
 clear and distinct, and nothing appears to have resulted 
 from his suggestions. In 1690, Papin, an eminent 
 and able French engineer and author of the diges- 
 ter which goes under his name, living in London, 
 published a work in which he showed that he had made 
 two most important steps in the use of steam. Caus 
 and Worcester had applied the force directly to the 
 body which it was intended to move ; and it was 
 evident that, while that was a condition of its use, 
 very limited bounds must confine the operation. But 
 Papin, observing the use of the piston in a common 
 sucking-pump, applied this to the steam machine, 
 making it work in the cylinder, and be the medium of 
 communicating motion to other apparatus. Next, he 
 applied steam directly as the agent, to raise the piston ; 
 and making a vacuum by the condensation of the steam, 
 lie thus caused the atmosphere to press down the pis- 
 ton. Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, had half 
 a century earlier used the vacuum, made by his machine 
 in the same manner, as a mechanical power, by the 
 help of a piston and rod;* and he invented the valve, 
 without which the vacuum could not be produced. 
 The application of the same principle and of the same 
 contrivance to steam was Papin's ; and its importance, 
 and his merit, are not diminished by considering the 
 source from which he borrowed it.f Indeed the action 
 of the air in the sucking-pump is another form of the 
 same experiment. It must be added that to Papin also 
 we owe the important invention of the safety-valve, al- 
 though he did not apply it to the steam engine. He 
 introduced it as a part of his digester, but suggesting 
 that it was applicable to the steam engine. 
 
 * See the distinct figure in his plate xiv., p. 109, of Experimenta 
 nova Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio.' Amstelodami, 1672. 
 
 f Acta Eruditorum, 1688. The paper has an excellent and clear figure. 
 Nothing can be more groundless than Mr. Stuart's statement that Baptista 
 Porta had anticipated Papin in this important step. The passage refers 
 only to the rise of water in a vacuum. See ' I tre Libri dei Spiritali, ' 1606. 
 
WATT. 29 
 
 It is, however, certain that the most rude and cum- 
 brous part of the former invention was continued by 
 Papin. The fire was applied to the water, and when 
 it had filled the cylinder with steam, the condensation 
 was only effected by withdrawing or extinguishing the 
 fire. Savery about the year 1 698 made considerable 
 improvements on the apparatus ; and though he did not 
 use the vacuum as Papin had done, but only as it is 
 used in the sucking-pump, he yet produced it by apply- 
 ing cold water to the outside of the cylinder. The 
 machines made by him were so manageable that they 
 were brought into use for raising water in many 
 country houses. D'Alesme exhibited a machine before 
 1705 (as appears by the ; Histoire de 1' Academic des 
 Sciences' for that year, p. 137), in which water was 
 made to spout to a great height by the force of steam 
 alone. 
 
 It is extremely doubtful if Papin ever erected any 
 steam engine, either upon his own or upon any other 
 principle. It is certain that he did not adhere to the 
 two great propositions which he had brought forward, 
 the operating by a piston, and the operating by the 
 pressure of the atmosphere; he recurred to the old 
 plan of making the steam act directly upon the weight 
 to be raised. In 1711 Newcomen, an iron-master of 
 Dartmouth, and Galley, or Cawley, a glazier of the 
 same town, constructed an engine upon Papin's principle 
 of a piston and a condensing process, using, however, 
 Savery's mode of creating a vacuum by cold affusion, 
 for which they were led by an accident to substitute 
 the method of throwing a jet or stream of cold water 
 into the cylinder. This important improvement saved, 
 in a considerable degree, the waste of heat occasioned 
 by Savery's method of condensing. Their engine 
 could be applied with advantage to raise water from 
 mines, which Savery's was wholly incapable of effect- 
 ing, its power being limited to that of the sucking- 
 pump. Neweomen's engine, as it is generally called, 
 
30 WATT. 
 
 made no use at all of the direct force of steam ; it 
 worked entirely by means of the vacuum ; and hence it 
 is sometimes and justly termed the atmospheric engine, 
 as its moving force is the pressure of the atmosphere. 
 Desaguliers, who has given the best description of 
 Newcomen and Cawley's engine, about the year 1717 
 or 1718 made several of those engines, in which he 
 executed Papin's suggestion of using the safety-valve. 
 In the same year Beighton perfected the mechanism 
 whereby the engine itself shut and opened the valves, 
 by which the supply of steam to the cylinder and of 
 water to the boiler is regulated ; and Smeaton subse- 
 quently made some other mechanical improvements. 
 With these exceptions the steam engine continued 
 exactly in the same state from the time of Newcomen 
 to that of Watt, above half a century later. 
 
 We have thus seen how very slowly this great 
 invention was brought to the state in which Mr. Watt 
 found it, and how considerable a number of persons con- 
 tributed each a small share to its progress. Let us enu- 
 merate these steps : they are at least six in number. S. 
 de Caus made steam act to raise water ; Worcester per- 
 formed this operation in a more regular and mechanical 
 manner; Papin used the condensation of steam, and 
 through that the atmospheric pressure, as well as the 
 direct expansive force, and he worked the engine by a 
 piston; Savery condensed by refrigeration instead of the 
 mere absence of fire, but did not use the atmosphere; 
 Newcomen used the jet for condensing and the atmos- 
 phere for pressure, but did not use the direct force of 
 steam ; Desaguliers introduced the safety-valve ; Beigh- 
 ton and Smeaton improved the mechanism ; D'Alesme 
 needs not be mentioned, as we are not informed what 
 plan he executed, but he certainly made no step himself. 
 If the direct force of steam, as well as atmospheric 
 pressure, had been both employed, with the jet of cold 
 water, the safety-valve, and the contrivance for regu- 
 lating the supply -valves, a far better engine than any 
 
31 
 
 ever known before the time of Wattf 'would have been 
 produced, and yet nothing whatever would have been 
 added to the former inventions ; they would only have 
 been combined together. The result of the whole is, 
 that one of the greatest theoretical steps was made by 
 Papin, who was, during a long period, little commemo- 
 rated ; and that Savery and Newcomen, who have been 
 by many called the inventors, were the first of all the 
 ingenious and useful persons whose successive improve- 
 ments we have now recorded, to apply the steam-engine 
 to practical purposes. France has thus produced the 
 man who, next to Watt, must be regarded as the author 
 of the steam-engine ; of all Watt's predecessors, Papin 
 stands incontestably at the head ; but it is almost cer- 
 tain that he never actually constructed an engine. 
 Though the engine of Savery was of considerable use 
 in pumping to a small height, and indeed has not 
 entirely gone out of use even in our own times, and 
 though INewcomen's was still more extensively useful 
 from being applicable to mines, not only had no 
 means ever been found of using the steam power for 
 any other purpose than drawing up water, but even in 
 that operation it was exceedingly imperfect and very 
 expensive, insomuch that a water power was often 
 preferred to it, and even a horse power in many cases 
 afforded equal advantages. The great consumption of 
 fuel which it required was its cardinal defect; the 
 other imperfection was its loss of all direct benefit from 
 the expansive force of the steam itself. That element 
 was only used in creating a vacuum, and an air-pump 
 might have done as much had it been worked by water 
 or by horses. It was, in the strictest sense of the 
 word, an air and not a steam engine. 
 
 When Mr. Watt was directed to repair the working 
 model for the Professor at Glasgow, he of course exa- 
 mined it attentively. He was at that time, 1763, in 
 his twenty-eighth year, having been born in 1736 at 
 Greenock, where his father was a magistrate, and he 
 
32 WATT. 
 
 had learnt the business of a mathematical instrument 
 maker. He had been prevented by delicate health 
 from benefiting much by school instruction ; but he had 
 by himself studied both geometry and mechanics, having 
 from his childhood showed a marked taste for those 
 pursuits, in which his grandfather and uncle, teachers 
 of the mathematics, had been engaged. It is related 
 of him that a friend of his father's one day found the 
 child stretched on the floor drawing with chalk nume- 
 rous lines that intersected each other. He advised the 
 sending the young idler, as he supposed him, to school, 
 but the father said, " Perhaps you are mistaken ; exa- 
 mine first what he is about." They found he was try- 
 ing, at six years old, to solve a problem in geometry. 
 So his natural turn for mechanics was not long in 
 showing itself; and his father indulging it by putting 
 tools in his hands, he soon constructed a small elec- 
 trical machine, beside making many childish toys. 
 
 He occasionally visited his mother's relations at 
 Glasgow, but never attended any lectures there, or 
 elsewhere. The ardour of his active mind was su- 
 perior to all the restraints which the weakness of his 
 bodily frame could impose. He devoured every kind 
 of learning. Not content with chemistry and natural 
 philosophy, he studied anatomy, and was one day found 
 carrying home for dissection the head of a child that 
 had died of some hidden disorder. His conversation, 
 too, was so rich, so animated, that we find, from the 
 relation of Mrs. Campbell, a female cousin of his, the 
 complaints made by a lady with whom he resided. 
 She spoke of the sleepless nights which he made her 
 pass by engaging her in some discussion, or some detail 
 of facts, or some description of phenomena, till the 
 night was far advanced towards morning, and she found 
 it impossible to tear herself away from his talk, or to 
 sleep after he had thus excited her, 
 
 In 1755 he placed himself with Mr. Morgan, mathe- 
 matical and nautical instrument maker, of Cornhill, and 
 
WATT. 33 
 
 resided with him somewhat less than a year, during 
 which he was chiefly employed in the preparation and 
 adjustment of sextants, compasses, and other nautical 
 instruments. But the same feeble health which had 
 interrupted his studies at Glasgow again oppressed 
 him ; he was obliged to leave London, and return to 
 Glasgow. On his arrival there he had the intention 
 of setting up as an instrument maker, but the Glasgow 
 Body of Arts and Trades, one of the sub-corporations 
 in the municipal corporation of that city, opposed him 
 as not free of their craft or guild, and therefore not 
 entitled to exercise his calling within the limits of the 
 charter. Attempts were made to obtain their leave 
 for a very small workshop, on the humblest scale, but 
 this was peremptorily refused. The University there- 
 fore came to his assistance, granted him a room in their 
 own building, and gave him the appointment of their 
 mathematical instrument maker. There remain small 
 instruments then made by him in this workshop, and 
 executed entirely with his own hands ; they are of ex- 
 quisite workmanship. The earliest of his steam-engine 
 drawings are likewise preserved, and those competent 
 judges who have examined them, particularly M. Arago, 
 describe them as " truly remarkable for the neatness, 
 the strength, and the accuracy of their outline." His 
 manual dexterity and skill, therefore, is clear, and he 
 had good cause to plume himself as he always did upon 
 it, estimating the same quality in others at its just value. 
 In the course of a very few years, beside renewing 
 his intimacy with Mr. Eobison, afterwards Professor 
 there and at Edinburgh, he became intimately ac- 
 quainted with the most eminent of the Glasgow Pro- 
 fessors, Adam Smith, Robert Simson, Robert Dick, and 
 above all, Dr. Black. Of these all but Mr. Dick have 
 left the deep impress of their great names upon the 
 scientific history of their age ; and he was always de- 
 scribed by both Mr. Watt and Professor Robison as a 
 person of most admirable capacity and great attain- 
 
 D 
 
34 WATT. 
 
 ments, treating natural philosophy, too, with singular 
 ability and success, nor prevented from acquiring a 
 more extensive and lasting reputation by anything save 
 his premature death. 
 
 While thus occupied and thus befriended by men of 
 great names, his own reputation increased daily as a 
 successful cultivator of natural science. His work- 
 shop became the resort of all zealous students and 
 enlightened inquirers into physical science, and was 
 particularly resorted to by the pupils of the University. 
 Professor Robison tells us that though regarding him- 
 self as a proficient in the mixed mathematics and in 
 experimental philosophy, he was somewhat mortified 
 at finding Watt so greatly his superior in the same 
 favourite departments of study. In truth, it was the 
 ordinary practice to consult him as the oracle upon 
 any difficulty coming in the way of either students or 
 inquirers. His fixed resolution to be deterred by no 
 difficulties was constantly apparent, and one example 
 is given by the Professor. The solution of a problem 
 which occupied Watt and his friends, seemed to re- 
 quire the perusal of Leupold's Theatre of Machines, 
 and as it was written in German, he at once learnt 
 that language in order to consult the book. Another 
 instance of his indomitable perseverance against great 
 difficulties apparently irremovable, though not insuper- 
 able, may be added. He had no ear at all for music : 
 not only was he through life wholly insensible to its 
 charms, but he could never distinguish one note from 
 another; yet he undertook the construction of an organ: 
 and the instrument which he made not only had every 
 mechanical merit from the most ingenious contrivances 
 for conducting and regulating the blasts and the move- 
 ments of the machine, but produced the most admirable 
 harmonic results, so as to delight the best performers. 
 He overcame the difficulties which lay in his way, 
 partly by the phenomenon of the beats of imperfect 
 Gonsor.ances, a theory then little understood, and only 
 
WATT, 35 
 
 contained in a work at once very profound and very 
 obscure, Smith's * Harmonics.' This treatise, of which 
 only the first and less perfect edition was then pub- 
 lished, must have been read and understood by the 
 young engineer. While employed by Dr. Eoebuck at 
 his Works, he made a guitar for his daughter, after- 
 wards Mrs. Stuart, which she still possesses, and relates 
 the sum given for it to have been five guineas. 
 
 It only remains to add that all the reading and all 
 the speculations of Watt were strictly confined to hours 
 which did not interfere with his profession or his trade 
 of an instrument maker. The whole of the day was 
 devoted to his business, only subject to the interrup- 
 tion of the discussions raised by those who frequented 
 his workshop in search of assistance and information. 
 It was late in the evening, or rather in the night, that 
 he prosecuted with zeal and close attention his philo- 
 sophical studies ; for his principle through life was 
 steadily kept in view, and uniformly acted on, never to 
 let anything whatever interfere with business, the tran- 
 saction of which he regarded as a primary duty to be 
 performed, and entitled, as such, to take precedence of 
 all other pursuits. 
 
 There chanced to be among the apparatus of the Na- 
 tural Philosophy class a model of Newcomen's steam- 
 engine, which, from some defect in the construction 
 never could be got to work well ; and Mr. Watt was 
 desired to examine and report to the Professor, Mr. 
 Anderson, successor of Dr. Dick, and better known 
 afterwards as having founded by his will the class in 
 which Dr, Birkbeck taught the working men, and thus 
 gave rise to Mechanics' Institutes. The construction 
 of this working model was found to be exceedingly 
 imperfect, but Mr. Watt soon remedied all its defects, 
 As far as the kind of engine could answer its purpose, 
 the apparatus was found to perform its functions satis- 
 factorily, being annually exhibited to the class with 
 great success. He had, however, been taught by his 
 
36 WATT. 
 
 examination of the model what were the defects of the 
 machine itself, and which no care in repairing or ad- 
 justing that model could remove. He found first of 
 all that the boiler was much too small in proportion to 
 the column of water which the steam had to raise, and 
 yet it was larger than the boiler used in practice. The 
 cylinder was on the scale of two inches diameter, the 
 height being half a foot. The vacuum being imper- 
 fect from the size of the boiler, he diminished the 
 length of the piston-rod. He found that the brass of 
 which the cylinder was made carried off a great deal 
 of heat, and that too large a surface was exposed to the 
 steam. These observations set him upon making a va- 
 riety of experiments upon steam, and upon the mode 
 of applying it both directly and to produce a vacuum. 
 He had, in the year 1759, while a fellow-student with 
 Mr. Robison, received from that gentleman a sugges- 
 tion of the application of steam to wheel-carriages, as he 
 tells us in 1803, long before steam travelling was dreamt 
 of* They had together made experiments on Papin's 
 digester, in order to ascertain the expansive force of 
 steam; but these speculations had for several years 
 been given up. In 1760 and the two following years 
 Watt had been in familiar intercourse with Professor 
 Black, had witnessed his experiments on heat, and 
 had learnt from him the true cause of evaporation 
 and condensation. When, therefore, he began to ex- 
 periment upon the mechanical application of steam, 
 its expansion, and its condensation, he enjoyed that 
 inestimable advantage of thoroughly knowing the 
 principles on which its changes and its action depended. 
 His own experiments now put him in possession of 
 the causes which determine the rapidity of evaporation, 
 the proportion which it bears to the surface exposed 
 
 * Mr. Murdock, in 1784, made a working model of a steam-carriage, 
 which moved about the room. It was constructed upon the principle set 
 forth in Mr. Watt's specification of 1769, Art. iv., and this is the very 
 method used at the present day 
 
WATT. 37 
 
 to the fire, the effects of pressure upon the boiling- 
 point, and the quantity of fuel required to convert a 
 given quantity of water into steam circumstances 
 which had hitherto been only vaguely and generally 
 examined, but which he now reduced to mathematical 
 precision. 
 
 The first discovery which he made upon the atmo- 
 spheric engine and its waste of fuel, was that the in- 
 jection of cold water which condenses the steam also 
 cools the cylinder to a degree which requires a great 
 expenditure of fuel again to give it the necessary heat 
 for keeping the steam expanded to fill it. He found 
 that three-fourths of the fuel employed were thus con- 
 sumed ; in other words, that if the cylinder could be 
 kept at the temperature which it has before the jet is 
 thrown in, one-fourth of the fuel would suffice for the 
 operation. 
 
 The next defect of the process was scarcely less im- 
 portant. The water injected, coming in contact with 
 the steam, was itself heated ; the evolution of the latent 
 heat, which Black's discovery showed Watt necessarily 
 took place on its condensation, had the effect, together 
 with the absorption of the steam's sensible heat, of con- 
 verting a portion of the injected water itself into steam. 
 Hence the vacuum was very far from perfect; and 
 the resistance which the piston thus met with in its 
 descent was found to be equal to one-fourth part of 
 the atmospheric pressure, that is to say, the working 
 power of the machine was diminished one-fourth. 
 
 From the distinct view thus obtained of the evil 
 arose the suggestion of the remedy. The whole mis- 
 chief proceeded from the condensation being performed 
 in the cylinder, where the steam was thrown and the 
 piston worked. It occurred to Watt, that if the con- 
 densation could be performed in a separate vessel, com- 
 municating with the cylinder, the latter could be kept 
 hot while the former was cooled, and the vapour aris- 
 ing from the injected water could also be prevented 
 
38 WATT. 
 
 from impairing the vacuum. The communication could 
 easily be effected by a tube, and the water could be 
 pumped out. This is the first and the grand invention 
 by which he at once saved three-fourths of the fuel, 
 and increased the power one-fourth, thus making every 
 pound of coal consumed produce five times the force 
 formerly obtained from it. But this was not all. He 
 found it expedient to remove the air from the upper 
 part of the cylinder, as it tended to diminish the heat. 
 In effecting this he was, secondly, led to open a com- 
 munication with the boiler, and introduce steam above 
 the piston while it descended, thus making the upper 
 chamber of the cylinder air-tight. The steam thus acted 
 in aiding the descent of the piston, instead of that de- 
 scent being accomplished merely by the atmospheric 
 pressure, ttirdly the counterpoise at the pump-rod 
 was done away, as a mere loss of power, and the pis- 
 ton was now forced upwards by the steam entering to 
 fill the cylinder. These two great additional improve- 
 ments only required a communication to be opened 
 by tubes with the condenser" as well as the boiler, and 
 they gave to the machinery its right to be called a 
 steam-engine ; for it now worked more by steam than 
 by air. The upper chamber was kept air-tight by 
 making the piston-rod work in a socket of tow satu- 
 rated with grease, called the stuffing-box, which also 
 diminished greatly the friction of the rod. 
 
 If Mr. Watt's invention had gone no further than 
 this, we may perceive that it not only increased the 
 power of the fuel fivefold directly, but obtained from 
 the steam as much additional force as could be derived, 
 the limit being only the strength of the materials, 
 within which limit the safety-valve of Papin always 
 enabled the engineer to keep his power. But the 
 three particulars which have been described were not 
 the whole of this great engineer's improvements upon 
 the mechanism of his predecessors. The smooth work- 
 ing of the engine, especially if it be applied to other 
 
WATT. 39 
 
 and finer operations than those of the miner, depends 
 essentially on the accurate position of the piston-rod, 
 with whatever velocity moving, and against whatever 
 weight contending. Its motion must be steadily main- 
 tained in the same vertical straight line, or in the same 
 horizontal line, or in the same straight line whatever 
 be its direction, without shaking or inclining so as to 
 press at all against the sides of the cylinder any 
 such lateral pressure occasioning a loss of time, a 
 jolting motion, a general derangement of the ma- 
 chinery. The motion of the rod and the piston must 
 be perfectly equable, continuous, and -smooth : it must 
 work, as the engineers sometimes say, sweetly, at every 
 instant, in order that the engine may well perform 
 its functions. The contrivance for producing this 
 motion of the rod so that it shall be always in one 
 line parallel to some supposed line whether vertical, 
 as in a mine, or horizontal, or in any other direction, 
 is thence called the " Parallel Motion" and it is one 
 of Mr. Watt's most exquisite discoveries, and one to 
 which scientific principle has the most conduced. If 
 a circle or other curve has its curvature gradually 
 changed, until from being concave to its axis it be- 
 comes convex, it will pass through every possible 
 position or variation (whence the great refinement 
 upon fluxions, the calculus of variations, probably 
 derived its name, if not its origin), and at one point 
 it will be a straight line, or will coincide with a 
 straight line. So if a curve have two branches, one 
 concave to the axis, the other convex, as a cubic para- 
 bola for example, the point at which its concavity ends 
 and its convexity begins, is called for that reason a 
 point of contrary flexure. The contrivance of the 
 parallel motion consists in making the contrary circu- 
 lar motions of arms which bear on the rod always keep 
 to the point of contrary flexure and thus give a recti- 
 linear motion to the rod, the tendencies to disturb it 
 correcting each other. It was long ago shown by Sir 
 
40 WATT. 
 
 Isaac Newton, in the ' Principia,' that if a circle moves 
 upon another of twice its diameter, each point describes 
 a straight line. This is precisely the principle of the 
 parallel motion. Three beams are made to revolve 
 round different centres, two of these being moveable in 
 the arm of the engine, and one fixed without it. These 
 three are connected together and with the piston-rods 
 of the cylinder and the pumps, which their revolutions 
 cause to describe accurately straight lines. 
 
 A fifth invention is the Float, which, placed on the 
 surface of the water in the boiler, descends until the 
 water is so low as ito require a supply ; it then opens 
 a valve which lets in the quantity wanted; for, as soon as 
 it rises to a certain height, the valve is shut by the float. 
 
 The most refined contrivance of the whole may now 
 be mentioned, in the sixth and last place, the adaptation 
 of the Governor, previously used in wind and water 
 mills. It is evident that the velocity of the working- 
 may be increased beyond what is required or con- 
 venient without the safety-valve giving any indication 
 of the excess, and also that the warning given by this 
 valve does little more than point out the risk without 
 providing the remedy or preventive. The governor 
 is a far more subtle invention. Two balls are fixed 
 to the end X)f arms which are connected with the 
 engine by a moveable socket ; this can play up and 
 down a vertical rod revolving by a band on the 
 axis or spindle of the fly-wheel, and it revolves, there- 
 fore, with the velocity of that spindle. The arms are 
 perfectly moveable on their centres, which are fixed in 
 the socket and on opposite sides of it. Their centrifu- 
 gal force, therefore, makes them diverge, more or less, 
 in proportion as the rotatory motion of the spindle and 
 consequently the velocity of the engine increases; 
 their divergence pushes the collar up the spindle, its 
 axis, and as it rises, it closes, by means of cranks, a 
 valve called the "throttle-valve," in the pipe which 
 conveys the steam from the boiler to the cylinder, and 
 
WATT. 41 
 
 this lessens the supply of steam ; the motion of the 
 engine is thus reduced, the centrifugal force is abated, 
 the balls approach the spindle again, the collar de- 
 scends, the throttle-valve is gradually opened, and the 
 supply of steam again slowly increased, but never be- 
 yond the quantity required, because as soon as that is 
 exceeded, the increase of centrifugal force causes the 
 balls to diverge, the collars to rise, and the valve to 
 close. Thus the engine itself provides for its conti- 
 nuing in the state of perfect adjustment required. As 
 long as its motion continues uniform, the balls revolve 
 at the mean distance from their axis without either 
 receding or approaching, and the supply of steam con- 
 tinues the same. As soon as the motion becomes ex- 
 cessive, they diverge, and the supply of steam is dim- 
 inished ; as soon as the motion becomes defective, they 
 converge, and the supply of steam is increased. But 
 further, the balls themselves, by their increased motion, 
 absorb part of the force, independent of their action on 
 the throttle-valve, and so contribute to the adjustment. 
 The sagacious inventor soon satisfied himself that 
 he had almost created a new engine of incalculable 
 power, universal application, and inestimable value. 
 But he had not the funds either to try his invention 
 upon an adequate scale so as to bring it into use, or to 
 secure his property in it by obtaining a patent. After 
 some repulses, he happily met with Dr. Roebuck, a 
 man of profound scientific knowledge, and of daring 
 spirit as a speculator. He had just founded the Carron 
 Iron Works, not far from Glasgow, and was lessee, 
 under the Hamilton family, of the Kinneil Coal Works. 
 He was the grandfather of the present Member for 
 Bath, who, descended from him on the one side, and 
 from the Tickells* on the other, may be said ^to unite 
 in himself rare claims to hereditary distinction ; but 
 who is probably destined to exalt the name of his 
 
 * His maternal grandfather was the author of 'Anticipation,' and 
 grandson of Addison's friend, the poet. 
 
42 WATT. 
 
 family still higher by his own virtues. Dr. Roebuck, 
 like too many ingenious men, for the benefit of others 
 founded these Carron and Kinneil Works ; and though 
 he agreed to Mr. Watt's terms of receiving two-thirds 
 of the profit, he was obliged by pecuniary embarrass- 
 ments to retire from the partnership after a patent had 
 been obtained in 1769, and an engine of an eighteen- 
 inch cylinder had been erected at Kinneil. The suc- 
 cess of this amply proved the solidity of the invention, 
 but the inventor was obliged, for some yfears, to aban- 
 don the pursuit, and to labour in his profession of what 
 is now termed a civil engineer; but the extensive 
 operations of which Scotland soon became the scene, 
 gave a much more ample scope to his talents. He 
 was actively engaged in the surveys, and afterwards 
 in the works, for connecting by a canal the Monkland 
 coal-mines with Glasgow. He was afterwards em- 
 ployed in preparing the canal since completed by Mr. 
 Rennie, across the Isthmus of Crinan ; in the difficult, 
 and laborious investigations for the improvement of 
 the harbours of Ayr, Greenock, and Glasgow; in im- 
 proving the navigation of the Forth and the Clyde; 
 in the Campbelton Canal, and in the surveys and plans 
 preliminary to the Grand Caledonian Canal; beside 
 several bridges of great importance, as those of Ham- 
 ilton and Rutherglen. At Dr. Roebuck's Mr. Watt 
 had early received much kindness, and many valu- 
 able lessons in chemical science. He was here, too, 
 introduced to Dr. Black. 
 
 The various works which have been mentioned 
 occupied his whole time from the disappointment 
 experienced in 1769 respecting the steam engine, of 
 which during that long interval he never despaired, 
 to the year 1774, when he acceded to the proposal of 
 Mr. Boulton, of Soho, near Birmingham, that he should 
 be taken in Dr. Roebuck's place as partner in the 
 patent, and in 1775 he settled there in this new busi- 
 ness. An extension of the patent for twenty-five 
 
WATT. 43 
 
 years from this time was obtained from Parliament, 
 in consequence of the national importance which all 
 men saw belonged to the invention ; and the partners 
 constructed many engines upon the terms of receiving 
 one-third of the fuel saved by the improvements. It 
 is a convenient mode of illustrating the effect of the 
 invention in saving fuel, to observe what were the 
 gains of the partnership under this stipulation. On 
 one mine, that of Chase water, in Cornwall, the pro- 
 prietors compounded for 2,400 a-year, instead of 
 paying the third of the fuel saved. That saving then 
 must very considerably have exceeded 7,200 a-year. 
 But there seemed some difficulty in carrying bargains 
 of this kind into effect ; and the genius of Watt, fertile 
 in resources, immediately invented a small clock, called 
 the counter, to be moved by the engine, and which 
 accurately recorded every stroke it made. Payment 
 being in proportion to the number of strokes, the clock 
 was enclosed in a box under a double lock, and thus 
 the working could be easily and securely ascertained.* 
 The first consequence of this grand invention, and 
 the great saving of fuel it occasioned, was the renewed 
 working of mines which had become unprofitable under 
 the old plan. The next was the opening mines which 
 Newcomen's engine could not drain at all. The steam- 
 power, too, was no longer confined to draining mines. 
 Various contrivances, for which Watt took out no less 
 than four patents between 1781 and 1785, enabled him 
 to communicate a rotatory motion from the piston, so 
 that the engine could now work any machinery what- 
 ever; could spin cotton, cut iron and brass, stamp 
 cloth, grind corn, print books, coin money, in short, 
 could perform on any scale any kind of work in which 
 human labour was either inefficient or expensive; and 
 
 * Such an engine could not be made and used secretly, and thus piracy 
 was prevented. It is far otherwise with small pieces of mechanism, and 
 still more difficult would be the protection of patent rights in mere methods, 
 though to these the protection of the law should be extended. 
 
44 WATT. 
 
 while it was seen in one place pouring out rivers from 
 the bowels of the earth with the arms of a giant, or 
 cleaving rocks of granite formation, or clipping huge 
 bars of stubborn iron into ribands, it was elsewhere to 
 be found weaving or spinning like a quiet and indus- 
 trious female, or turning a small lathe, or forming the 
 fine wheels of a watch, or drawing out a thread too 
 fine for sight; when the machine, instead of sawing 
 the air aloft, and making the ground tremble around 
 it, was placed quietly on a table like a candlestick or 
 an inkstand. The latest use of the power, and the 
 most important, is steam travelling by land and water. 
 Watt himself early perceived this application of his 
 engine ; and in 1785 he took out a patent for moving 
 carriages by steam, but he does not appear to have 
 practically used his method. The attempts had been 
 numerous, and from very early times, to propel vessels 
 by steam. There seems reason to think that the 
 paddle-wheel, the only addition to the steam-engine 
 required for navigation, was known in ancient Egypt : 
 it certainly was known to the Romans. In the middle 
 of the sixteenth century a Spanish engineer exhibited 
 a steam-vessel to Charles V. The Marquis of Wor- 
 cester appears to have turned his attention to the 
 subject from some parts of the work already cited, and 
 so superciliously condemned by Hume ; and Jonathan 
 Hulls, in 1736, took out a patent for a kind of steam- 
 tug. Various similar attempts were afterwards made, 
 but with no success, and it was not until the steam- 
 engine had been improved and had become generally 
 used for all other purposes that it was applied to those 
 of locomotion. 
 
 It is truly painful to reflect, that among the rewards 
 which this great public benefactor was destined to 
 reap for his invaluable services, w r as the lot of having 
 to pass many years of his life in the unenviable situa- 
 tion of a party to suits at law and in equity, so numerous 
 as might well have worn out the patience of any one 
 
WATT. 45 
 
 but him, whose unwearied perseverance had already 
 toiled successfully against unnumbered difficulties of 
 another kind. Such was, at that time, the patent law 
 of this country ; such, in some degree, it still is, though 
 much improved. Inventive genius is placed between 
 two dangers, and it can hardly escape the one without 
 falling before the other. If the invention is such that 
 it requires some new demand to be created, or some 
 novel taste to be introduced, before it can be much 
 used, the period of the monopoly expires before any 
 gain can be reaped. This is the more likely to happen 
 if it comes in competition with things already made, 
 and of which, at some expense, a considerable stock has 
 been prepared, because a formidable interest is com- 
 bined against the use of that new method which must 
 displace the old, and render valueless this collected 
 stock. I remember sitting on the trial of a patent for 
 a new and admirable pianoforte ; the only witness to 
 its excellence being a sculptor of distinction who had 
 once made such instruments, but had no longer any 
 interest in crying down the invention; none of the 
 trade could be trusted to give their opinion upon oath ; 
 all were, of course, in a combination against that im- 
 provement, which, if adopted, would render unsaleable 
 their pianofortes already made. If, on the other hand, 
 the superiority of the invention is quite manifest, if 
 the demand for it already exists, if no combination 
 can prevent its coming into general use for example, 
 the making a new instrument for performing a known 
 and necessary operation, or a new substance for sup- 
 plying a general want already existing then the in- 
 ventor has to prepare himself for encountering piracy 
 in all its forms ; capitalists, who would be ashamed to 
 violate the law in their own persons, encouraging men 
 of no substance to infringe the patent, and omitting to 
 pay the patentee's costs when these tools are defeated. 
 My learned and ingenious kinsman, Dr. Forsyth, the 
 inventor of the percussion lock, passed the fourteen 
 
46 WATT. 
 
 years of his patent right in courts of justice, and in 
 every instance prevailed; but he found the pirates 
 pennyless, the costs were to be paid, and he never 
 gained one shilling by an invention which is, I believe, 
 more universally used all over Europe than any other, 
 except, perhaps, Argand's lamp. That invention was 
 defeated in court, in consequence of the imperfect 
 state of the law in those days, and of the absurd lean- 
 ing of the Judges against all patentees ; their Lordships 
 displaying the utmost ingenuity in discovering flaws, 
 and calling into action all the resources of legal astute- 
 ness in grinding, as they went on, new law for the defeat 
 of the inventor. Of this, one instance only needs be 
 given. If a specification contained ten good matters 
 or processes, and by oversight one was either not 
 original, or in any other respect did not answer the 
 description given,* the courts held the patent wholly 
 void, and not merely void for the erroneously described 
 part, upon the subtle and senseless ground that the 
 Crown had been deceived in the grant. 
 
 Mr. Watt had to struggle against this state of the 
 law as well as against the shameless frauds, the con- 
 spiracies of dishonest, unprincipled men. During seven 
 years and upwards he was condemned to lead the life 
 of litigation ; during seven years his genius was with- 
 drawn from his own pursuits to become what he, 
 no doubt, had, unfortunately for society, full time to 
 make himself, an accomplished and learned lawyer; 
 and it was not till five and thirty years after his 
 invention had been made, that he was finally freed by 
 a decision of the Court of King's Bench, in 1799, from 
 a durance which lasted all the term of his patent, 
 after all interest in the subject had expired by efflux 
 of time. It was proved before a committee of the 
 House of Commons in 1829, that had his statutory 
 
 * Turner v. Winter, 6 T. E. ; Rex v. Fuller, 3 B. and A. My Acts 
 of 1835 and 1840 have in great part remedied these sad defects in the 
 law ; others still remain. 
 
WATT. 47 
 
 term in the patent only been secured to him, he 
 would have been a great loser by the invention ; and 
 that for some years after the Act of Parliament had 
 extended the time, he still was out of pocket : conse- 
 quently it follows, that had he never taken a patent at 
 all, but trusted entirely to the preference which his 
 being the inventor would have given him in the 
 market, as a maker of steam-apparatus, that is, had he 
 taken only this indirect benefit instead of the direct 
 gains of the monopoly, he would have been better off 
 in a pecuniary point of view than he was by means of 
 the grant of the patent and its Parliamentary exten- 
 sion. The Act which I introduced in 1835, grounded 
 mainly upon that evidence, has removed some of the 
 greatest defects in the law; and it has enabled, when 
 coupled with the subsequent Act of last Session, an 
 inventor to obtain, at a very inconsiderable cost, an 
 extension for any additional period, not exceeding the 
 duration of the original patent.* The expenses of 
 obtaining patents, and especially the grievous burden 
 of having to take out one for each of the three king- 
 doms, are the principal parts of the grievance which 
 remain to be redressed. 
 
 Notwithstanding the serious drawbacks upon his 
 gains which Watt thus experienced, he was, on the 
 whole, successful in respect of profit, realizing an 
 ample fortune, but which all men wished had been 
 greater, and which, under a more just law, would have 
 been thrice as great. 
 
 We have been contemplating the great achievement 
 of Watt, but it would be a mistake to suppose that the 
 
 * The course- which a patentee ought to pursue if there be no opposi- 
 tion to his claim of extension, is to employ no solicitor and no counsel, 
 but to appear in person before the Judicial Committee, as my gallant and 
 truly ingenious friend Lord Dundonald (better known as Lord Cochrane) 
 lately did. Their lordships will always favour such a course, the rather 
 as they thus obtain the advantage of "hearing the explanations ^required 
 from the person best able to give them.. In opposed cases professional aid 
 is requisite^ 
 
48 WATT. 
 
 steam-engine is the only monument of his scientific 
 genius or his inventive skill. He was the author of 
 the machine in general use for copying letters ; of the 
 method extensively used for heating buildings and hot- 
 houses by steam ; and of an ingenious mechanism for 
 multiplying copies of busts and other sculptures ; but 
 he was also, without any doubt, the person who first 
 discovered the composition of water. At this most 
 important truth he arrived by a profound examination 
 of all the experiments which had been made by Warl- 
 tire, by Macquer, and especially by Priestley, upon 
 the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen gases, then 
 called inflammable, and vital or dephlogisticated airs 
 No former reasoner had come even near the true theory 
 of the phenomena observed in those experiments. All 
 had assumed that water was a simple or elementary 
 body ; that it was contained in the airs burnt together, 
 and was precipitated by their explosion. He, on the 
 contrary, showed that it was formed by the union of 
 the two gases, and their parting with the latent heat 
 which had held them in the elastic or gaseous state, 
 but which being withdrawn by their union, left them 
 in a state of liquid or aqueous fluidity. 
 
 As early as 1782, his attention had been closely 
 directed to the experiments in which air is produced 
 from water, and especially to those upon the com- 
 bustion of inflammable air. In December of that year 
 he had matured his theory, for we find him then an- 
 nouncing to De Luc his discovery, that " one element 
 must be dismissed from the list ;" water being, accord- 
 ing to his doctrine (stated more explicitly to Dr. Black, 
 April 1783,) " composed of dephlogisticated and in- 
 flammable airs deprived of a portion of their latent 
 heat." To his whole correspondence with that great 
 philosopher, with Smeaton, with Priestley, De Luc, and 
 others, I have had access, and no trace is to be found 
 in it that either he or they had even entertained the 
 least suspicion of the same thing having before oc- 
 
WATT, 49 
 
 curred to any one else.* It is to be noted, too, that 
 in 1784 Mr. Cavendish, after his celebrated experiment, 
 had not attained by any means so clear a notion of the 
 true doctrine as Mr. Watt explains in those previous 
 letters.f I examined minutely the whole of this sub- 
 ject eight years ago, at the request of my distinguished 
 colleague M. Arago, then engaged in preparing his 
 ' Eloge' of Mr. Watt, who had also been our fellow- 
 member of the Institute. The reader will find my 
 statement of the evidence annexed to this account. But 
 I cannot easily suppose that M. Arago ever intended, 
 and I know that I never myself intended, to insinuate 
 in the slightest degree a suspicion of Mr. Cavendish's 
 having borrowed from Mr. Watt. He had, in all pro- 
 bability, been led to the same conclusion by his own 
 researches, ignorant of Mr. Watt's speculations, which 
 were a little earlier in point of time, just as Priestley 
 when claiming, and justly claiming, the important dis- 
 covery of oxygen (called by him, in accordance with 
 the doctrine of Stahl, " dephlogisticated air"), never 
 denied that Scheele also made the same discovery, 
 (calling it " empyreal air"), without being aware of 
 another having preceded him. Priestley, of course, 
 treated the discreditable proceedings of Lavoisier in 
 respect to this gas very differently, and so must all 
 impartial men. 
 
 It must on no account be supposed that Watt can- 
 not be considered as having discovered the composition 
 of water, merely because he made no new experiments 
 of particular moment, like Cavendish, to ascertain that 
 capital point. No one refuses to Newton the discovery 
 of gravitation as the controlling and directing power 
 of the solar system; and yet he made not one of those 
 observations upon which his theory rests; nay, he 
 threw it aside for sixteen years when the erroneous 
 
 * Letters to Gilbert Hamilton of Glasgow, Fry of Bristol, Smeaton, 
 De Luc all dated March and April, 1783. 
 
 t See Life of Cavendish for further particulars and explanations. 
 E 
 
50 WATT. 
 
 notion of a degree being only sixty miles appeared by 
 its consequences to disprove his proposition, and in- 
 stead of making any further experiments himself, 
 waited until Picard's more accurate measurement be- 
 came known to him accidentally in 1 682, and enabled 
 him to demonstrate his doctrine. In like manner, 
 Lavoisier, who discovered no gas, and made no original 
 experiments of the least value in pneumatic chemistry, 
 is universally admitted to have discovered the true 
 theory of combustion and calcination, by reasoning on 
 the facts which others had ascertained. Watt's happy 
 inference from the facts discovered by Warltire and 
 Priestley was just as much entitled, and for the same 
 reasons, to be regarded as the discovery of the com- 
 position of water. 
 
 The latter years of Mr. Watt's useful and honour- 
 able life were passed in the bosom of his family and 
 the society of his friends, although he ever gave the 
 due attention to the extensive concerns of the house 
 in which he was the principal partner. He had been 
 married as early as 1764 to Miss Miller, his cousin, 
 and had by her a daughter who predeceased him, and 
 a son, James, who still survives, inheriting the scien- 
 tific tastes, the extensive knowledge, the masculine 
 understanding, and the scrupulous integrity of his 
 father. With the late Mr. Robinson Boulton and Mr, 
 Gregory Watt, he was admitted into the partnership, 
 the concerns of which he has extended, and, for the 
 last quarter of a century, almost exclusively conducted. 
 By his second wife, Miss Macgregor, whom Mr. Watt 
 married 1776, he had one son, Gregory, who unfortu- 
 nately died in October, 1804, at the age of twenty- 
 seven, after giving an earnest of brilliant talents and 
 accomplishments. This loss was, no doubt, a severe 
 blow to his family, and the father shared fully in their 
 sorrow. But he bore it like a man : and I feel great 
 satisfaction in correcting an error into which my illus- 
 trious, friend and colleague M. Arago has fallen through 
 
WATT. 51 
 
 misinformation, when he represents Mr. Watt's spirit 
 as so entirely broken by the misfortune that he " pre- 
 served an almost total silence during the latter years of 
 his life." The fact is, that he survived his son's death 
 nearly fifteen years, and never was more cheerful or 
 enjoyed the pleasures of society more heartily than 
 during this period. I can speak on the point with ab- 
 solute certainty, for my own acquaintance with him 
 commenced after my friend Gregory's decease. A few 
 months after that event, he calmly and with his wonted 
 acuteness discussed with me the composition of an 
 epitaph to be inscribed on his son's tomb. The autumn 
 and winter of 1805 he was a constant attendant at our 
 Friday club, and in all our private circles, and was the 
 life of them all. He has, moreover, left under his 
 hand an account of the effect which the recent loss had 
 produced upon his spirits, and a flat contradiction to 
 the notion that it had depressed them. " I perhaps," he 
 observes, " have said too much to you and Mr. Camp- 
 bell on the state of my mind : I therefore think it ne- 
 cessary to say that I am not low-spirited, and were 
 you here you would find me as cheerful in the com- 
 pany of my friends as usual ; my feelings for the loss 
 of poor Gregory are not passion, but a deep regret 
 that such was his and my lot." He then expresses his 
 pious resignation to the will of " the Disposer of 
 events." It is true, he adds, that he had lost one 
 stimulus to exertion, and with it his relish for his usual 
 avocations, but he looks to time for a remedy, and adds, 
 "meanwhile, I do not neglect the means of amuse- 
 ment which are within my power." This letter was 
 written in January 1805, only a few weeks after the 
 loss of his son. In another letter written in April to 
 the same gentleman, his cousin, Mr. Muirhead, great 
 uncle of the able and learned translator of M. Arago's 
 ' Eloge,' after expressing his confident hopes that Gre- 
 gory had changed this mortal state for a far happier 
 existence, he says, as if anxious to avoid all suspicion 
 
52 WATT. 
 
 of his giving way to excessive sorrow, " You are not 
 to conceive that we give way to grief: on the contrary, 
 you will find us as cheerful as we ought to be, and as 
 much disposed to enjoy the friends we have left as 
 ever. But we should approach to brutes if we had no 
 regrets." In this letter he quotes the beautiful lines 
 of Catullus, " Nunc it per iter tenebricosum," &c. 
 
 To this evidence at the period of his son's death let 
 me add the testimony of Lord Jeffrey, who knew him 
 well, and who brings down the account to the latest 
 years of his life. " His health, which was delicate 
 from his youth upwards, seemed to become firmer as he 
 advanced in years ; and he possessed, up almost to the 
 last moments of his existence, not only the full com- 
 mand of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity 
 of spirit and the social gaiety which had illumined his 
 happiest days. His friends in this part of the country 
 (Edinburgh) never saw him more full of intellectual 
 vigour and colloquial animation, never more delightful 
 or more instructive, than in his last visit in autumn 
 1817." It was after this period that he invented the 
 machine for copying sculpture. He distributed among 
 his friends some specimens of its performances, jocu- 
 larly calling them " the productions of a young artist 
 just entering into his eighty-third year." 
 
 In the summer of the following year, 1819, I saw 
 him for the last time, and did not observe any change 
 in his conversation or in his manner; but I understand 
 that he suffered some inconvenience through the 
 summer; though, until a few weeks before his death, 
 he was not seriously indisposed. He soon became 
 aware of the event which was approaching, and he 
 seemed only anxious to impress upon his sorrowing 
 family the circumstances calculated to minister con- 
 solation under the change which must soon take place. 
 He expressed his sincere gratitude to Divine Pro- 
 vidence for the blessings which he had been permitted 
 to enjoy, for his length of days, his exemption from 
 
WATT. 53 
 
 the infirmities of age, the calm and cheerful evening 
 of his life passed after the useful labours of its day had 
 closed. He died on the 25th of August, 1819, in his 
 eighty-fourth year. His remains lie buried in Hands- 
 worth church, near his residence of Heathfield, and a 
 statue, the work of Chantrey, is there erected to his 
 memory by his son ; and the same filial piety has pre- 
 sented a statue to the College of Glasgow, in grateful 
 recollection of early patronage. But a truly noble 
 monument is raised to him in Westminster Abbey, by 
 the genius of Chantrey, at the expense of the sover- 
 eign and of many peers and distinguished commoners, 
 who held a meeting in honour of this illustrious man 
 and great public benefactor. The ministers of the 
 crown, and the chiefs of the opposition in either House 
 of Parliament, the most eminent men of science, the 
 most distinguished cultivators of the arts, assembled 
 with this view, and the account of their proceedings 
 was made public in an authentic form. The prime min- 
 ister, Lord Liverpool, presided; and it was none of the 
 least remarkable passages of that day, that his succes- 
 sor, the present premier, was anxious to declare the 
 obligation under which he lay to the genius of him 
 they were commemorating, the fortunes of his family 
 being reared by manufacturing industry, founded upon 
 the happy inventions of Arkwright and Watt. It has 
 ever been reckoned by me one of the chief honours of 
 rny life, that I was called upon to pen the inscription 
 upon the noble monument thus nobly reared. 
 
 The chisel of Chantrey, whose greatest work this 
 certainly is, has admirably presented the features of 
 the countenance at once deeply meditative and calmly 
 placid, but betokening power rather than delicacy and 
 refinement. The civilized world is filled with im- 
 perishable records of his genius, and the grateful 
 recollection of the whole species embalms his memory. 
 But for this, the author of the epitaph might well feel 
 how inadequately his feeble pen had performed its 
 
54 WATT. 
 
 office in attempting to pourtray such excellence: how 
 much more inadequately when its lines are traced in 
 most disadvantageous contrast with the signal success 
 of the sculptor! He who has ever made the attempt 
 to write with a chisel in our language, little lapidary 
 as it certainly is, will comprehend the extraordinary 
 difficulties of the task, and will show mercy to the 
 failure : 
 
 NOT TO PERPETUATE A NAME 
 WHICH MUST ENDURE WHILE THE PEACEFUL ARTS FLOURISH 
 
 BUT TO SHEW 
 
 THAT MANKIND HAVE LEARNED TO HONOUR THOSE- 
 WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE 
 
 THE KING 
 
 HIS MINISTERS AND MANY OF THE NOBLES 
 
 AND COMMONERS OP THE REALM 
 
 RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO 
 
 JAMES WATT 
 
 WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL GENIUS 
 
 EARLY EXERCISED IN PHILOSOPHIC RESEARCH 
 
 TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF 
 
 THE STEAM ENGINE 
 
 ENLARGED THE RESOURCES OF HIS COUNTRY 
 INCREASED THE POWER OF MAN 
 AND ROSE TO AN EMINENT PLACE 
 
 AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FOLLOWERS OF SCIENCE 
 AND THE REAL BENEFACTORS OF THE WORLD 
 
 BORN AT GREENOCK MDCCXXXVI 
 DIED AT HEATHFIELD IN STAFFORDSHIRE MDCCCXIX. 
 
 We have been considering this eminent person as 
 yet only in his public capacity, as a benefactor of 
 mankind by his fertile genius and indomitable perse- 
 verance; and the best portraiture of his intellectual 
 character was to be found in the description of his 
 attainments. It is, however, proper to survey him 
 also in private life. He was unexceptionable in all its 
 relations; and as his activity was unmeasured, and 
 his taste anything rather than fastidious, he both was 
 master of every variety of knowledge, and was tolerant 
 of discussion on subjects of very subordinate import- 
 ance compared with those on which he most excelled. 
 Not only all the sciences from the mathematics and 
 
WATT, 55 
 
 astronomy, down to botany, received his diligent at- 
 tention, but he was tolerably read in the lighter kinds 
 of literature, delighting in poetry and other works of 
 fiction, full of the stores of ancient literature, and 
 readily giving himself up to the critical disquisitions 
 of commentators, and to discussions on the fancies of 
 etymology. His manners were most attractive from 
 their perfect nature and simplicity. His conversation 
 was rich in the measure which such stores and such 
 easy taste might lead us to expect, and it astonished all 
 listeners with its admirable precision, with the extra- 
 ordinary memory it displayed, with the distinctness it 
 seemed to have, as if his mind had separate niches for 
 keeping each particular, and with its complete rejection 
 of all worthless and superfluous matter, as if the same 
 mind had some fine machine for acting like a fan, 
 casting off the chaff and the husk. But it had besides 
 a peculiar charm from the pleasure he took in convey- 
 ing information where he was peculiarly able to give 
 it, and in joining with entire candour whatever discus- 
 sion happened to arise. Even upon matters on which 
 he was entitled to pronounce with absolute authority, 
 he never laid down the law, but spoke like any other 
 partaker of the conversation. You might observe 
 him, however, with his pencil in his hand, ready to 
 prove what might require explanation, and he was an 
 adventurous disputant who would not rather see his in- 
 tellect play in illustrations than descend with demon- 
 strative force. He was ever in pursuit of truth or the 
 gratification of a rational curiosity, and this attempered 
 as well as guided his talk. If he seemed occasionally 
 to be moved beyond the interest thus excited, it was 
 when he perceived any thing uncandid or unfair, or, 
 above all, indirect and dishonest. The attempts of one 
 man to appropriate another's inventive merit were the 
 things that most roused his indignation ; for^ regarding 
 discovery and invention as the most precious of all 
 property, he could not bear the sight of its violation, 
 
56 WATT. 
 
 and would stop minutely and curiously to ascertain the 
 relative shares of different individuals, when any doubt 
 was raised upon the distribution. His conversation 
 was withal spirited and lively it was easy and concise, 
 and without the least of a lecturing formality. His 
 voice was deep and low, and if somewhat monotonous, 
 it yet seemed in harmony with the weight and the 
 beauty of his discourse, through which, however, there 
 also ran a current of a lighter kind ; for he was mirth- 
 ful, temperately jocular, nor could anything to more 
 advantage set off the living anecdotes of men and 
 things, with which the graver texture of his talk was 
 interwoven, than his sly and quiet humour, both of 
 mind and of look, in recounting them. No one who 
 had the happiness of knowing him, no member, more 
 especially, of the club in Edinburgh which he fre- 
 quented as often as he visited that capital, can ever 
 forget the zest which his society derived from the 
 mixture of such various matters as those to which 
 I have referred; and one of its most distinguished 
 founders* has justly said, that in no other person was 
 there ever observed so " fine an expression of reposing 
 strength and uninterrupted self-possession as marked 
 his whole manner." 
 
 * Lord Jeffrey. The club was called from the day, Friday, on which 
 it met at supper, after the business of the week was over, and the half- 
 holiday of Saturday only lightly hanging over the heads of the lawyers, 
 who chiefly composed it. Mr. Watt was an honorary member. He had 
 for his colleagues no less distinguished men than Professor Playfair, Sir 
 Walter Scott, Lord Corehouse, Mr. Homer, Mr. Elmsley, Sir W. Drum- 
 mond, and several who still survive and fill exalted places in the state. 
 
WATT. 57 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 HISTOEIOAL NOTE OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE THEOEY 
 OF THE COMPOSITION OF WATEE. 
 
 THEEE can be no doubt whatever, that the experiment of 
 Mr. Warltire, related in Dr. Priestley's fifth volume,* gave 
 rise to this inquiry, at least in England ; Mr. Cavendish 
 expressly refers to it, as having set him upon making his 
 experiments. (Phil. Trans. 1784, p. 126.) The experi- 
 ment of Mr. Warltire consisted in firing, by electricity, a 
 mixture of inflammable and common air in a close vessel, 
 and two things were said to be observed : first, a sensible 
 loss of weight ; second, a dewy deposit on the sides of the 
 vessel. 
 
 Mr. Watt, in a note to p. 332 of his paper, Phil. Trans. 
 1784, inadvertently states, that the dewy deposit was first 
 observed by Mr. Cavendish ; but Mr. Cavendish himself, 
 p. 127, expressly states Mr. Warltire to have observed it, 
 and cites Dr. Priestley's fifth volume. 
 
 * Mr. Warltire's letter is dated Birmingham, 18th April, 1781, and 
 was published by Dr. Priestley in the Appendix to the seventh volume of 
 his ' Experiments and Observations relating to various branches of Natu- 
 ral Philosophy ; with a continuation of the Observations on Air,' form- 
 ing, in fact, the fifth volume of his ' Experiments and Observations on 
 different kinds of Air;' printed at Birmingham in 1781. 
 
 Mr. Warltire's first experiments were made in a copper ball or flask, 
 which held three wine pints, the weight 14 ounces ; and his object was to 
 determine " whether heat is heavy or not." After stating his mode of 
 mixing the airs, and of adjusting the balance, he says, he " always accu- 
 rately balanced the flask of common air, then found the difference of weight 
 after the inflammable air was introduced, that he might be certain he had 
 confined the proper proportion of each. The electric spark having passed 
 through them, the flask became hot, and was cooled by exposing it to the 
 common air of the room : it was then hung up again to the balance, and 
 a loss of weight was always found, but not constantly the same ; upon an 
 average it was two grains." 
 
 He goes on to say, " I have fired air in glass vessels since I saw you 
 (Dr. Priestley) venture to do it, and I have observed, as you did, that, 
 though the glass was clean and dry before, yet, after firing the air, it 
 became dewy, and was lined with a sooty substance." 
 
 It seems evident that neither Mr. Warltire nor Dr. Priestley attributed 
 the dew to anything else than a mechanical deposit of the moisture sus- 
 pended in common air. [Note by Mr. James Watt.] 
 
58 WATT. 
 
 Mr. Cavendish himself could find no loss of weight, and 
 he says that Dr. Priestley had also tried the experiment, 
 and found none.* But Mr. Cavendish found there was 
 always a dewy deposit, without any sooty matter. The 
 result of many trials was, that common air and inflammable 
 air being burnt together, in the proportion of 1000 meas- 
 ures of the former to 423 of the latter, " about one-fifth of 
 the common air, and nearly all the inflammable air, lose 
 their elasticity, and are condensed into the dew which lines 
 the glass." He examined the dew, and found it to be pure 
 water. He therefore concludes, that " almost all the in- 
 flammable air, and about one-sixth of the common air, are 
 turned into pure water." 
 
 Mr. Cavendish then burned, in the same way, dephlogis- 
 ticated and inflammable airs (oxygen and hydrogen gases), 
 and the deposit was always more or less acidulous, accord- 
 ingly as the air burnt with the inflammable air was more or 
 less phlogisticated. The acid was found to be nitrous. Mr. 
 Cavendish states, that " almost the whole of the inflam- 
 mable and dephlogisticated air is converted into pure water;" 
 and, again, that " if these airs could be obtained perfectly 
 pure, the whole would be condensed." And he accounts 
 for common air and inflammable air, when burnt together, 
 not producing acid, by supposing that the heat produced is 
 not sufficient. He then says that these experiments, with 
 the exception of what relates to the acid, were made in the 
 summer of 1781, and mentioned to Dr. Priestley ; and adds, 
 that "a friend of his (Mr. Cavendish's), last summer 
 (that is 1783), gave some account of them to M. Lavoisier, 
 as well as of the conclusion drawn from them, that dephlo- 
 gisticated air is only water deprived of its phlogiston ; but, 
 at that time, so far was M. Lavoisier from thinking any 
 such opinion warranted, that till he was prevailed upon to 
 repeat the experiment himself, he found some difficulty in 
 believing that nearly the whole of the two airs could be 
 converted into water." The friend is known to have been 
 Dr., afterwards Sir Charles Blagden ; and it is a remarkable 
 circumstance, that this passage of Mr. Cavendish's paper 
 
 * Mr. Cavendish's note, p. 127, would seem to imply this ; but I have 
 not found in any of Dr. Priestley's papers that he has said so. [Note by 
 Mr. James Watt.'} 
 
WATT. 59 
 
 appears not to have been in it when originally presented to 
 the Boyal Society; for the paper is apparently in Mr. 
 Cavendish's hand, and the paragraph, p. 134, 135, is not 
 found in it, but is added to it, and directed to be inserted 
 in that place. It is, moreover, not in Mr. Cavendish's 
 hand, but in Sir Charles Blagden's ; and, indeed, the latter 
 must have given him the information as to M. Lavoisier, 
 with whom it is not said that Mr. Cavendish had any 
 correspondence. The paper itself was read 15th January, 
 1784. The volume was published about six months after- 
 wards. 
 
 M. Lavoisier's memoir (in the Mem. de 1' Academic des 
 Sciences for 1781) had been read partly in November and 
 December 1783, and additions were afterwards made to it. 
 It was published in 1784. It contained M. Lavoisier's 
 account of his experiments in June 1783, at which, he says, 
 Sir Charles Blagden was present; and it states that he 
 told M. Lavoisier of Mr. Cavendish having " already burnt 
 inflammable air in close vessels, and obtained a very sensible 
 quantity of water." But he, M. Lavoisier, says nothing 
 of Sir Charles Blagden having also mentioned Mr. Caven- 
 dish's conclusion from the experiment. He expressly states, 
 that the weight of the water was equal to that of the two 
 airs burnt, unless the heat and light which escape are pon- 
 derable, which he holds them not to be His account, there- 
 fore, is not reconcilable with Sir Charles Blagden's, and the 
 latter was most probably written as a contradiction of it, 
 after Mr. Cavendish's paper had been read, and when the 
 Memoires of the Academic were received in this country. 
 These Memoires were published in 1784, and could not, 
 certainly, have arrived when Mr. Cavendish's paper was 
 written, nor when it was read to the Royal Society 
 
 But it is further to be remarked, that this passage of 
 Mr. Cavendish's paper in Sir Charles Blagden's hand- 
 writing, only mentions the experiments having been 
 communicated to Dr. Priestley ; they were made, says the 
 passage, in 1781, and communicated to Dr. Priestley ; it is 
 not said when, nor is it said that " the conclusions drawn 
 from them," and which Sir Charles Blagden says he com- 
 municated to M. Lavoisier in summer 1783, were ever com- 
 municated to Dr. Priestley ; and Dr. Priestley, in his paper 
 
60 WATT. 
 
 (referred to in Mr. Cavendish's), which was read June 
 1783, and written before April of that year, says nothing 
 of Mr. Cavendish's theory, though he mentions his experi- 
 ment. 
 
 Several propositions then are proved by this statement. 
 
 First, That Mr. Cavendish, in his paper, read 15th Jan- 
 uary, 1784, relates the capital experiment of burning oxy- 
 gen and hydrogen gases in a close vessel, and finding pure 
 water to be the produce of the combustion. 
 
 Secondly, That, in the same paper, he drew from this 
 experiment the conclusion that the two gases were con- 
 verted or turned into water. 
 
 Thirdly, That Sir Charles Blagden inserted in the same 
 paper, with Mr. Cavendish's consent, a statement that the 
 experiment had first been made by Mr. Cavendish in sum- 
 mor 1781, and mentioned to Dr. Priestley, though it is not 
 said when, nor is it said that any conclusion was mentioned 
 to Dr. Priestley, nor is it said at what time Mr. Cavendish 
 first drew that conclusion. A most material omission. 
 
 Fourthly, That in that addition made to the paper by 
 Sir Charles Blagden, the conclusion of Mr. Cavendish is 
 stated to be, that oxygen gas is water deprived of phlo- 
 giston ; this addition having been made after M. Lavoisier's 
 memoir arrived in England. 
 
 It may further be observed, that in another addition to 
 the paper which is also in Sir C. Blagden' s handwriting, and 
 which was certainly made after M. Lavoisier's memoir had 
 arrived, Mr. Cavendish for the first time distinctly states, 
 as upon M. Lavoisier's hypothesis, that water consisted of 
 hydrogen united to oxygen gas. There is no substan- 
 tial difference, perhaps, between this and the conclusion 
 stated to have been drawn by Mr. Cavendish himself, that 
 oxygen gas is water deprived of phlogiston, supposing 
 phlogiston to be synonymous with hydrogen ; but the for- 
 mer proposition is certainly the more distinct and unequi- 
 vocal of the two : and it is to be observed that Mr. Caven- 
 dish, in the original part of the paper, i. e. the part read 
 January 1784, before the arrival of Lavoisier's, considers 
 it more just to hold inflammable air to be phlogisticated 
 water than pure phlogiston (p. 140.) 
 
 We are now to see what Mr. Watt did ; and the dates 
 
WATT, 61 
 
 here become very material. It appears that he wrote a 
 letter to Dr. Priestley on 26th April, 1783, in which he 
 reasons on the experiment of burning the two gases in a 
 close vessel, and draws the conclusion, " that water is com- 
 posed of dephlogisticated air and phlogiston, deprived of 
 part of their latent heat."* The letter was received by 
 Dr. Priestley and delivered to Sir Joseph Banks, with a 
 request that it might be read to the Royal Society ; but 
 Mr. Watt afterwards desired this to be delayed, in order 
 that he might examine some new experiments of Dr. Priest- 
 ley, so that it was not read until the 22d April, 1784. In 
 the interval between the delivery of this letter to Dr. 
 Priestley, and the reading of it, Mr. Watt had addressed 
 another letter to M. De Luc, dated 26th November, 1783,t 
 
 * It may with certainty be concluded from Mr. Watt's private and 
 unpublished letters, of which the copies taken by his copying-machine, 
 then recently invented, are preserved, that his theory of the composition 
 of water was already formed in December, 1782, and probably much 
 earlier. Dr. Priestley, in his paper of 21st April, 1783, p. 416, states, 
 that Mr. Watt, prior to his (the Doctor's) experiments, had entertained 
 the idea of the possibility of the conversion of water or steam into perma- 
 nent air. And Mr. Watt himself, in his paper, Phil. Trans., p. 335, 
 asserts, that for many years he had entertained the opinion that air was a 
 modification of water, and he enters at some length into the facts and 
 reasoning upon which that deduction was founded. [Note by Mr. James 
 Watt.'] 
 
 f The letter was addressed to M. J. A. De Luc, the well-known Gene- 
 vese philosopher, then a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Reader to Queen 
 Chariotte. He was the friend of Mr. Watt, who did not then belong to 
 the Society. M. De Luc, following the motions of the Court, was not 
 always in London, and seldom attended the meetings of the Royal Society. 
 He was not present when Mr. Cavendish's paper of 15th January, 1784, 
 was read j but, hearing of it from Dr. Blagden, he obtained a loan of it 
 from Mr. Cavendish, and writes fco Mr. Watt on the 1st March following, 
 to apprise him of it, adding that he has perused it, and promising an 
 analysis. In the postscript he states, " In short, they expound and prove 
 your system, word for word, and say nothing of you." The promised 
 analysis is given in another letter of the 4th of the same month. Mr. 
 Watt replies on the 6th, with all the feelings which a conviction he had 
 been ill-treated was calculated to inspire, and makes use of those vivid 
 expressions which M. Arago has quoted ; he states his intention of being 
 in London in the ensuing week, and his opinion, that the reading of his 
 letter to the Royal Society will be the proper step to be taken. He 
 accordingly went there, waited upon the President of the Royal Society, 
 Sir Joseph Banks, was received with all the courtesy and just feeling 
 which distinguished that most honourable man ; and it was settled that 
 
02 WATT. 
 
 with many further ohservations and reasonings, hut almost 
 the whole of the original letter is preserved in this, and is 
 distinguished by inverted commas. One of the passages 
 thus marked is that which has the important conclusion 
 above mentioned ; and that letter is stated, in the subse- 
 quent one, to have been communicated to several members 
 of the Eoyal Society at the time of its reaching Dr. Priest- 
 ley, viz. April, 1783. 
 
 In Mr. Cavendish's paper as at first read, no allusion is 
 to be found to Mr. Watt's theory ; but in an addition made 
 in Sir C. Blagden's own hand, after Mr. Watt's paper had 
 been read, there is a reference to that theory (Phil. Trans. 
 1784, p. 140), and Mr. Cavendish's reasons are given for 
 not encumbering his theory with that part of Mr. Watt's 
 which regards the evolution of latent heat. It is thus left 
 somewhat doubtful, whether Mr. Cavendish had ever seen 
 the letter of April 1783, or whether he had seen only the 
 paper (of 26th November, 1783) of which that letter formed 
 a part, and which was read 29th April, 1784. That the 
 first letter was for some time (two months, as appears from 
 the papers of Mr. Watt) in the hands of Sir Joseph Banks 
 and other members of the Society, during the preceding 
 spring, is certain, from the statements in the note to 
 p. 330 ; and that Sir Charles Blagden, the Secretary, should 
 not have seen it, seems impossible ; for Sir Joseph Banks 
 must have delivered it to him at the time when it was in- 
 tended to be read at one of the Society's meetings (Phil. 
 Trans., p. 330, Note), and, as the letter itself remains 
 among the Society's Records, in the same volume with the 
 paper into which the greater part of it was introduced, it 
 must have been in the custody of Sir C. Blagden. It is 
 equally difficult to suppose, that the person who wrote the 
 remarkable passage already referred to, respecting Mr. Ca- 
 vendish's conclusions having been communicated to M. 
 Lavoisier in the summer of 1783 (that is, in June), should 
 not have mentioned to Mr. Cavendish that Mr. Watt had 
 drawn the same conclusion in the spring of 1783 (that is, 
 
 both the letter to Dr. Priestley of 26th April, 1783, and that to M. De 
 Luc of 26th November, 1783, should be successively read. The former 
 was done on the 22d, and the latter on the 29th April, 1784. [Note by 
 Mr. James Watt.'] 
 
WATT. 63 
 
 in April at the latest.) For the conclusions are identical, 
 with the single difference, that Mr. Cavendish calls dephlo- 
 gisticated air, water deprived of its phlogiston, and Mr. 
 Watt says that water is composed of dephlogisticated air 
 and phlogiston. 
 
 We may remark, there is the same uncertainty or vague- 
 ness introduced into Mr. Watt's theory, which we before 
 observed in Mr. Cavendish's, by the use of the term Phlo- 
 giston, without exactly defining it. Mr. Cavendish leaves 
 it uncertain, whether or not he meant by phlogiston simply 
 inflammable air, and he inclines rather to call inflammable 
 air, water united to phlogiston. Mr. Watt says expressly, 
 even in his later paper (of November, 1783), and in a pas- 
 sage not to be found in the letter of April, 1783, that he 
 thinks that inflammable air contains a small quantity of 
 water, arid much elementary heat. It must be admitted 
 that such expressions as these on the part of both of those 
 great men, betoken a certain hesitation respecting the theory 
 of the composition of water. If they had ever formed to 
 themselves the idea that water is a compound of the two 
 gases deprived of their latent heat, that is, of the two 
 gases, with the same distinctiveness which marks M. La- 
 voisier's statement of the theory, such obscurity and uncer- 
 tainty would have been avoided. 
 
 Several further propositions may now be stated, as the 
 result of the facts regarding Mr. Watt. 
 
 First, That there is no evidence of any person having 
 reduced the theory of composition to writing, in a shape 
 which now remains, so early as Mr. Watt. 
 
 Secondly, That he states the theory, both in April and 
 November, 1783, in language somewhat more distinctly 
 referring to composition than Mr. Cavendish does in 1784, 
 and that his reference to the evolution of latent heat renders 
 it more distinct than Mr. Cavendish's. 
 
 Thirdly, That there is no proof, nor even any assertion, 
 of Mr. Cavendish's theory (what Sir C. Blagden calls his 
 conclusion) having been communicated to Dr. Priestley 
 before Mr. Watt "stated his theory in 1783, still less of 
 Mr. Watt having heard of it, while his whole letter shows 
 that he never had been aware of it, either from Dr. Priest- 
 ley, or from any other quarter. 
 
64 WATT. 
 
 Fourthly, That Mr. Watt's theory was well known among 
 the members of the Society, some months before Mr. Ca- 
 vendish's statement appears to have been reduced into 
 writing, and eight months before it was presented to the 
 Society. We may indeed go further, and affirm, as another 
 deduction from the facts and dates, that as far as the evi- 
 dence goes, there is proof of Mr. Watt having first drawn 
 the conclusion, at least that no proof exists of any one 
 having drawn it so early as he is proved to have done. 
 
 Lastly, That a reluctance to give up the doctrine of phlo- 
 giston, a kind of timidity on the score of that long-estab- 
 lished and deeply rooted opinion, prevented both Mr. Watt 
 and Mr. Cavendish from doing full justice to their own 
 theory ; while M. Lavoisier, who had entirely shaken off 
 these trammels, first presented the new doctrine in its 
 entire perfection and consistency. 
 
 All three may have made the important step nearly at 
 the same time, and unknown to each other ; the step, 
 namely, of concluding from the experiment, that the two 
 gases entered into combination, and that water was the 
 result ; for this, with more or less of distinctness, is the in- 
 ference which all three drew. 
 
 But there is the statement of Sir Charles Blagden, to 
 show that M. Lavoisier had heard of Mr. Cavendish's draw- 
 ing this inference before his (M. Lavoisier's) capital experi- 
 ment was made ; and it appears that M. Lavoisier, after 
 Sir C. Blagden's statement had been embodied in Mr. 
 Cavendish's paper and made public, never gave any contra- 
 diction to it in any of his subsequent memoirs which are to 
 be found in the Memoires de 1' Academic, though his own 
 account of that experiment, and of what then passed, is 
 inconsistent with Sir Charles Blagden's statement. 
 
 But there is not any assertion at all, even from Sir C. 
 Blagden, zealous for Mr. Cavendish's priority as he was, 
 that Mr. Watt had ever heard of Mr. Cavendish's theory 
 before he formed his own. 
 
 Whether or not Mr. Cavendish had heard of Mr. Watt's 
 theory previous to drawing his conclusions, appears more 
 doubtful. The supposition that he had so heard, rests on 
 the improbability of his (Sir Charles Blagden's) and many 
 others knowing what Mr. Watt had done, and not com- 
 
WATT. 65 
 
 municatmg it to Mr. Cavendish, and on the omission of 
 any assertion in Mr. Cavendish's paper, even in the part 
 written by Sir C. Blagden with the view of claiming pri- 
 ority as against M. Lavoisier, that Mr. Cavendish had 
 drawn his conclusion before April 1783, although in one 
 of the additions to that paper reference is made to Mr. 
 Watt's theory. 
 
 As great obscurity hangs over the material question at 
 what time Mr. Cavendish first drew the conclusion from 
 his experiment, it may be as well to examine what that 
 great man's habit was in communicating his discoveries to 
 the Royal Society. 
 
 A Committee of the Eoyal Society, with Mr. Gilpin the 
 clerk, made a series of experiments on the formation of 
 nitrous acid, under Mr. Cavendish's direction, and to satisfy 
 those who had doubted his theory of its composition, first 
 given accidentally in the paper of January 1784, and after- 
 wards more fully in another paper, June 1785. Those 
 experiments occupied from the 6th December, 1787, to 
 19th March, 1788, and Mr. Cavendish's paper upon them 
 was read 17th April. 1788. It was, therefore, written and 
 printed within a month of the experiments being concluded. 
 
 Mr. Kirwan answered Mr. Cavendish's paper (of 15th 
 January, 1784) on water, in one which was read 5th Feb- 
 ruary, 1784, and Mr. Cavendish replied in a paper read 4th 
 March, 1784. 
 
 Mr. Cavendish's experiments on the density of the earth 
 were made from the 5th August, 1797, to the 27th May, 
 1798. The paper upon that subject was read 27th June, 
 1798. 
 
 The account of the eudiometer was communicated at 
 apparently a greater interval ; at least the only time men- 
 tioned in the account of the experiments is the latter half 
 of 1781, and the paper was read January 1783. It is, 
 however, probable, from the nature of the subject, that he 
 made further trials during the year 1782. 
 
 That Mr. Watt formed his theory during the few months 
 or weeks immediately preceding April, 1783, seems pro- 
 bable.* It is certain that he considered the theory as his 
 
 * That the idea existed in his mind previously, is proved by his de- 
 clarations to Dr. Priestley, cited by the latter; by his own assertions, 
 
 F 
 
66 WATT. 
 
 own, and makes no reference to any previous communication 
 from any one upon the subject, nor of having ever heard of 
 Mr. Cavendish drawing the same conclusion. 
 
 The improbability must also be admitted to be extreme, 
 of Sir Charles Blagden ever having heard of Mr. Caven- 
 dish's theory prior to the date of Mr. Watt's letter, and 
 not mentioning that circumstance in the insertion which 
 he made in Mr. Cavendish's paper. 
 
 It deserves to be farther mentioned, that Mr. Watt left 
 the correction of the press, and every thing relating to the 
 publishing of his paper, to Sir Charles Blagden. A letter 
 remains from him to that effect, written to Sir Charles 
 Blagden, and Mr. Watt never saw the paper until it was 
 printed. 
 
 Since M. Arago's learned Eloge was published, with this 
 paper as an Appendix, the Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt has 
 entered into controversy with us both, or, I should rather 
 say, with M. Arago, for he has kindly spared me ; and 
 while I express my obligations for this courtesy of my 
 reverend, learned, and valued friend, I must express my 
 unqualified admiration of his boldness in singling out for 
 his antagonist my illustrious colleague, rather than the far 
 weaker combatant against whom he might so much more 
 safely have done battle. Whatever might have been his 
 fate had he caken the more prudent course, I must fairly 
 say (even without waiting until my fellow-champion seal 
 our adversary's doom), that I have seldom seen any two 
 parties more unequally matched, or any disputation in which 
 the victory was so complete. The attack on M. Arago 
 might have passed well enough at a popular meeting at 
 Birmingham, before which it was spoken ; but as a scientific 
 inquirer, it would be a flattery running the risk of seeming 
 ironical to weigh the reverend author against the most 
 eminent philosopher of the day, although upon a question 
 of evidence (which this really is, as well as a scientific dis- 
 cussion) I might be content to succumb before him. As a 
 strange notion, however, seems to pervade this paper, that 
 
 p. 335 of his paper; and by the existing copies of his letters in December 
 1782. [Note by Mr. James Watt.] 
 
WATT. 67 
 
 everything depends on the character of Mr. Cavendish, it 
 may be as well to repeat the disclaimer already very dis- 
 tinctly made of all intention to cast the slightest doubt 
 upon that great man's perfect good faith in the whole 
 affair ; I never having supposed that he borrowed from Mr. 
 Watt, though M. Arago, Professor Eobison,* and Sir H. 
 Davy, as well as myself, have always been convinced that 
 Mr. Watt had, unknown to him, anticipated his great dis- 
 covery. It is also said by Mr. Harcourt, that the late Dr. 
 Henry having examined Mr. Watt's manuscripts decided 
 against his priority. I have Dr. H.'s letter before me of 
 June 1820, stating most clearly, most fully, and most 
 directly, the reverse, and deciding in Mr. Watt's favour. 
 I must add, having read the full publication with fac-similes, 
 Mr. Harcourt has now clearly proved one thing, and it is 
 really of some importance. He has made it appear that in 
 all Mr. Cavendish's diaries and notes of his experiments, 
 not an intimation occurs of the composition of water having 
 been inferred by him from those experiments earlier than 
 Mr. Watt's paper of spring, 1783. 
 
 * Encyc. Brit., vol. xviii., p. 808. This able and learned article enters 
 at length into the proofs of Mr. Watt's claims, and it was published in 
 1797, thirteen years before Mr. Cavendish's death. 
 
(68) 
 
 PEIESTLEY. 
 
 MENTION has already been more than once made of 
 Dr. Priestley ; and certainly history would imperfectly 
 perform its office of recording the progress of natural 
 knowledge should it pass over his important discoveries 
 without the large share of attention and of praise which 
 they are well entitled to claim. In turning, however, 
 to recount the events of his life, we make a somewhat 
 painful transition from contemplating the philosophic 
 character in its perfection, to follow the course of one 
 who united in his own person the part of the experi- 
 mental inquirer after physical truth with that of the 
 angry polemic and the fiery politician, leading some- 
 times the life of a sage, though never perhaps free from 
 rooted and perverted prejudice sometimes that of a 
 zealot against received creeds and established institu- 
 tions, and hi consequence of his intemperance, alter- 
 nately the exciter and the victim of persecution. 
 Nevertheless, the services which he rendered in the 
 former and better capacity, ought to be held in grate- 
 ful remembrance by the cultivators of physical science. 
 Nor are we to suppose that even in his polemical 
 capacity he was not in pursuit of truth. He may have 
 had a tendency to oppose established opinions; a 
 disposition which led him, as he says himself, at the 
 age of twenty " to embrace what is generally called the 
 heterodox side of every question,"* just as he had a 
 disposition pertinaciously to keep by the received and 
 erroneous chemical theory ; but if he thought for him- 
 
 * Works. Memoirs, vol. i., part i., p. 25. 
 
PRIESTLEY 69 
 
 self, and followed the bent of his convictions, we have 
 no right to doubt his conscientious motives, the more 
 especially as his heterodox dogmas, always manfully 
 avowed, never brought him anything but vexation and 
 positive injury in his temporal concerns. The perti- 
 nacity with which he defended to the end of his days 
 the chemical doctrine of Phlogiston, and the equal 
 zeal with which he attacked the theological tenets of 
 original sin and the atonement, alike proceeded from 
 sincere conviction, and no one has a right to blame 
 him for either of these opinions, even if it be quite 
 clear that he was wrong in both. 
 
 Joseph Priestley was the son of a cloth dresser at 
 Birstal-Fieldhead, near Leeds, and was born there, 
 13th of March (old style), 1733. His family appear to 
 have been in humble circumstances ; and he was taken 
 off their hands after the death of his mother by his 
 paternal aunt, with whom he went to live when nine 
 years old, and who sent him to a free school at Batley, 
 in the neighbourhood. There he learnt something of 
 Greek and Latin, and a dissenting minister taught 
 him a little Hebrew in the vacation of the grammar- 
 school, To this he added some knowledge of other 
 Eastern languages connected with Biblical literature ; 
 he made a considerable progress in Syriac and Chaldean, 
 and began to learn Arabic ; he also had a little instruc- 
 tion in the mathematics from a teacher who had been 
 educated under Maclaurin, at Edinburgh. But in this 
 science he made very little proficiency.* Indeed his 
 whole education was exceedingly imperfect, and ex- 
 cepting in Hebrew and in Greek he never afterwards 
 improved it by any systematic course of study ; but in 
 both these languages he became well versed, and he 
 
 * This is manifest from several parts of his writings, although he in 
 one passage of his correspondence speaks of having once been very fond of 
 the study; for in the same paper he speaks of Baron Maseres' work 
 (' Scriptores Logarithmic!') as if he had been the author, instead of the 
 collector. Mem. i., part ii., p. 490. 
 
70 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 used always to read the Scriptures in the original 
 tongues. Even in chemistry, the science which he 
 best knew, and in which he made so important a 
 figure, he was only half taught ; and he himself ac- 
 knowledged, after having failed to obtain a chemical 
 lectureship, that he "never could have acquittedhimself 
 properly in it, never having given much attention to the 
 common routine of the science, and knowing but little 
 of the common processes." " When I began my ex- 
 periments," he says, " I knew very little of chemistry, 
 and had, in a manner, no idea of the subject before I 
 attended a course of lectures at an academy where I 
 taught." So that he was not well-informed, and had 
 never studied either the theoretical or the practical 
 parts of it, but just got possession of such portions of 
 the subject as occasionally came within the scope of the 
 experiments he was making, and the doctrines he was 
 discussing at the time. His whole writings, which 
 are numberless, and without method, or system, or 
 closeness, or indeed clearness, bear ample testimony 
 to what we might expect would be the result of so 
 very imperfect a foundation as his scanty and rambling 
 education had laid. That education, however, far from 
 redounding to his discredit, very greatly enhances the 
 merit of the man. He presents one of the memorable 
 examples of knowledge pursued, science cultivated, 
 and even its bounds extended, by those whose circum- 
 stances made their exertions a continued struggle 
 against difficulties which only virtue and genius like 
 theirs could have overcome. 
 
 He went to study for some years at the dissenting 
 academy founded by Mr. Coward, at Daventry, and 
 since transferred to London, where it is in a kind of 
 union, mutually beneficial, with the University College. 
 Mr. Ashworth had succeeded the learned and pious 
 Dr. Doddridge as its principal teacher, and under him 
 Priestley remained till 1755. During the three years 
 that he studied here, he and his intimate friends used 
 
PRIESTLEY. 71 
 
 to make a point of reading, daily, ten pages of Greek, 
 and every week one Greek play, a practice which they 
 continued after they left the school, corresponding 
 with each other on the subject of their studies. On 
 quitting Daventry, having taken orders, he was ap- 
 pointed minister of a congregation at Needham Mar- 
 ket, in Suffolk. He had been brought up by his 
 father and aunt in the strictest Calvinistic principles, 
 most of which he very soon from conviction aban- 
 doned ; and so early did his spirit of free inquiry show 
 itself, that having before he left his aunt's house desired 
 to be admitted as a communicant at the chapel which 
 she attended, he was rejected by the minister on his 
 preparatory examination, in consequence of doubts 
 expressed respecting original sin, and eternal damna- 
 tion as its punishment. He describes the deep distress 
 into which he was thrown by feeling that he was 
 unable to experience due contrition and repentance 
 for Adam's fault ; and the rigid divine who tested the 
 state of his mind on this point, withheld the sacred 
 ordinances in consequence. At Needham his salary 
 never exceeded thirty pounds ; indeed it seldom 
 amounted to so much, and he could only subsist by 
 the aid which certain dissenting charities afforded to 
 augment this poor stipend. His predecessor, Dr. 
 Doddridge, had never received above thirty-five pounds 
 a-year, and his board then (1723) only cost him ten 
 pounds. Priestley's opinions proved distasteful to the 
 congregation, who probably regarded the eternity of 
 hell-torments as a peculiar privilege rudely invaded 
 by him ; and he removed in 1758 to Nantwich, ^ in 
 Cheshire, where he obtained some thirty pupils, beside 
 teaching a few young ladies and acting as private tutor 
 in an attorney's family. This increased his income, 
 and enabled him, by means of the strictest frugality, 
 to purchase a scanty apparatus ; for he had now added 
 a little natural philosophy to his favourite theological 
 studies, the fruit of which had been already two works, 
 
72 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 one of them against the atonement. I say a little 
 natural philosophy ; for he confesses that when nine 
 years later he began to write his ' History of Electri- 
 city,' he was but imperfectly acquainted with the sub- 
 ject. It is a careless and superficial work, hastily 
 written, as is his ' History of Vision ;' and the original 
 experiments afforded no new information of any value. 
 In 1761 he removed to Warrington Academy, in 
 which he succeeded Dr. Aikin as tutor in the belles 
 lettres. On settling at Warrington he married the 
 daughter of Mr. Wilkinson, a respectable iron master 
 in Wales. She was an amiable woman, and endowed 
 with great strength of mind, which was destined after- 
 wards to be severely tried. By her he had several 
 children, one of whom survived them both. 
 
 He appears to have chiefly devoted himself to theo- 
 logical studies, and hence the great disproportion which 
 his Hebrew and Greek learning bears to his other ac- 
 quirements. Metaphysical speculations, next to these, 
 engaged his attention ; and the influence produced on 
 his mind, and even his conduct, by Dr. Hartley's cele- 
 brated work (' Observations on Man'), has been re- 
 corded by himself. u I hardly know, " he says, 
 " whether it more enlightens the understanding or 
 improves the heart." He says he also had studied 
 composition, and mainly by the help of writing poetry, 
 of no merit, but according to him the best means of 
 learning to write good prose. That his taste, however, 
 was somewhat deficient in this respect, we may fairly 
 affirm, when we find him pronouncing, many years 
 after, a decided opinion that Belsham's * History ' is 
 written in a better style than Robertson's or Hume's.* 
 The universality of his attempts may be judged from 
 his delivering at Warrington a course of lectures on 
 anatomy. He sought relaxation from music, and 
 learnt to play on the flute. He strongly recommends 
 
 * Mem. and Cor. 1796, vol i., part ii., p. 358. 
 
PRIESTLEY. 73 
 
 this to students, especially, he says with some naivete, 
 such as have no fine ear, " for they will be the less 
 annoyed by bad music." 
 
 As early as during his education at Daventry he 
 had written a work which, however, was not published 
 till twenty years later ; it was the ' Institutes of Natu- 
 ral and Revealed Religion.' But having once begun 
 to publish in 1 761, his appeals to the press were in- 
 cessant, and on almost every subject. A ' Theory of 
 Language,' books on * Oratory and Criticism,' on 
 ' History and General Policy,' on the ' Constitution 
 and Laws of England,' on ' Education,' a ' Chart of 
 Biography,' a 'Chart of History;' these and others 
 were all written while he resided at Warrington, from 
 1761 to 1769. How well he was qualified to write 
 on oratory and on English law, we may easily con- 
 jecture, from the circumstance that he could never 
 have heard any speaking save in the pulpits of meeting- 
 houses, and in all probability had never seen a cause 
 tried ; but even if he had been present at debates and 
 trials, it is difficult to imagine anything more adven- 
 turous than the tutor of an academy, afflicted with an 
 incurable stutter, and who devoted his time to teaching 
 and to theology, promulgating rules of eloquence and 
 of jurisprudence to the senators and lawyers of his 
 country. That we may come without interruption to his 
 really useful studies, it may be well here to take notice 
 of his other controversial writings. In consequence of 
 a disagreement with the Warrington trustees in 1767 
 he removed to Leeds, where he became minister of the 
 Mill-Hill chapel, and wrote many controversial books 
 and pamphlets. In after times he wrote ' Letters to a 
 Philosophical Institution;' 'An Answer to Gibbon;' 
 'Disqusitions on Matter and Spirit;' 'Corruptions of 
 Christianity ;' ' Early Opinions on Christ ;' ' Familiar 
 Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham ;' ' Two Dif- 
 ferent Histories of the Christian Church ;' ' On Edu- 
 cation ;' ' Comparison of Heathen and Christian Phi- 
 
74 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 losophy ;' * Doctrine of Necessity ;' * On the Roman 
 Catholic Claims ;' ' On the French Revolution ;' ' On 
 the American War ;' beside twenty volumes of tracts 
 in favour of the Dissenters and their rights. His gene- 
 ral works fill twenty-five volumes,* of which only five 
 or six are on scientific subjects : his publications being 
 in all one hundred and forty-one (in one year ten), of 
 which only seventeen are on scientific matters. He 
 is one of the most voluminous writers of any age or 
 country, and probably he is of all voluminous writers 
 the one who has the fewest readers. This arises from 
 the circumstance that, though his political opinions are 
 shared by many, the bulk of his works are theological 
 and metaphysical, but especially theological ; and his 
 religious opinions were confined to an extremely small 
 class of persons. Indeed it may be questioned if he 
 was not in several respects the only person who held 
 his peculiar faith upon all points. 
 
 It happened, fortunately, that when he went to 
 reside at Leeds in care of the Mill-Hill chapel, his 
 house immediately adjoined a common brewery, and 
 this led him to make experiments upon the fixed air 
 copiously produced during the process of fermentation. 
 It must be observed, that long before this time the 
 great step had been made by Black of ascertaining 
 that there are other permanently elastic fluids than our 
 atmosphere, and which have properties wholly different 
 from it. Cavendish, too, had very recently subjected 
 both fixed and inflammable airs (carbonic acid and 
 hydrogen gases) to accurate experiments, showing 
 their relative specific gravities, and proving that they 
 were of the same nature from what bodies soever they 
 were obtained. The probability was, that other 
 gaseous fluids existed in nature as well as those two 
 and common air. The experimenter had, therefore, 
 thenceforth, his attention directed to meeting with 
 
 * Edited by the affectionate care of an able and worthy man, Mr. 
 Towell Eutt. 
 
PRIESTLEY. 75 
 
 these : and an examination of all the products of mix- 
 ture and of heat, by precipitation or evaporation, was 
 now the natural course of experimental inquiry. At 
 first, Priestley only tried in what way fixed air could 
 be most easily combined with water , he published in 
 1772 a pamphlet upon the means of effecting this 
 union, and the condensing process which he employed 
 is used to this day. He soon after gave to the Eoyal 
 Society his observations on different kinds of air, which 
 ascertained the important fact, that atmospheric air, 
 after having been corrupted by the respiration of ani- 
 mals or by the burning of inflammable bodies, is re- 
 stored to salubrity by the vegetation of plants ; and 
 that if the air is exposed to a mixture of sulphur and 
 iron filings, as in one of Hales's experiments, its bulk 
 is diminished between a fourth and a fifth, and the 
 residue is both lighter than common air and unfit to 
 support life. This residue he called 'Phlogistic air;' 
 afterwards it was called 'Azotic' or 'Nitrogen gas;' 
 and Dr. Rutherford, of Edinburgh, as well as Priestley, 
 though unknown to each other, discovered it about the 
 same time. For these experiments the Copley Medal 
 was, in 1773, justly awarded to him by the Royal 
 Society. 
 
 The following year was destined to be the period 
 of a discovery most important for science, and truly 
 glorious for its author. Having exposed red-lead, or 
 minium, in a close vessel to the sun's rays concen- 
 trated by a burning-glass, he found that an aeriform 
 body, permanently elastic, was evolved, and that this 
 air had the peculiar property of increasing exceedingly 
 the intensity of flame. This gas he called ' dephlo- 
 gisticated air,' upon the principle that the matter of heat 
 and light, the phlogiston of Stahl, being abstracted from 
 it by the return of the calx to its metallic state, which 
 phlogiston was supposed by that theory to effect, the 
 air had great avidity for phlogiston, and seized it from 
 the inflammable bodies it came in contact with. This 
 
76 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 most important discovery, which he thus connected 
 with an erroneous theory, was made on the 1st of Au- 
 gust, 1774. He afterwards discovered that its absorp- 
 tion by the lungs in the process of respiration gives its 
 red colour to arterial blood, as it was proved to act 
 through the substance of thin bladder ; and he found 
 that when plants grow in close vessels, and restore the 
 purity of the air in which a candle has burnt or an 
 animal breathed, they do so by evolving this pure air. 
 The new nomenclature gave it the name of ' oxygen 
 gas,' from the belief then generally entertained that it 
 was the acidifying principle. Later experiments have 
 proved that there is at least one great exception to 
 this in chlorine, formerly called ' oxygenated muriatic 
 acid ;' but now found to be wholly without oxygen, 
 and yet to have all the properties of an acid. But, in- 
 deed, water itself, and the atmospheric air, having 
 neither of them the nature of acids, are both contrary 
 to the theory ; and the fixed alkalis are found to owe 
 their alkaline state and lose their metallic, like other 
 oxides, by uniting with oxygen. 
 
 Priestley is the undoubted discoverer of oxygen. 
 He was the first who communicated a knowledge of it 
 to Lavoisier, at Paris, soon after he had made the dis- 
 covery ; nor can anything be more disingenuous than 
 that celebrated person's afterwards affirming that he, 
 Priestley, and Scheele, had all discovered it " about the 
 same time." He never discovered it until Priestley 
 discovered it to him. Bergmann's suppressing in his 
 book all knowledge of the experiments of Black and 
 Cavendish, the former published twenty and the latter 
 eight years before, was bad enough, but not so bad as 
 Lavoisier's positive assertion contrary to what must 
 have been his positive knowledge. 
 
 This great discovery was far from being the last of 
 its justly celebrated author. He discovered the gases 
 of muriatic, of sulphuric, and of fluoric acids, ammonial 
 gas, and nitrous oxide gas. He also discovered the 
 
PRIESTLEY. 77 
 
 combination which nitrous gas forms suddenly with 
 oxygen ; diminishing the volume of both in proportion 
 to that combination ; and he thus invented the method 
 of eudiometry, or the ascertainment of the relative 
 purity of different kinds of atmospheric air. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, in considering the great 
 merits of Priestley as an experimentalist, that he had 
 almost to create the apparatus by which his processes 
 were to be performed. He, for the most part, had to 
 construct his instruments with his own hands, or if he 
 employed others, he had to make unskilful workmen 
 form them under his own immediate direction. His 
 apparatus, however, and his contrivances for collecting, 
 keeping, transferring gaseous bodies, and for exposing 
 substances to their action, were simple and effectual, 
 and they continue to be still used by chemical philo- 
 sophers without any material improvement. It was 
 fortunate in this respect that he began his pneu- 
 matic inquiries with seeking for the means of im- 
 pregnating water with carbonic acid; this inquiry 
 naturally turned his attention to the contrivance of 
 apparatus and generally of manipulations, serviceable 
 in the examination of bodies whose invisible form and 
 elastic state renders inapplicable to them the machinery 
 of the old laboratory, calculated only for solids and 
 liquids. 
 
 The pertinacity with which Priestley clung to the 
 phlogistic theory is marvellous. It might have been 
 expected, that the fact of a combustion leaving the 
 residue, whether of two gases, or of a gas and an in- 
 flammable body, exactly equal in weight to the sum 
 of the weights of the bodies burnt and which had dis- 
 appeared in the process, would have been accepted as 
 a proof that these two bodies had entered into an 
 union, giving out the latent heat which had previously 
 held the gaseous body or bodies in a state of aeriform 
 fluidity. It might, in like manner, have been ex- 
 pected, that when a metal, by absorbing oxygen gas, 
 
78 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 becomes calcined, and gains in weight precisely the 
 weight of the gas which has disappeared, the calcina- 
 tion should be ascribed to the gas, and that the repro- 
 duction of the gas by heat, or its abstraction by elec- 
 tive affinity for some other body, should be allowed to 
 have restored the metallic state by simply destroying 
 the union of the gas and the metal which had changed 
 that metal. But nothing could overcome Priestley's 
 repugnance to give up phlogiston : he adhered to it 
 while he lived; he never would believe that water 
 was formed of the two gaseous bodies whose combus- 
 tion and disappearance leaves a weight of liquid equal 
 to their joint weights ; he always imagined that water 
 was held in suspense by these gases and precipitated 
 on their disappearing. He never would believe that 
 metals owe their malleability and lustre to any cause 
 other than phlogiston, or lose their properties except 
 by oxygen taking the phlogiston from them. He 
 never would believe that combustion is anything but 
 the phlogiston leaving the inflammable body and join- 
 ing the oxygen ; or that when an acid is formed by 
 the burning, that acid contains the oxygen and the 
 combustible base. That his obstinate unbelief was 
 perfectly disinterested no one can doubt. The dis- 
 coverer of oxygen, and of the true cause of respira- 
 tion, had, of all men, the strongest interest in assent- 
 ing to a theory which was whoUy founded upon his 
 own discovery, and which made him the immediate, 
 as Black was the more remote, author of modern 
 chemical science made him the philosopher who had 
 raised the superstructure upon the foundation which 
 his predecessor had laid. 
 
 The merit of Dr. Priestley, as a cultivator of science, 
 was the activity with which he made experiments 
 the watchful attention with which he observed every 
 phenomenon, following the minutest circumstances of 
 each process the versatility with which he prose- 
 cuted each new idea that arose from his trials his 
 
PEIESTLEY. 79 
 
 diligence in recording all the particulars, as if well 
 aware how much depends in every branch of inductive 
 philosophy upon allowing no fact to escape, when we 
 are confessedly in search of light, and can never tell 
 how any given fact may bear on the unknown conclu- 
 sion to which our analytical process is leading us. 
 As a reasoner his powers were far less considerable. 
 He possessed not the sound judgment, the large cir- 
 cumspection, which enables men to weigh the relative 
 value of either reasons or facts. He was cautious 
 enough, and drew little from his imagination in feign- 
 ing hypotheses, if it be not the reasons which he in- 
 vented from time to time for the purpose of sustaining 
 the desperate fortunes of the phlogistic theory, and 
 making the facts bend to it as they successively arose, 
 with a force capable of shivering it in pieces. But he 
 was also deficient in the happy sagacity which pierces 
 through apparent dissimilarity, and ranges things 
 seemingly unlike under the same class he had not 
 that chastened imagination which can see beyond the 
 fact present to the senses in a word, he was much 
 greater as a collector of new facts than a reasoner upon 
 them and his inductive capacity was inferior to his 
 power of experimenting and of contriving the means 
 of observation. Perhaps his want of general scientific 
 acquirements, and his confined knowledge of chemis- 
 try, itself contributed to the activity and the boldness 
 with which he performed novel experiments, while the 
 same defect impaired his capacity as an inductive 
 philosopher. It is extremely probable that the strict 
 attention to principle, the methodical systematic spirit 
 which presided over the inquiries of Black and of 
 Cavendish the scientific views which directed the 
 contrivance of all their processes, never leading them 
 to make any trial without some definite object in view, 
 prevented them from performing many experiments, 
 from stooping, as it were, to try things which 
 Priestley did not disdain to try from his more empiri- 
 
80 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 cal turn of mind what Mr. Watt, in a letter, calls 
 " his random haphazarding." 
 
 In 1779, when Captain Cook was preparing to sail 
 upon his second voyage, Mr. Banks, who took a great 
 interest in it from having been engaged in the first, 
 invited Dr. Priestley to accompany the Captain as 
 astronomer to the expedition. Advantageous terms 
 were proposed, including a provision for his family. 
 He entertained the proposal, and then agreed to it ; 
 but objections were taken by the clerical members of 
 the Board of Longitude, not to his ignorance of astro- 
 nomy and of natural history, but to his Socinian prin- 
 ciples in religion, which one might have supposed 
 could exercise but a limited influence upon his obser- 
 vations of the stars and of plants. I know not if the 
 same scientific authorities objected, on like grounds, 
 in the council of the Royal Society, to receiving papers 
 upon his chemical discoveries. It is certain that a 
 like influence prevented Professor Playfair from after- 
 wards proceeding to India, where he had designed to 
 prosecute his inquiries into the science of the Hindoos. 
 Such passages stamp the history of a great nation with 
 indelible infamy in the eyes of the whole world. 
 
 In 1773, when his fame had been established by his 
 first discoveries, and the Royal Society had crowned 
 his paper with their medal, Priestley accepted an in- 
 vitation from Lord Shelburne, afterwards first Marquis 
 of Lansdowne, to fill the place of librarian and philo- 
 sophic companion, with a salary of 250, reducible to 
 150 for life should he quit the employment. An 
 additional allowance of 40 a-year was given by this 
 truly munificent patron for the expense of apparatus 
 and experiments ; homes were provided for his family 
 in the neighbourhood both of Lord Shelburne's town 
 and country residence ; nor can anything be easily 
 conceived more truly gratifying to a man of right 
 feelings, and of a noble ambition, than the reflection 
 must have been, that the discovery of oxygen was 
 
PRIESTLEY. 81 
 
 made under his roof, and with the funds which his 
 disinterested liberality had provided for his learned 
 guest. With whatever difference of sentiments states- 
 men may at any time view Lansdowne House, the 
 lovers of science in after ages will gaze with venera- 
 tion on that magnificent pile, careless of its architec- 
 tural beauties, but grateful for the light which its 
 illustrious founder caused to beam from thence over 
 the whole range of natural knowledge ; and after the 
 structure shall have yielded to the fate of all human 
 works, the ground on which it once stood, consecrated 
 to far other recollections than those of conquest or of 
 power, will be visited by the pilgrim of philosophy 
 with a deeper fervour than any that fills the bosom 
 near the forum or the capitol of ancient Rome. 
 
 In 1780 Priestley settled at Birmingham, where he 
 was chosen minister of the principal dissenting con- 
 gregation. He had left Lansdowne House without 
 any difference to interrupt the friendship of its inmates; 
 and some years afterwards an offer to return, made on 
 the death of Lord Lansdowne's friends, Dunning and 
 Lee, was declined.* A subscription among his friends 
 furnished the means of prosecuting his experimental 
 researches ; and he declined an offer to obtain for him 
 a pension from the government. A shade is cast upon 
 this passage of his history by the circumstance of the 
 pecuniary aid which he thus received being only in a 
 small part rendered necessary for his experimental 
 pursuits. Mr. Parker, the eminent optician, furnished 
 him for nothing all the instruments made by him, as 
 did Mr. Wedgwood all his earthenware utensils. Yet 
 we find in his correspondence a painful thankfulness 
 expressed, in any thing rather than the language of a 
 
 * This offer, and Lord Lansdowne's frank declaration that he never had 
 any fault to find with his guest, entitles us to state that no quarrel, nor 
 anything like it, had occurred. Nevertheless, Priestley's offer to visit hia 
 Lordship when he occasionally came to London was politely declined. 
 Political reasons apparently caused this refusal, 
 
 a 
 
82 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 philosopher, to Mrs. Rayner and Mr. Lee, for " season- 
 able benefactions." The " apology" which he evi- 
 dently feels required for this kind of dependence is 
 not at all confined to the " expense of his philosophi- 
 cal and theological studies;" he refers also to the 
 education of his children, and to the expenses of house- 
 keeping occasioned by his reputation.* It is not in- 
 vidious to observe that, be a man's celebrity ever so 
 great, he is not bound to incur any expenses in keep- 
 ing hospitality, if these, " exceeding twice his own 
 income" (and that, with the pension of Lord Lans- 
 downe, not an inconsiderable one), can only be met 
 by the large "benefactions" of his friends. He names 
 fifteen who gave him by subscription a yearly allow- 
 ance, all the while he chose to decline an offer made 
 to procure a pension from the government, " wishing 
 to preserve himself independent of every thing con- 
 nected with the court." We must on this be content 
 to remark, that different men entertain different notions 
 of independence. 
 
 Settled at Birmingham, he continued, however, his 
 controversial writings, and engaged eagerly in conflict 
 with Gibbon upon his celebrated chapters respecting 
 the Early History of Christianity, and with Bishop 
 Horsley upon the Socinian doctrines. In the latter 
 controversy the Episcopal and the Sectarian tempe- 
 rature, both high, were not very unequal ; but in the 
 former the minister of the Gospel had all the heat to 
 himself at least in the layman it was latent, if it 
 existed at all. He was desirous of drawing his adver- 
 sary into a controversy, and, failing in this, lost his 
 temper, and had the vulgar recourse to calling names 
 and imputing motives. Mr. Gibbon may have shown 
 some superciliousness in his treatment of this angry 
 polemic ; but he certainly had a good right to marvel 
 at the intolerance of one whose heterodoxy was so 
 
 * Memoirs, vol. i., part i., p. 217- 
 
PEIESTLEY. 83 
 
 universal as to " condemn by circumscribing the in- 
 spiration of the Evangelists, and to condemn the reli- 
 gion of every Christian nation as a fable less innocent, 
 not less absurd, than Mahomet's journey to the third 
 heaven." How fortunate it was that Priestley lived in 
 an age when the use of actual fire is withheld from 
 theological disputants, as a mode of argumentation, 
 must appear from the wonder he expresses at David 
 Hume's monument having been so long suffered to 
 offend the pious eyes of the Edinburgh people an 
 expression which might seem to convey a hint that he 
 would have taken care to avoid, after he had himself 
 felt the weight of the popular hand when called in to 
 settle theological disputes. 
 
 Having taken, as was his wont, an active but not a 
 very temperate part in the controversy to which the 
 French Revolution gave rise, and having published a 
 * Reply' to Mr. Burke's famous pamphlet, he was early 
 in 1791 made a citizen of the French Republic. An 
 ironical and somewhat bitter pamphlet against the 
 high church party still further excited the feelings of 
 the people against him ; and a dinner being given on 
 the 14th of July to celebrate the anniversary of the 
 attack upon the Bastille, the mob attacked the tavern 
 where the party were assembled. Dr. Priestley was 
 not present, but his chapel and house were immediately 
 after assailed. His library, manuscripts, and apparatus 
 were destroyed ; his person and his family escaped. 
 The compensation which he obtained, by an action 
 against the hundred, fell short, according to his own 
 account, by 2000 of his loss. As, however, an 
 ample subscription was made for him, and as his 
 brother-in-law generously gave him 10,000 with an 
 annuity of 200 for life, he could not be other than a 
 large gainer by the execrable violence of which he 
 had been the victim; and as he never allowed any of 
 his writings to remain unpublished for even the shortest 
 time after they were finished, it is not likely that any 
 
84 PEIESTLET. 
 
 loss of an irreparable kind was incurred by the burning 
 of his papers. He found, however, that he could no 
 longer reside with comfort in the scene of such out- 
 rageous proceedings, and among a community which 
 had so shamefully countenanced them. He removed 
 to London, and succeeded his friend, Dr. Price, as 
 Principal of the Hackney Academy, Late in the 
 month of September, 1792, he was elected by the 
 department of the Orne a member of the National 
 Convention, about to assemble after the subversion of 
 the French monarchy. This singular honour bestowed 
 on him, as well for his philosophical fame as for his 
 political services and the persecutions to which they 
 had exposed him, he respectfully declined, giving as 
 his reason that he was not familiar with the French 
 language, and had not devoted his time sufficiently 
 to legislative duties. But this moderation disarmed 
 not his enemies he was pursued by the intolerant 
 spirit of the times. He found himself shunned by his 
 former associates in science. Even the Royal Society 
 did not afford an exception to this persecuting loyalty, 
 or a shelter from its effects ; and in the spring of 1794 
 he withdrew to America. Here he again suffered 
 considerable disappointment. His religion was too 
 much for those who had ceased to care for sacred 
 things, and far too scanty for those who still were 
 Christians, while his republican opinions were exceed- 
 ingly distasteful because they were tinged with a 
 decided admiration of France. He continued, how- 
 ever, to inhabit the country, and to prosecute his 
 studies, chiefly theological. He received contribu- 
 tions regularly from his benefactors in England, 
 Mrs. Rayner and the Duke of Grafton; but these, 
 though acknowledged by him in the same unpleasant 
 style as eleemosynary ("very acceptable benevo- 
 lences"), were for the most part on a different footing 
 from the English charities ; they appear generally to 
 have been required for the propagation of their 
 
PRIESTLEY. 85 
 
 Unitarian opinions, to which the parties were all so 
 zealously attached. 
 
 He settled at Northumberland, in an uncleared dis- 
 trict, where he purchased three hundred acres of land ; 
 and his youngest son, Henry, then a very fine young man 
 of eighteen, devoted himself to the clearing and culti- 
 vating this woodland spot, working with his labourers 
 and sharing their toils. The father himself partook of 
 this labour for two or three hours daily. On Sundays 
 he frequently preached, and when he visited Phila- 
 delphia he always did so. He devoted the rest of his 
 time to his works, particularly his * Church History;' 
 and he wrote answers to Paine and Volney. He was 
 much obstructed in his philosophical pursuits by the 
 want of proper accommodation for his apparatus, and 
 he only wrote three tracts on chemical subjects during 
 the ten years of his residence in America; two of 
 which were merely arguments on phlogiston, and the 
 third alone recorded any experiments ; it was written 
 eight years before his death. 
 
 At the end of 1795 he suffered a heavy affliction in 
 the death of his son Henry, after a few days' illness ; 
 and in ten months more he also lost his wife. These 
 blows, though he felt their weight, did not at all crush 
 him ; his resignation was exemplary ; and his steady, 
 enthusiastic faith in Revelation gave him a certain 
 hope of meeting, before many years should elapse, with 
 those whom he had lost. Indeed, his letters clearly 
 show that he regarded the sundering of these ties far 
 less attentively than their restoration. A few days 
 after his son's death he writes to his most intimate 
 friend and constant correspondent, Theophilus Lindsay, 
 recounting the particulars of his loss, and he adds that 
 he is composing three discourses on Revelation against 
 modern unbelievers. The letter next year announcing 
 his wife's death, begins with saying to the same friend 
 how much he stands in need of his sympathy, and 
 goes on to add, "This day I bury my wife; she died 
 
86 PEIESTLEY. 
 
 on Saturday after an illness of a fortnight." He adds 
 some remarks on his literary occupations, and con- 
 cludes with mentioning a plan he has of travelling to 
 distract his mind.* No one who reads his letters and 
 his memoirs, written by himself, can doubt that this 
 stoical firmness is not the result of a callous dispo- 
 sition, but the signal triumph of a heartfelt belief in 
 the promises of Religion over the weakness of our 
 nature. 
 
 It is, indeed, quite manifest that Religion was as 
 much an active principle in him as in any one who 
 ever lived. Not only is it always uppermost in his 
 thoughts, but he even regards temporal concerns of a 
 public nature always in connexion with the Divine 
 superintendence, and even with the prophecies of 
 Scripture. His letters are full of references to those 
 prophecies as bearing on passing events, and he 
 plainly says that since his removal to America he 
 should care little for European events but for their 
 connexion with the Old Testament. He also looked 
 for an actual and material second coming of Christ 
 upon earth. 
 
 It is not true to affirm that he was little of a poli- 
 tician, though in declining the seat in the National 
 Convention he says f his studies had been little 
 directed towards legislation compared with theology 
 and philosophy; and denies in a letter to William 
 Smith that he ever taught or even mentioned politics 
 to his pupils, as he had been charged with doing, 
 among the innumerable falsehoods of which he was 
 the subject. Nor is the circumstance of his not 
 attending political meetings at all decisive of his being 
 little of a political agitator, because his incurable 
 stutter prevented him Som taking a part in such pro- 
 ceedings. But he wrote in 1774, at Franklin's request, 
 an address to the people on the American disputes, 
 
 * Mem. vol. i., part ii., p. 328, 354. 
 f Mem. vol. i., part ii., p. 190 198. 
 
PRIESTLEY. 87 
 
 previous to the general election. He answered Mr. 
 Burke's ' Reflections on the French Revolution.' He 
 mixed in the question of the Catholic claims $ and he 
 published in all no less than eleven political works, 
 almost every one upon the topics of the day. It is 
 equally true, however, that theological controversy 
 occupied him far more constantly and engaged his 
 mind far more deeply than political matters ; that he 
 was regularly a theologian and incidentally a partisan. 
 
 The cast of his political opinions had originally 
 little more tendency to democracy than those of Whigs 
 who have read and discussed more than they have 
 reflected and seen. He used, indeed, to say that in 
 politics he was a Trinitarian, though a Unitarian in 
 religion. It must, however, be confessed that he went 
 very much further in the same direction after the 
 French Revolution had set fire to the four quarters of 
 the political world, and his admiration of republican 
 principles might be measured by his zeal for the 
 innovators of France, with the success of whose arms 
 he deemed the safety of freedom to be bound up. 
 When we read his answer to the offer of a seat in 1792, 
 and reflect that it was penned about three weeks after 
 the horrible massacres of September, the worst of the 
 atrocities which disfigured the Revolution, it moves 
 our wonder to find a Christian minister accompanying 
 his acknowledgment of the honour proposed, that of 
 being enrolled among the authors of the tragedy so 
 recently enacted, with no protest against the bloody 
 course then pursuing, no exception to the unqualified 
 admiration expressed of the youthful republic. ^ 
 
 In America we find his leanings are all against the 
 Federal party, and his censures of the great Chief of 
 the Union little concealed. He felt for the democratic 
 party, the French alliance, the enemies of English 
 partialities, and he regarded Washington as ungrateful 
 because he would not, from a recollection of the ser- 
 vices of France twenty years before to American in- 
 
88 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 dependence, consent to make America dependent 
 upon France. The indifferent reception which he met 
 with in society was probably owing to this party vio- 
 lence full as much as to the dislike of his Unitarian 
 opinions. But it must be added, that his temper was 
 so mild, and his manners so gentle, as to disarm his 
 most prejudiced adversaries whensoever they came into 
 his society. Many instances of this are given in his 
 correspondence, of which one may be cited. He hap- 
 pened to visit a friend whose wife received him in her 
 husband's absence, but feared to name him before a 
 Calvinistic divine present. By accident his name was 
 mentioned, and the lady then introduced him. But he 
 of the Genevan school drew back, saying, "Dr. Joseph 
 Priestley ?" and then added in the American tongue, 
 " I cannot be cordial." Whereupon the Doctor, with 
 his usual placid demeanour, said that he and the lady 
 might be allowed to converse until their host should 
 return. By degrees the conversation became general ; 
 the repudiator was won over by curiosity first, then by 
 gratification; he remained till a late hour hanging 
 upon Priestley's lips ; he took his departure at length, 
 and told the host as he quitted the house, that never 
 had he passed so delightful an evening, though he ad- 
 mitted that he had begun it "by behaving like a fool 
 and a brute." One such anecdote (and there are many 
 current) is of more force to describe its subject than a 
 hundred laboured panegyrics. 
 
 After the loss of his wife and his younger and 
 favourite son, he continued with unabated zeal to pur- 
 sue his theological studies, and published several works, 
 both controversial and historical, beside leaving some 
 which have been given to the world since his decease. 
 He endeavoured, too, as far as he could, to propagate 
 the tenets of Unitarianism, and to collect and extend 
 a congregation at Philadelphia attached to that doc- 
 trine. At one time, in the summer of 1797, enter- 
 taining hopes of peace in Europe, he had resolved to 
 
PEIESTLEY 89 
 
 visit France, where he might communicate personally 
 with his English friends ; and he even thought of 
 making a purchase in that country on which he might 
 reside during a part of each year. So nearly did he 
 contemplate this removal, that we find him desiring 
 the answers to letters he was writing might be sent to 
 the care of Messrs. Perregaux at Paris. The revolu- 
 tion of Fructidor, however (4th September, 1797), put 
 an end to all prospects of peace, and the war soon 
 raged in every quarter with redoubled fury. He seems 
 now to have derived his chief comfort from tracing the 
 fancied resemblance between the events passing be- 
 fore him and the prophecies in Scripture; though 
 occasionally he felt much puzzled, and the book of 
 Daniel, especially, appears to have given him trouble 
 and perplexity. When the peace came at last, his 
 health was too much broken to permit any plans to be 
 executed such as he had four years before contemplated. 
 
 In 1802 he became a confirmed invalid, suffering 
 from internal, and apparently organic, derangement. 
 His illness was long and lingering, and he suffered 
 great pain with perfect patience for two years. The 
 prospect of death which he had before him did not 
 relax his application to literary labour, his faculties 
 remaining entire to the last. Neither did that awful 
 certainty, ever present to his mind, affect him with 
 sorrow or dismay. The same unshaken belief in a 
 future state, the same confident hope of immortal life 
 which had supported him under his affliction for the 
 death of others, cheered him while contemplating the 
 approach of his own. In this happy frame of mind 
 he gently expired on the 6th of February, 1804, in 
 the seventy- second year of his age. 
 
 His character is a matter of no doubt, and it is of a 
 high order. That he was a most able, most indus- 
 trious, most successful student of nature, is clear ; and 
 that his name will for ever be held in grateful remem- 
 brance by aU^^rfe^g^^te physical science, and 
 
90 PRIESTLEY. 
 
 placed among those of its most eminent masters, is un- 
 questionable. That he was a perfectly conscientious 
 man in all the opinions which he embraced, and sincere 
 in all he published respecting other subjects, appears 
 equally beyond dispute. He was, also, upright and 
 honourable in all his dealings, and justly beloved by 
 his family and friends as a man spotless in all the 
 relations of life. That he was governed in his public 
 conduct by a temper too hot and irritable to be con- 
 sistent either with his own dignity, or with an amiable 
 deportment, may be freely admitted ; and his want of 
 self-command, and want of judgment in the practical 
 affairs of life, was manifest above all in his controversial 
 history ; for he can be charged with no want of pru- 
 dence in the management of his private concerns. His 
 violence and irritability, too, seems equally to have 
 been confined to his public life, for in private all have 
 allowed him the praise of a mild and attractive de- 
 meanour j and we have just seen its great power in 
 disarming the prejudices of his adversaries. 
 
(91) 
 
 CAVENDISH. 
 
 A GREATER contrast between two men of science, both 
 eminent benefactors to the same branch of know- 
 ledge, can hardly be imagined than Cavendish offers 
 to Priestley. He was thoroughly educated in all 
 branches of the Mathematics and Natural Philosophy ; 
 he studied each systematically ; he lived retired from 
 the world among his books and his instruments, never 
 meddling with the affairs of active life ; he passed his 
 whole time in storing his mind with the knowlege im- 
 parted by former inquirers and in extending its bounds. 
 Cultivating science for its own sake, he was slow to 
 appear before the world as an author ; had reached the 
 middle age of life before he gave any work to the 
 press ; and though he reached the term of fourscore, 
 never published a hundred pages. His methods of 
 investigation were nearly as opposite as this diversity 
 might lead us to expect; and in all the accidental 
 circumstances of rank and wealth the same contrast is 
 to be remarked. He was a duke's grandson ; he pos- 
 sessed a princely fortune ; his whole expenditure was 
 on philosophical pursuits ; his whole existence was in 
 his laboratory or his library. If such a life presents 
 little variety and few incidents to the vulgar observer, 
 it is a matter of most interesting contemplation to all 
 who set its just value upon the cultivation of science, 
 who reckon its successful pursuit as the greatest privi- 
 lege, the brightest glory of our nature. 
 
 Henry Cavendish was born at Nice, whither his 
 mother's health had carried her, the 10th of October, 
 1731. He was the son of Lord Charles Cavendish, the 
 
92 CAVENDISH. 
 
 late Duke of Devonshire's great uncle, by the daugh- 
 ter of Henry Grey, Duke of Kent. His family, aware 
 of the talents which he early showed, were anxious 
 that he should take the part in public life which men 
 of his rank are wont to do, and were much displeased 
 with his steady refusal to quit the studies which he 
 loved. An uncle, disapproving of the course pursued 
 towards him made him his heir ; and so ample a for- 
 tune came into his possession that he left at his death 
 a million and a quarter of money.* The Mathematics, 
 and the various branches of Natural Philosophy, were 
 the chief subjects of his study, and of all these sciences 
 he was a consummate master. 
 
 The discoveries of Black on carbonic acid and la- 
 tent heat, appear to have drawn his attention to the 
 cultivation of pneumatic chemistry; and in 1766 he 
 communicated to the JRoyal Society his experiments 
 for ascertaining the properties of carbonic acid and 
 hydrogen gas.j He carried his mathematical habits 
 into the laboratory ; and not satisfied with showing 
 the other qualities which make it clear that these two 
 aeriform substances are each sui generis, and the same 
 from whatever substances, by whatever processes, they 
 are obtained ; nor satisfied with the mere fact that one 
 of them is heavier, and the other much lighter, than 
 atmospheric air, he inquired into the precise nume- 
 rical relation of their specific gravities with one another 
 and with common air, and first showed an example of 
 weighing permanently elastic fluids: unless, indeed, 
 Torricelli may be said before him to have shown the 
 relative weight of a column of air and a column of 
 mercury: or the common pump to have long ago 
 
 * M. Biot's article in the Biog. Univ. makes him the son of the Duke 
 of Devonshire, and states his yearly income at 300,000 sterling, and yet 
 gives the. property he left at only 1,200,000 so that he must have 
 spent 300,000 a-year, and also dissipated five millions. Such errors 
 seem incredible. 
 
 f Three papers containing experiments on factitious air. Phil. Trans. 
 1766, p. 141. 
 
CAVENDISH. D3 
 
 compared in this respect air with water. It is, how- 
 ever, sufficiently clear, that neither of these experi- 
 ments gave the relative measure of one air with an- 
 other: nor, indeed, could they be said to compare 
 common air with either mercury or water, although 
 they certainly showed the relative specific gravities of 
 the two bodies, taking air for the middle term or com- 
 mon measure of their weights. 
 
 The common accounts in chemical and in biographi- 
 cal works are materially incorrect respecting the man- 
 ner in which Mr. Cavendish was led to make his great 
 experiment upon the composition of water in 1781 
 and the following years. It is said, that while making 
 his experiments on air in 1765 and 1766, he had ob- 
 served for the first time, that moisture is produced by 
 the combustion of inflammable air, and that this led 
 him, sixteen or seventeen years later, " to complete the 
 synthetical formula of water, and to find that the moist- 
 ure that he had before observed was simple water."* 
 Nothing can be more erroneous than this whole state- 
 ment. In Mr. Cavendish's paper, of 1766, upon fixed 
 and inflammable airs, there is not one word said of the 
 moisture formed by the combustion ; and respecting 
 inflammable air, the experiments are confined entirely 
 to its burning or exploding, to its specific gravity, and 
 to its production. The paper of 1 784 is, in fact, en- 
 titled ' Experiments upon Air,' and it commences with 
 stating, not that those experiments were undertaken 
 with any view to the water formed by burning inflam- 
 mable air, but that they were made " with a view to 
 find out the cause of the diminution which common 
 
 Penny Cyclopaedia, vol. vi., p. 392. This and other similar accounts 
 are plainly given by some persons who never read Mr. Cavendish's writ- 
 ings. But a still greater error occurs in them ; they represent him as 
 having first shown that fixed and inflammable airs are separate bodies 
 from common air; whereas Dr. Black, in his Lectures from 1755 down- 
 wards, showed this distinctly by his experiments, proving clearly that 
 these gases have nothing in common with the atmospheric air (vol. ii., 
 f. 87, 88). 
 
94 CAVENDISH. 
 
 air is well known to suffer by all the various ways in 
 which it is phlogisticated, and to discover what becomes 
 of the air thus lost or consumed ;" and the author adds, 
 that besides, " determining this fact, they also threw 
 light on the constitution and means of production of 
 dephlogisticated air." Instead of referring to any for- 
 mer observation of his own either in 1766, or subse- 
 quently, on the moisture left by burning inflammable 
 air, he expressly refers to Mr. Warltire's observation of 
 this moisture, as related by Dr. Priestley: and both 
 Mu. Warltire's observation and Dr. Priestley's publica- 
 tion were made in 1781. Upon this observation Mr. 
 Cavendish proceeded to further experiments, with the 
 view of ascertaining " what becomes of the air lost by 
 phlogistication." For this purpose, he introduced a 
 portion of hydrogen gas into a globe or balloon of 
 glass, sufficiently strong to resist the expansive force 
 of the combustion which had often been observed in 
 mines, and also in experiments upon a smaller scale, 
 to produce an explosion. He adapted to the globe 
 two wires of metal, fixing them in air-tight sockets, 
 and bringing their points within a short distance of 
 each other in the inside of the globe ; so that, by an 
 electrical machine, he could send the spark or the 
 shock from the one point to the other, through the 
 gases mixed together in the globe. He found that 
 the whole of the hydrogen gas disappeared by the 
 combustion thus occasioned, and a considerable por- 
 tion also of the common air. Water was, as usual, 
 found in small quantity, and an acid was also formed. 
 He then weighed accurately the air of both kinds 
 which he exposed to the stream of electricity, and he 
 afterwards weighed the liquid formed by the com- 
 bustion ; he found that the two weights corresponded 
 with great accuracy. It was difficult to resist the in- 
 ference that the union of the two airs had taken place ; 
 and it might further have been inferred that the^latent 
 heat which held them in an elastic state had been given 
 
CAVENDISH. 95 
 
 out, forming the flame which was produced ; and that 
 water was formed by the union of the two airs, having, 
 of course, less latent heat than was required to keep 
 them in a gaseous state ; but Mr. Cavendish did not 
 approve of this manner of stating the conclusion which 
 Mr. Watt had adopted, because of doubts which he 
 had respecting the nature of heat.* The residue of 
 the combustion, however, was two-fold : there was an 
 aeriform body left in the glass vessel, as well as liquid 
 in the bottom. This was much smaller in volume than 
 the air which had filled the globe before the combus- 
 tion, because the hydrogen gas and part of the com- 
 mon air had disappeared. This aeriform residue was 
 also of a different nature from common air; it was 
 found to be the phlogistic air of Priestley ; the azotic 
 air of Rutherford : and the air consumed in burning 
 the hydrogen gas must, therefore, be the vital air or 
 oxygen gas of the atmosphere. By another experi- 
 ment he more fully ascertained this : for, burning oxy- 
 gen gas with hydrogen gas, nearly the whole aeriform 
 contents of the globe disappeared, and water, equal in 
 weight to the two gases taken together, remained as 
 the produce of the combustion , but still an acid was 
 formed, unless in some cases, when very pure oxygen 
 gas was used. 
 
 Thus was effected the important discovery of the 
 composition of water, which Watt had inferred some 
 time before from a careful examination of the similar 
 facts collected by former experimentalists; one of 
 whom, Warltire, had even burned the gases in a close 
 vessel, and by means of electricity. The conclusion 
 arrived at by Mr. Cavendish from his capital experi- 
 ment was, in his own words, that " dephlogisticated 
 air is in reality nothing but deplogisticated water, or 
 water deprived of its phlogiston, or in other words, 
 that water consists of dephlogisticated air united to 
 
 * Page 140. 
 
96 CAVENDISH. 
 
 phlogiston, and that inflammable air is either pure 
 phlogiston, or else water united to phlogiston;" and 
 he then gives his reasons in favour of the second in- 
 ference, namely, that inflammable air is water united 
 to phlogiston ; but he repeatedly dwells on the prefer- 
 ence due to this inference over the conclusion that in- 
 flammable air is pure phlogiston.* This statement of 
 the theory is somewhat less distinct than Mr. Watt's, 
 who considered water to be dephlogisticated air united 
 to inflammable air or pure phlogiston, and both de- 
 prived of their latent heat. But he, as well as Mr. Caven- 
 dish, expresses himself with some hesitation, and even, 
 like him, in some passages entertains the idea of water 
 as united in a small proportion with inflammable air. 
 The theory, though nearly completed by those great 
 chemists, was perhaps first stated with perfect certainty 
 and distinctness by Lavoisier, f 
 
 In the combustion of hydrogen gas with common 
 air, and even with impure oxygen gas, Cavendish had 
 observed that the water was slightly tinged with acid, 
 though not always when pure oxygen gas was used 
 for the operation. He therefore devised an experi- 
 ment which should ascertain the nature of this acid, 
 and in what manner it was formed. He passed the 
 electric spark through common air without any hydro- 
 gen gas being present ; the air was in a receiver over 
 mercury, and the operation was of long continuance, 
 on account of the slowness with which the combina- 
 tion is formed of the two gases whereof the atmos- 
 phere is composed. He had not supposed that the 
 hydrogen had any share in forming the acid: his 
 theory being that water, and not acid, is the produce 
 of that gas's combustion. He naturally suspected the 
 acid to be the produce of some union between the azote 
 and the oxygen of the atmosphere. He left the pro- 
 cess in the hands of a committee of his scientific 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions, 1784, p. 137, 140. 
 f See Appendix to the Life of Watt. 
 
CAVENDISH. 97 
 
 friends, fellow-members of the Royal Society; and 
 after some weeks of constantly passing the electric 
 fluid through a limited portion of air, a small quantity 
 of liquid was formed, which readily combined with a 
 solution of potash in water sent up through the mer- 
 cury. This union was found to be common nitre, 
 having all the qualities of that well-known substance. 
 It detonated with charcoal ; it sparkled when paper 
 impregnated with it was burnt; it gave out nitrous 
 fumes when sulphuric acid was poured on it. There 
 could, therefore, no doubt whatever now exist that 
 nitrous acid is composed of the two airs deprived of 
 latent heat, which form our atmosphere ; that it is a 
 true oxide of azote. 
 
 The undivided merit of this important discovery has 
 never been denied to Mr. Cavendish. Even Lavoisier 
 could not intrude ; but his avidity to claim a share in 
 all discoveries had been exerted respecting the com- 
 position of water, which he asserts in his ' Elements of 
 Chemistry' to have been discovered by himself and 
 Mr, Cavendish about the same time. I have shown 
 clearly in the Appendix to the Life of Mr. Watt, that 
 the discovery had been previously communicated to 
 the French philosopher ; but it is worth while to con- 
 sider the experiment upon which he grounded his 
 claim ; and that experiment, when examined, is found 
 wholly insufficient to prove the position, even if it had 
 been contrived and performed before the communica- 
 tion of Watt's and Cavendish's discovery. Of that 
 discovery it was plainly a corollary by that discovery 
 it was manifestly suggested. 
 
 The former experiments, both those of Cavendish 
 and those on which Watt reasoned, were all syntheti- 
 cal and decisive that of Lavoisier was analytical and 
 radically defective. It proved nothing conclusively : 
 it was well enough after the experimentum crucis had 
 demonstrated the proposition ; to that proposition it 
 was a corollary it was nothing like a critical experi- 
 
 H 
 
98 CAVENDISH. 
 
 ment. He placed water in a retort exposed to heat ; 
 the vapour of the retort, when the water boiled, was 
 passed through a tube (a gun barrel with the breech- 
 pin knocked out was generally used); the tube, if 
 made of earthenware, had iron filings placed in its 
 course ; it was placed in a fire ; its further extremity 
 was connected with a receiver, in which cold water or 
 mercury rose to fill it entirely. As the water slowly 
 boiled there came through the tube, and into the glass 
 receiver, a current of gas, which, upon examination, 
 was found to be hydrogen gas r while the iron filings 
 were converted into calx or oxide. The weight of the 
 gas produced, added to the weight acquired by the 
 gun barrel or by the filings during the process, was 
 found to be nearly equal to the weight lost by the 
 water in the retort. Hence the inference was, that 
 the lost portion of water had been decomposed into 
 its two elements, the oxygen gas forming the calx of 
 the iron and the hydrogen gas being received in the 
 
 flass vessel. But the adversaries of the new doctrine 
 ad an answer to this inference far more formidable 
 than any that they could urge against the conclusion 
 drawn from the synthetical experiment. The analyti- 
 cal experiment was liable to all the uncertainty of the 
 process called the destructive distillation. The sub- 
 stances found might have been the product, and not 
 merely the educt of the process. It is known that if 
 coal or oleaginous bodies be distilled in close vessels 
 there are obtained gases and water and acids which 
 never existed in the matters subjected to the action of 
 the fire. The component parts of these matters enter 
 into new combinations with one another under the 
 action of heat, just as a tallow candle or an oil lamp 
 gives lamp-black and water in burning, though no 
 water, but only hydrogen, nor of course any lamp- 
 black, exists in the tallow and the oil. So, in Lavoi- 
 sier's experiment, the water might contain only oxygen 
 and hydrogen, and the action of the hot iron might 
 
CAVENDISH. 99 
 
 have separated them from each other. But it was 
 also quite possible that the iron gave out hydrogen, 
 and that the hot water was partly kept in solution 
 by this gas, partly combined with the iron, for on that 
 supposition the combined weight of the calcined iron 
 and the hydrogen gas would be exactly equal to the 
 united weight of the water evaporated, and of the iron 
 before calcination. The previous discovery of Watt 
 and Cavendish is liable to no such ambiguity ; and it 
 has the merit of also removing all ambiguity from the 
 experiment of Lavoisier, which it manifestly suggested. 
 
 These great discoveries placed Cavendish in the 
 highest rank of philosophers. No one doubted of 
 nitrous acid ; that he was the undisputed discoverer of 
 the composition of water, before Mr. Watt's claim, is 
 equally certain ; nor, even now, is it necessary for the 
 defenders of Watt's priority to deny that Cavendish 
 made the great step without any previous knowlege 
 of Watt's reasoning, while all admit that his experi- 
 mentum crucis was of the greatest value in completing 
 the foundation on which Watt's happy inference had 
 been built. Lavoisier's attempt to intrude himself was 
 wholly unsuccessful ; it had no effect whatever except 
 to tarnish his reputation, already injured sufficiently 
 by his similar attempt to share in the discovery of 
 oxygen. All men held Cavendish as placed among 
 the greatest discoverers of any age, and only lamented 
 that he did not pursue his brilliant career with more 
 activity, so as to augment still farther the debt of gra- 
 titude under which he had laid the scientific world. 
 
 The reader, especially the French reader, must not 
 suppose that any prejudice respecting Lavoisier has 
 dictated the remarks occasionally made in the course 
 of this work upon his pretensions as a discoverer. It 
 is scarcely possible to estimate too highly the services 
 which he rendered to chemical science by his labours. 
 The truly philosophic spirit which guided his researches 
 had not been found to prevail much before his time in 
 
100 CAVENDISH. 
 
 the speculations of chemists. He had a most happy 
 facility in reducing the knowledge cf scattered and 
 isolated facts to a system. His talent for generalization 
 has not often been surpassed ; and it led him, together 
 with his admirable freedom from preconceived preju- 
 dice, and his resolute boldness of investigation in un- 
 frequented paths, to make some of the most felicitous 
 inductions, well deserving the title of discoveries, that 
 have ever been made, although the materials of his in- 
 ferences were obtained from the experiments and ob- 
 servations of his predecessors, and his own experiments, 
 except on the nature of the diamond, led to no material 
 extension of our chemical knowledge. Stript of the 
 plumes in which he sought to array himself, repulsed 
 from the avenues by which he would fain have in- 
 truded himself among those whose experiments led at 
 once to great discoveries, he is now, on all hands, 
 allowed to have never made us acquainted with a single 
 new gas, or a new substance of any kind, or, except 
 as to carbon, with a single new combination of the old- 
 He did not, like Black, discover carbonic acid or latent 
 heat he did not, like Priestley, discover oxygen he 
 did not, like Scheele, discover chlorine he did not, 
 like Davy, discover the alkaline metals or like Caven- 
 dish, by direct experiment, show how water and nitrous 
 acid are constituted or, like Berthollet, explain of 
 what ammonia consists. But it is equally confessed 
 that, by sound and happy reasoning on the experiments 
 of others, he showed how the process of combustion 
 and of calcination takes place, and to him and his in- 
 dividual researches we owe the important discovery 
 that fixed air, however generated, whether by respira- 
 tion or by combustion or by fermentation (its three 
 great sources, as proved by Black), is the combination 
 of oxygen and carbon. Nor is it any derogation from 
 his claims to the title of a discoverer of physical truths 
 that his generalization pushed too far made him regard 
 oxygen as necessary to all combustion and all acidi- 
 
CAVENDISH. 101 
 
 fication, whereas it has been found that heat and light 
 are abundantly evolved both by the combustion of 
 metals and sulphur in close vessels by the combustion 
 of hydrogen and azotic gas and by the combination 
 of metals with chlorine ; and also that chlorine, an acid 
 of the strongest kind, contains no oxygen at all, while 
 the alkalis themselves are oxides. The doctrine of 
 latent heat was happily applied by him to the union of 
 gases with bodies, and if he had only followed that 
 doctrine more closely he would have avoided the error 
 into which he fell, and have perceived that other gases 
 as well as oxygen may support flame, and that all, on 
 becoming liquid or solid, must part with heat. Against 
 his error respecting the constitution of acids may justly 
 be set the great merit of his conjecture, that the fixed 
 alkalis are oxides of metals ; for this has been since 
 proved, and the conjecture is a sufficient evidence that 
 he did not doggedly adhere to his theory of the acidi- 
 fying principle. 
 
 It does not appear that Mr. Cavendish ever after 
 1 785, when he discovered the nature of nitrous acid, 
 prosecuted his chemical inquiries so as to make new 
 discoveries ; but beside making numberless useful 
 chemical experiments, about ten years later he engaged 
 in some important experiments upon the force of at- 
 traction. It occurred to him that he could measure 
 that force, and thereby ascertain the density of the 
 earth by accurately observing the action of bodies 
 suddenly exhibited in the neighbourhood of a horizon- 
 tal lever nicely balanced, loaded with equal leaden 
 balls of a small size at its two ends, and protected 
 from all aerial currents by being inclosed in a box. In 
 that box a telescope and lamp were placed, that the 
 motions of the lever might be carefully observed. On 
 approaching the external leaden balls made use of, 
 whose diameter was eight inches, to the small ones 
 inclosed, and near the lever, it was found that a hori- 
 zontal oscillation took place. This was measured; 
 
102 CAVENDISH. 
 
 and the oscillation caused by the earth on a pendulum 
 being known, as well as the relative specific gravities 
 of lead and water, it was found, upon the medium of 
 his observations, that the earth's density is to that of 
 water as eleven to two, or five-and-a-half times greater. 
 Dr. Hutton, who repeated his calculations, made the 
 result five three-tenths, or as fifty-three to ten. Maske- 
 lyne's experiments at Schehallion made the proportion 
 as five to one. Zach's experiment on a smaller hill near 
 Marseilles did not give a result materially different. 
 
 A paper on the civil year of the Hindus, connected, 
 like Newton's chronological works, with astronomical 
 researches, an account of a new eudiometer, and some 
 papers on electricity, form the rest of this great philo- 
 sopher's works ; and altogether they shrink into a very 
 inconsiderable bulk compared with the voluminous 
 works of inferior men. In this, as in other respects, 
 we trace his resemblance to Black. Indeed the admi- 
 rable contrivance of their experiments their circum- 
 spect preparation of the ground by previous discussion 
 of principles the cautious following of facts, and yet 
 the resolute adoption of legitimate consequences in 
 their generalizations the elegance of their processes, 
 and the conciseness of their descriptions and remarks, 
 with an unsparing rejection of everything superfluous 
 forms the characteristic of both those illustrious 
 students of nature. While, as regards Cavendish's 
 writings, it has been, and as regards Black's it might 
 have been, justly said by one writer that every sentence 
 will bear the microscope ; another, the most eminent of 
 his successors, has, with equal truth, described his pro- 
 cesses as of so finished a nature, so perfected by the 
 hand of a master, as to require no correction ; and, 
 though contrived in the infancy of the science, yet to 
 remain unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, for accuracy 
 and beauty at the present day. 
 
 The world, even the scientific world, dazzled by the 
 brilliancy of those discoveries which we have described, 
 
CAVENDISH. 103 
 
 is wont to regard Cavendish as a chemist merely. But 
 it was not only in chemical science and in a few de- 
 partments of natural philosophy that this great man had 
 thoroughly exercised himself; he was profoundly versed 
 in every branch of physics, and was a most complete 
 and accomplished mathematician. I have had access to 
 the manuscripts which he left behind him ; and it would 
 be difficult to name any subject which had not engaged 
 his close attention : all had been made the subject not 
 only of his study, but of his original investigations. 
 The two papers on Electricity which he published in 
 the * Philosophical Transactions' contain, the one of 
 1776, the first distinct statement of the difference be- 
 tween animal and common electricity ; the other, in 
 1771, twenty-seven propositions upon the action of 
 the electric fluid, treated mathematically. They are 
 grounded upon the general hypothesis that the par- 
 ticles of the fluid repel one another, and attract those 
 of other matter with a force inversely as some lesser 
 power than the cube of the distance ; and with this 
 theory the experiments which he examines are found 
 to tally perfectly. But his voluminous unpublished 
 papers show how constantly his life was devoted to 
 experimental inquiries, and analytical or geometrical 
 investigations. Beside ranging over the whole of che- 
 mical science, they relate to various branches of optics, 
 of physical and of practical astronomy of the theory 
 of mathematical and astronomical instruments of me- 
 chanical and dynamical sciences, both theoretical and 
 practical of pure mathematics in all its branches, geo- 
 metry, the integral and differential calculus, the doctrine 
 of chances and annuities. He seems in his application 
 of mathematics to physics to have disregarded elegance, 
 and even simplicity, and to have chosen always the 
 shortest and most certain path to his object. Accordingly 
 this somewhat surprises the mathematical reader; as 
 
 when we find him using U^. (or rather-^-, for he 
 a v v 
 
104 CAVENDISH. 
 
 always employs the Newtonian notation) for the sub- 
 normal, having taken x for some other quantity than 
 the abscissa, and using three letters, as a, 0, and #, to 
 denote segments of the same line, when perhaps a is 
 the whole line, and a x is equal to z. But that he 
 had the most familiar and masterly knowledge of the 
 calculus is plain throughout all his investigations, as 
 it is that his trust in its powers induced him to throw 
 himself willingly and habitually upon them. In this 
 respect he stands not only at the head of chemical 
 philosophers, but alone among them, with perhaps one 
 or two exceptions in the French school. 
 
 In giving the history of his labours, and the cha- 
 racter of his intellectual capacity, we have written the 
 life of Cavendish. His personal history cannot be ex- 
 pected to have any striking interest ; yet they who have 
 been dwelling on his scientific eminence will not be 
 displeased to know somewhat of his ordinary life. 
 He was of a most reserved disposition, and peculiarly 
 shy habits. This led to some singularity of manner, 
 which was further increased by a hesitation or difficulty 
 of speech, and a thin shrill voice. He entered diffi- 
 dently into any conversation, and seemed to dislike 
 being spoken to. He would often leave the place 
 where he was addressed, and leave it abruptly, with a 
 kind of cry or ejaculation, as if scared and disturbed. 
 He lived in a house on Clapham Common, and his 
 library, vast in extent, was at another place, because he 
 made it accessible to all, and did not wish to be trou- 
 bled by those who resorted to it. He allowed friends 
 to take books from it, and he himself never took one 
 without giving a receipt for it. On the death of his 
 librarian he began the practice of himself attending one 
 day in the week to give out and take in books. His 
 large income was allowed to accumulate ; and when 
 his bankers, after finding that a very considerable ba- 
 lance was always left in their hands, mentioned the 
 circumstance, suggesting that it might be invested to 
 
CAVENDISH. 105 
 
 some profit, he answered with much simplicity, that if 
 the balance was an inconvenience to them he could go 
 to another banker. Himself a man of no expense, his 
 habits never varied, nor did his style of living at all 
 suffer a change on succeeding to his uncle's large 
 fortune. His purse was ever accessible to the claims 
 of charity, as well as to proposals for the promotion of 
 scientific pursuits. Having formed a high opinion of 
 Dr. (afterwards Sir Charles) Blagden's capacity for 
 science, he settled a considerable annuity on him, upon 
 condition that he should give up his profession and 
 devote himself to philosophy; with the former portion 
 of which condition the Doctor complied, devoting 
 himself to the hopeless pursuit of a larger income in 
 the person of Lavoisier's widow, who preferred mar- 
 rying Count Rumford.* Mr. Cavendish received no 
 one at his residence ; he ordered his dinner daily by a 
 note which he left at a certain hour on the hall table, 
 where the housekeeper was to take it, for he held no 
 communication with his female domestics, from his 
 morbid shyness. It followed, as a matter of course, 
 that his servants thought him strange, and his neigh- 
 bours deemed him out of his mind. He hardly ever 
 went into society. The only exceptions I am aware 
 of are an occasional christening at Devonshire or Bur- 
 lington House, the meetings of the Royal Society, and 
 Sir Joseph Banks' weekly conversaziones. At both 
 the latter places I have met him, and recollect the 
 shrill cry he uttered as he shuffled quickly from room 
 to room, seeming to be annoyed if looked at, but 
 sometimes approaching to hear what was passing 
 among others. His face was intelligent and mild, 
 though, from the nervous irritation which he seemed 
 to feel, the expression could hardly be called calm. 
 It is not likely that he ever should have been in- 
 duced to sit for his picture; the result, therefore, of 
 
 * He left Sir Charles a legacy of 15,000 ; which was generally under- 
 stood to have fallen much short of his ample expectations. 
 
106 CAVENDISH. 
 
 any such experiment is wanting. His dress was 
 of the oldest fashion, a greyish green coat and waist- 
 coat, with flaps, a small cocked hat, and his hair 
 dressed like a wig (which possibly it was) with a thick 
 clubbed tail. His walk was quick and uneasy; of 
 course he never appeared in London unless lying 
 back in the comer of his carriage. He probably 
 uttered fewer words in the course of his life than any 
 man who ever lived to fourscore years, not at all 
 excepting the monks of La Trappe. 
 
 Mr. Cavendish died on the 10th of March, 1810, 
 after a short illness, probably the first as well as the 
 last under which he ever suffered. His habit of 
 curious observation continued to the end. He was 
 desirous of marking the progress of disease, and the 
 gradual extinction of the vital powers. With this 
 view, that he might not be disturbed he desired to be 
 left alone. His servant returning sooner than he had 
 wished was ordered again to leave the chamber of 
 death, and when he came back a second time he found 
 his master had expired. 
 
(107) 
 
 DAVY. 
 
 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY being now removed beyond 
 the reach of such feelings, as he ought always to have 
 been above their influence, that may be said without 
 offence of which he so disliked the mention: he had 
 the honour of raising himself to the highest place 
 among the chemical philosophers of the age; emerging 
 by his merit alone from an obscure condition. His 
 father was a carver in wood at Penzance, in Cornwall; 
 a man of some ingenuity in his craft. He possessed 
 a small landed property in the village of Varfell, near 
 Penzance, and Davy was born there in 1778. He 
 received the rudiments of his education at a school 
 in Truro, but was very early apprenticed to an apo- 
 thecary at Penzance, where, disliking the profession to 
 which he had been destined, he occupied himself with 
 chemical experiments, ingeniously contriving to make 
 the utensils of the shop and the kitchen serve for ap- 
 paratus ; and it is remembered of him that he fre- 
 quently alarmed the household by his explosions. The 
 result of his dislike to the shop was a disagreement 
 with his master, and he went to another in the same 
 place ; but here he continued in the same course. 
 Pursuing a plan of study which he had laid down for 
 himself, he became thoroughly acquainted with che- 
 mistry, and well versed in other branches of natural 
 philosophy, beside making some proficiency in geo- 
 metry ; but he never cultivated the mathematical 
 sciences, except that I recollect his telling me once, 
 late in life, of his intention to resume the study of 
 them, as he had begun to make progress in crystallo- 
 
108 DAVY. 
 
 graphy. He does not appear to have given any early 
 indications of superior genius, or even of unusual 
 quickness ; but he showed all along, in following the 
 bent of his intellectual taste, the perseverance, the 
 firm purpose, which is inseparable from a capacity of 
 the higher order, and is an indispensable condition, as 
 it is a sure pledge, of success in every pursuit. 
 
 It must be observed of the biographers both of Davy 
 and Scheele, that they seem to have made too much 
 of the difficulties interposed in the path of their early 
 studies by the want of apparatus, to which want, and 
 to their ingenious contrivances for finding substitutes, 
 a good deal of their experimental skill has been 
 ascribed. It should be recollected that an apothecary's 
 shop is not by any means so destitute of helps, espe- 
 cially for the study of chemistry, as a workshop of 
 almost any other description. Crucibles, phials, mor- 
 tars, gallipots, scales and weights, liquid measures, 
 acids, alkalis, and neutral salts, are all to be found 
 there, even if a furnace and still be not a necessary 
 appendage. It may be allowed that nothing like an 
 air-pump might be there expected, unless cupping 
 chanced to be performed by the druggist. Accord- 
 ingly Davy was glad to obtain, in a case of surgical 
 instruments from a practitioner on board a French 
 vessel wrecked on the Cornish coast, to whom he had 
 done some kind service, the means of making some 
 approximation to an exhausting engine. 
 
 It happened, fortunately for him, that Gregory 
 Watt, youngest son of the great engineer, and whom, 
 having had the happiness of knowing him, I have 
 already mentioned, came to reside in the house of 
 Davy's mother at Penzance, where he was ordered to 
 pass the winter for the benefit of his health. Being- 
 five years older than the young chemist, and eminently 
 accomplished both in science and in letters, his con- 
 versation and advice was a great advantage, of which 
 Davy gladly availed himself. Another accident threw 
 
DAVY. 109 
 
 him in the way of Mr. Davies Giddy, a cultivator of 
 natural as well as mathematical science, and he, finding 
 that Davy had been devoting himself to chemistry, 
 gave him the use of an excellent library, and intro- 
 duced him to Dr. Beddoes, who was then engaged in 
 forming an establishment called by him the Pneumatic 
 Institution, for the medical use of gases, as well as for 
 further investigating their properties. At the head of 
 this he placed his new friend, who was thus at once 
 enabled to pursue his scientific vocation as a profession, 
 and did not long delay giving to the world a proof 
 of his ingenuity, by the publication of a theory of 
 ' Light and Heat,' fanciful no doubt, and ill-digested, 
 containing much groundless and imaginary, and even 
 absurd speculation, but disclosing great information 
 and no inconsiderable cleverness. It was published in 
 a periodical work edited by Dr. Beddoes, called * Con- 
 tributions to Medical and Physical Science ;' and to the 
 same work he soon after gave a paper upon the ' Nitrous 
 Oxide,' on the respiration of which he had made some 
 very curious experiments. The singular circumstances 
 which he thus ascertained, gave him considerable re- 
 putation as an experimentalist, and he was soon after 
 (1802) chosen first Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, by 
 the Royal Institution of London, and the year follow- 
 ing, sole Chemical Professor. Nor must the boldness 
 which he had shown in conducting his experiments be 
 passed over. He had exposed himself to serious hazard 
 in breathing some most deleterious gases, and both in 
 his trials of gaseous mixtures, and in his galvanic pro- 
 cesses, he had made many narrow escapes from the 
 danger of violent explosions. 
 
 It is a singular fact that, although his attention had 
 never been confined to his favourite science, for he 
 had studied literature, and especially poetry to the ex- 
 tent of writing tolerable verses, yet he was of^so un- 
 couth an exterior and manners, notwithstanding an 
 exceedingly handsome and expressive countenance, 
 
110 DAVY. 
 
 that Count Rumford, a leading director of the Institu- 
 tion, on seeing him for the first time, expressed no 
 little disappointment, even regretting the part he had 
 taken in promoting the engagement. But these feelings 
 were of short duration. Davy was soon sufficiently hu- 
 manized, and even refined, to appear before a London 
 and a fashionable audience of both sexes with great ad- 
 vantage, and his first course of lectures had unboun- 
 ded and unparalleled success. This he owed, certainly, 
 to the more superficial accomplishments of good and 
 lively language, an agreeable delivery, and, above all, 
 an ingenuous enthusiasm for his subject which in- 
 formed and quickened his whole discourse. But the 
 fame which he thus acquired would have been of 
 limited extent and of short duration, had his reliance 
 only been upon the fickle multitude whom such quali- 
 ties can please. The first consequences of his success 
 in the line of mere exhibition were unfavourable, and 
 threatened to be fatal ; for he was led away by the 
 plaudits of fashion, and must needs join in its frothy, 
 feeble current. For awhile he is remarked to have shown 
 the incongruous combination of science and fashion, 
 which form a most imperfect union, and produce a 
 compound of no valuable qualities, somewhat resem- 
 bling the nitrous gas on which he experimented earlier 
 in life, having an intoxicating effect on the party tast- 
 ing it, and a ludicrous one on all beholders. They 
 who have recorded this transformation, while they la- 
 ment the substitution of anything for "the natural 
 candour and warmth of feeling which had singularly 
 won upon the acquaintance of his early life," add most 
 justly that the weakness which they describe never 
 " cooled his regard for his family and former friends." 
 I can vouch for the change, which was merely super- 
 ficial, being of very short duration ; and it is pleasing 
 to add that, even while it lasted, there was none of 
 that most offensive of all the effects produced by such 
 a transition state to be found in his conversation ; he 
 
DAVY. Ill 
 
 never for a moment appeared to be ashamed of his 
 great vocation, nor to shun the fullest discussion of the 
 subject on which he was at home, in order to deal 
 with topics to which he was of necessity a stranger. 
 I am speaking, too, of his habits long before his great 
 discoveries ; there would have been little ground for 
 praise, any more than for wonder, that the discoverer 
 of the alkaline metals should be willing to have the 
 conversation roll upon chemistry and galvanism ; but 
 the time to which I have been referring was when his 
 fame rested chiefly upon the success of his lectures to 
 mixed companies in Albemaiie- Street, and to lovers of 
 agriculture in Sackville-Street, where the Board had 
 chosen him their Chemical Professor. 
 
 If his situation at the Royal Institution had exposed 
 him to the risk which we have seen he escaped, it had 
 put him in possession of invaluable helps to his pursuits. 
 He had now an ample command of books ; he had 
 assistants under him ; above all, he had an unlimited 
 power of collecting and of making apparatus ; his in- 
 come was secure ; and his time was at his own dispo- 
 sal. He failed not to avail himself diligently of these 
 great advantages ; and although he lived a good deal 
 in society, where he was always a welcome guest, 
 his principal relaxations during the rest of his life con- 
 sisted in shooting, and especially in fishing, of which 
 he was from his earliest years passionately fond. The 
 intercourse he had held with Southey and with Cole- 
 ridge had given him not only his taste for poetry, but 
 an extraordinary love of rural walks, in the peaceful 
 solitude of which I have heard him say, answering the 
 ordinary and obvious objections of those who are not 
 smitten with the love of the " Angle," the gratifications 
 of that propensity very mainly consist. 
 
 In 1801 he made his first important discovery, that 
 by which he ascertained the true nature of galvanic 
 action. That this was connected with electric or che- 
 mical affinity had been generally suspected, though 
 
112 DAVY. 
 
 denied by Yolta, the author of the pile, and indeed of 
 the science which, like the continent of America, has 
 borne the name of another than the discoverer. This 
 had seemed probable from the presence being indis- 
 pensable of a liquid capable of decomposing one or 
 other of the metals, both supposed to be equally ne- 
 cessary to the production of the electric stream. 
 Davy's experiments, which were numerous and admir- 
 ably devised, and most laboriously conducted, now 
 showed that the presence of two metals was not re- 
 quired to provide the electricity. One metal, and one 
 other substance separated from it, with a fluid acting 
 upon either the metal or the substance ; or a metal 
 separating two fluids, one of which acts upon it ; nay, 
 one metal exposed to the same fluid, but acted upon 
 differently on its different sides or surfaces by the 
 fluid's strength differing on the different sides ; or one 
 and the same metal in different pieces plunged into 
 the same fluid, at an interval of time were all found 
 to be combinations which gave the galvanic (or vol- 
 taic) shock, the same in kind, though varying in 
 strength. In all these cases, and in every production 
 of electricity by the voltaic process, the chemical action 
 of a fluid upon the metallic substance was a necessary 
 concomitant of the operation.* 
 
 During the five following years Davy continued his 
 experiments ; and in the autumn of 1806 he commu- 
 nicated to the Royal Society his discovery of the con- 
 nexion between the different ends of the electric circle 
 and the different component parts of bodies submitted 
 to the action of the fluid. Nothing could be more 
 singular and unexpected than the laws which he now 
 found to regulate this operation, nor anything which 
 promised more clearly a rich harvest of new discoveries. 
 The effect of the current, whether of common or gal- 
 vanic electricity, in decomposing substances through 
 
 * Subsequent experiments have shown that the effect may be produced 
 by other than metallic, or even carbonaceous bodies. 
 
DAVY. 113 
 
 which it passed, had been before known. Thus water 
 had been resolved into its two elements by the passing 
 of the fluid through wires whose points were opposite 
 to each other at a small distance. Nicholson had first 
 made this happy application of the voltaic pile ; but 
 he and others had been much disturbed by finding 
 other substances produced as well as oxygen and hy- 
 drogen gases. This perplexing circumstance was care- 
 fully investigated by Davy ; and he showed by a mas- 
 terly course of experiments, that these substances 
 owed their origin entirely to impurities in the water. 
 When it was quite pure, they wholly disappeared. 
 But he now proceeded farther, and found that when 
 the electric current is thus passed, there is always a 
 separation operated differently at the negative and at 
 the positive part of the current. The oxygen of the 
 water, for example, was accumulated round the positive 
 wire ; its hydrogen round the negative. So when a 
 neutral salt was subjected to the process, its acid was 
 evolved round the positive ; its alkaline base round the 
 negative wire. The same thing happened when a me- 
 tallic oxide was operated upon ; its oxygen went to the 
 positive, its metallic base to the negative side. The 
 oxygen, or the acid with the oxygen, went to the for- 
 mer ; the particles of the base were transferred to the 
 latter, along with the hydrogen of the water in which 
 the solution was made. But a still more extraordinary 
 phenomenon was observed. If there was a liquid in- 
 terposed between the two poles and the body to be 
 decomposed, the acid, or the oxygen, was found to pass 
 through that interposed liquid to the positive pole, the 
 hydrogen and the matter of the base to the negative 
 pole, and without acting upon the substance of the in- 
 terposed liquid. Thus suppose a vegetable colour 
 tinging the water in an intermediate cup, acid will 
 pass through it without reddening it, and alkali with- 
 out making it green. Nay, an acid will pass through 
 an alkaline solution, or an alkali through an acid, 
 
114 DAVY. 
 
 without uniting in either case to form a neutral salt, 
 unless the neutral compound is insoluble, for in that 
 case it falls to the bottom. But muriatic acid will 
 pass through a solution of potash, having been carried 
 over from a solution of common sea salt by the electri- 
 cal current, or soda will pass through muriatic acid in 
 the same circumstances, without forming in the former 
 case nitrate of potash, or in the latter nitrate of soda. 
 It was also found that the exception in the case of in- 
 soluble compounds arises from the mechanical effect of 
 their insolubility, their falling to the bottom ; for if 
 supported, as it were, on threads of any convenient 
 substance passing through the intermediate liquid in the 
 line of the electric current, the acid or alkali will pass 
 through that liquid. Thus films of asbestos conduct- 
 ing the electric stream, enabled magnesia or lime to 
 pass ; and so were the particles of metal carried over 
 when separated by the operation from nitrate of silver. 
 
 It thus appeared certain that an indissoluble con- 
 nexion exists between chemical and electric action, if 
 indeed it was not even proved that chemical affinity 
 and electricity are identical. The science of Electro- 
 chemistry, at all events, now arose out of Davy's 
 discoveries, and he is entitled to be regarded as its 
 founder. 
 
 It may easily be conceived that these important 
 truths excited generally the anxious attention of philo- 
 sophers. The French National Institute, greatly to 
 their honour, though the war between the two coun- 
 tries never raged more fiercely than now, and France 
 never reached a higher pitch of military glory, crowned 
 Davy with the first honour founded by Napoleon for 
 scientific desert. But it was even more honourable to 
 the philosopher, that great as his discoveries had been, 
 expectation was high of the still more important results 
 which must soon come from the discovery of so new a 
 law of electrical and chemical action. I can well re- 
 member that we used in discussing the subject to look 
 
DAVY. 115 
 
 forward with perfect confidence to the analysis of the 
 bodies which had hitherto proved the most stubborn, 
 and expected soon to find the fixed alkalis, and even 
 the alkaline earths, shown to be oxides, as by some 
 very imperfect experiments they had at one time been 
 supposed to be proved, when it was ascertained that 
 the metallic buttons found at the bottom of the crucible 
 in which their reduction had been attempted by carbon- 
 aceous or phosphoric re-agents had come from the 
 black lead in the pot. Nor must we omit to mention 
 the truly candid and magnanimous proceeding of Davy, 
 so worthy of a philosopher, in making public, with the 
 fullest details, his proceedings, by which it was mani- 
 fest he intended still to persevere till he should make 
 other discoveries. Any one possessed of a strong bat- 
 tery, deeply reflecting on the paper of autumn 1806, 
 and perceiving that the positive wire had such a 
 strong attraction for oxygen as to take it from metallic 
 oxides, reducing them to their reguline state, might 
 well have bethought him of subjecting the alkalis to 
 his machine ; and he would then have had the fame, 
 though, in truth, Davy would have had the merit, of 
 the grand discovery. 
 
 That discovery was not long delayed. About a year 
 after the former, that is in October 1807, after in vain 
 endeavouring to decompose the alkalis when mixed 
 with water, for he then only could decompose that 
 fluid, he exposed them in the dry state ; that is, made 
 liquid by fusion, without any other substance but heat 
 to dissolve them and, to his great delight, he found, 
 as he had a right to expect, that the process of deoxi- 
 dation proceeded by the positive wire attracting the 
 oxygen, while globules of a metallic substance were 
 found at the negative wire. The great attraction of 
 this metal for oxygen made it impossible to keep it 
 either in the air or in water. It burnt spontaneously 
 in the air and became alkali it decomposed water in 
 like manner, and formed an alkaline solution. The 
 
116 DAVY. 
 
 two fixed alkalis both yielded in this process metallic 
 bases ; but that of potash had alone the quality of 
 combustion at the temperature of 150, and it was, 
 though a metal, lighter than water in the proportion 
 of 97 to 100. When thrown into water in the air, it 
 detonates and burns with violence, forming a solution 
 of potash. The metal from soda is still lighter, being 
 to water as 86 to 100 ; but it does not so easily unite 
 with oxygen, though it decomposes water with a hiss- 
 ing noise, and makes with it a solution of soda. To 
 these metals the discoverer gave the name of potassium 
 and sodium. The glory of having now made the 
 greatest discovery of the age was plainly Davy's ; and 
 it was not the result of happy accident, but of labori- 
 ous investigation, conducted with a skill and a patience 
 equally admirable, and according to the strict rules of 
 the soundest philosophy. He had indeed begun by 
 discovering the laws of electrical action, and had thus 
 formed the means of his new discovery, which was 
 the fruit of the science he had founded, as Newton's 
 theory of dynamics and of astronomy was the fruit of 
 the calculus which he had so marvellously discovered 
 when hardly arrived at man's estate. 
 
 The wonder excited by the strange bodies with 
 which philosophers were thus brought acquainted, was 
 of course in part owing to their novel and singular 
 properties, which formed no part of the discoverer's 
 merits, yet might be reckoned as the perquisites of his 
 genius. His praise would have been the same if in- 
 stead of at once discovering the alkalis to be oxides, 
 and the metal forming the base to be one lighter than 
 water, or bees'-wax or box-wood, and the other to burn 
 unheated in the open air, he had only shown those 
 salts to be oxides of well-known metals. Yet, as his 
 investigation had been crowned with the discovery of 
 strange substances, metallic, and yet like no other 
 metals, we justly admire the more, and the more 
 thank him for his double service rendered to science. 
 
DAVY. 117 
 
 The long labour thus ending in so mighty a result, 
 and the excitement naturally enough produced in an 
 irritable habit, threw him into an illness of a most 
 serious complexion. For many days he lay between 
 life and death in a low nervous fever, and it was not till 
 the following March that he could resume his inquiries 
 into the composition of the alkaline earths. It is to 
 the credit of chemists that no one deemed himself at 
 liberty to interfere with him, as any one might now 
 by only following his footsteps have done, and thus 
 analysed these earthy bodies. He himself, early in 
 the summer following his illness, had reduced lime, 
 magnesia, strontites, and barytes. In these experiments 
 he was greatly assisted by the ingenious contrivances 
 which Gay-Lussac and Thenard had recently used for 
 the reduction of the alkaline oxides. The metals thus 
 discovered were not any wise light or fusible like 
 potassium and sodium ; but they burnt with a bright 
 light on being exposed to considerable degrees of heat, 
 and they decomposed water ; and either by their com- 
 bustion, or their exhibition to water, they reproduced 
 the alkaline earths. 
 
 A number of other experimental researches led 
 Davy to new and curious observations on the constitu- 
 tion and habits of different substances. But we need 
 only mention the most important of these, for it was 
 a discovery very unexpected both by himself and the 
 chemical world at large. The acid hitherto called oxy- 
 genated muriatic, or oxymuriatic, on account of its 
 powerful acid qualities, had been always from thence 
 supposed to contain an excess of oxygen, believed to 
 be the acidifying principle. At last Gay-Lussac and 
 Thenard, in 1809, concluded from some experimental 
 researches, or rather they suspected, that it might be a 
 simple and elementary substance ; but they on the whole 
 still inclined to think it contained oxygen according to 
 the old and received opinion. Davy now found, by a 
 course of satisfactory experiments which have fixed the 
 
118 DAVY. 
 
 opinions of all philosophers on the subject, that the 
 suspicion of those eminent men was well founded; that 
 the oxymuriatic acid is a simple substance, containing 
 no oxygen , that it unites with oxygen to form an 
 acid, which forms with alkalis the detonating salts 
 hitherto called oxymuriates, as being supposed to con- 
 tain oxymuriatic acid combined with alkaline bases ; 
 and finally, that with hydrogen it forms the acid long 
 and well known as the muriatic or marine. To the 
 oxymuriatic acid he gave the name of chlorine from 
 its green colour, and to common muriatic acid that of 
 hydrochlorine. The union of chlorine and oxygen he 
 calls chlorine acid, and its compounds, of course, chlo- 
 rates. This is justly reckoned one of the most impor- 
 tant of Davy's many brilliant discoveries. 
 
 It remains to make mention of the valuable present 
 which this great philosopher offered to humanity his 
 safety-lamp. The dreadful ravages made on human 
 life by the fire-damp explosions that is, the burning 
 of hydrogen gas in mines had often attracted the 
 notice of both the mine-owner and the philanthropist. 
 Various inventions had been fallen upon to give light 
 in those recesses of the earth with so low a degree of 
 heat as should be insufficient to explode the gas. One 
 of them was a series of flints playing by machinery 
 against each other so as to give a dim light ; but this 
 had very little success ; it was clumsy, and it was not 
 effectual so as to cause its use by miners. The ventila- 
 tion of the galleries by furnaces and even by air-pumps 
 was chiefly relied on as a preventive ; but gas would 
 collect in spite of all preventives, and the destruction 
 of a hundred or more lives was not an unusual calamity. 
 Davy about the year 1815 turned his attention to the 
 subject, and after fully ascertaining that carburetted 
 hydrogen is the cause of the fire-damp, and finding in 
 what proportions it must be mixed with air in order to 
 explode (between six and fourteen times its bulk), he 
 was surprised to observe, in the course of his experi- 
 
DAVY. 119 
 
 ments made for the purpose of ascertaining how the 
 inflammation takes place, that the flames will not pass 
 through tubes of a certain length or smallness of bore. 
 He then found that if the length be diminished, and the 
 bore also reduced, the flames will not pass; and he fur- 
 ther found that by multiplying the number of the tubes, 
 their length may safely be diminished to hardly any- 
 thing, provided their bore be proportionably lessened. 
 Hence it appeared that gauze of wire, whose meshes 
 were only one twenty-second of an inch diameter, stop- 
 ped the flame, and prevented the explosion. The candle 
 or lamp being wrapt in such gauze, and all access to 
 the external air prevented except through the meshes, 
 it is found that the lamp may be safely introduced into 
 a gallery filled with fire-damp ; a feeble blue flame will 
 take place inside the gauze, but no explosion, even if 
 the wire be heated nearly red. 
 
 The theory is, but it seems very questionable, that the 
 conducting power of the wire carrying off the heat pre- 
 vents a sufficient quantity reaching the explosive com- 
 pound. Subsequent inquiries seem to prove that al- 
 though in a still atmosphere of explosive gas the lamp 
 is a perfect protection, yet it does not prevent a cur- 
 rent of gas from penetrating to the flame and exploding. 
 It is attempted to guard against this by interposing a 
 tin shield or screen; but a current very often in mining 
 operations arises before any notice can be given. Had 
 Davy's life and health been prolonged, he might^ have 
 further improved his invention so as to meet this ob- 
 jection. He certainly never was fully convinced of its 
 force, as I know from having discussed the subject 
 with him ; and no doubt the testimony of so great an 
 engineer as the late Mr. Buddie, given before a Par- 
 liamentary Committee to whom the examination of this 
 important subject was referred, deserves great attention. 
 He positively affirmed that " having seen 1000, and 
 sometimes 1500 safety-lamps in daily use, and in all 
 possible varieties of explosive mixtures, he had never 
 
120 DAVY. 
 
 known one solitary instance of an explosion." As for 
 the lamentable accidents which continue to happen, 
 we can scarcely doubt that they originate in the dread- 
 ful carelessness of their own and of other men's lives, 
 which seems to be engendered in those who are habitu- 
 ally exposed to great danger. That they themselves 
 are the first to suffer for it, can only suppress the out- 
 ward expression of the feelings which recklessness like 
 this is fitted to produce. 
 
 It redounds to the credit of the north country mine- 
 owners that in 1817 they invited the inventor of the 
 Lamp to a public entertainment, and presented him 
 with a service of plate of two thousand pounds value. 
 It must be remembered that he had generously given 
 to the public the whole benefit of his invention, and 
 thus sacrificed the ample profit which a patent must 
 have enabled him to acquire for himself. 
 
 Davy had as early as 1806 been chosen a foreign 
 associate of the French Institute. In 1812 he received 
 from the Regent the honour of knighthood. About 
 the same time he married Mrs. Apreece, a lady whose 
 ample fortune was by far the least valuable part of her 
 accomplishments a person of great virtue, admirable 
 talents, and extensive information. Of this marriage 
 there has been no issue. In October, 1813, he pub- 
 lished his 'Elements of Chemical Philosophy,' a hasty 
 and even somewhat crude work, but abounding, as 
 whatever he wrote was sure to abound, in important 
 and ingenious observations. In the following year 
 appeared his ' Elements of Agricultural Chemistry,' of 
 which the same general character may be given. In 
 1816 he was created a baronet. 
 
 Napoleon had, during the war, given him permis- 
 sion to visit the extinguished volcanoes in Dauvergne, 
 and to pass through France towards Naples, Vesuvius 
 being then in a state of eruption. His reception at 
 Paris was very warm, but unfortunately he failed to 
 retain the affection of his colleagues in the Institute. 
 
DAVY. 121 
 
 Their complaint against him for having interfered, as 
 they termed it, with their recent discovery of iodine, 
 on which, having obtained a specimen, he chose, natu- 
 rally enough, to make experiments, appears incompar- 
 ably absurd. He had never complained of their in- 
 terference, during his illness in 1807, with the process 
 of deoxygenation by means of galvanic action; on the 
 contrary, he had availed himself thankfully of the lights 
 shed by their ingenuity on his process, and had im- 
 mediately after made new discoveries, at which they 
 had failed to arrive. It may be more true that his 
 manners were unpleasing ; and, as ever happens when 
 a great man is also a shy one, he was charged with 
 being supercilious and cold. They who knew him will 
 at once acquit him of any such charge ; but he was 
 painfully timid by nature when mixing with society ; 
 and hence the mistake of our neighbours, who, though 
 great critics in manner, are far from being infallible, 
 and are exceedingly susceptible fully as susceptible 
 as he was shy. Possibly they looked down upon him 
 in consequence of a peculiarity which he no doubt had. 
 He was fond of poetry, and an ardent admirer of 
 beauty in natural scenery. But of beauty in the arts 
 he was nearly insensible. They used to say in Paris 
 that on seeing the Louvre, he exclaimed that one of its 
 statues was " a beautiful stalactite ;" and it is possible 
 that this callousness, or this jest, whichever it might 
 be, excited the scorn or the humour of men not more 
 sincere lovers of sculpture than himself, or more able 
 judges of its merits, but better disposed to conceal 
 their want of taste or want of skill. 
 
 When Sir Joseph Banks terminated his long and re- 
 spectable course in 1820, Davy was unanimously chosen 
 to succeed him as President of the Koyal Society, and 
 continued to fill that distinguished office until, his 
 health having failed, he resigned it in 1827, and was 
 succeeded by his early patron Davies Giddy To- 
 wards the end of 1825 he had an apoplectic seizure, 
 which, though slight (if any such attack can be so 
 
122 DAVY. 
 
 called), left a paralytic weakness behind, and he was 
 ordered to go abroad in search of a milder and dryer 
 climate. He returned home in the following autumn, 
 not very ill, but not much restored in strength, and 
 unable to continue his scientific labours. The work 
 on fly-fishing called ' Salrnonia' was the amusement of 
 those hours in which, comparatively feeble, his mind 
 yet exerted what energy remained to it, on the favourite 
 pursuit of his leisure. It contains both curious in- 
 formation on natural history, and many passages of 
 lively and even poetical description. The same may 
 be said of many things in his latest work, ' Last Days 
 of a Philosopher,' which he wrote in the year after, 
 when he again went to the continent in search of 
 health. He wintered at Rome, and in May 1829, on 
 his arrival at Geneva, after passing the day in excel- 
 lent spirits, and dining heartily on fish, he had a fatal 
 apoplectic attack in the night, and died early in the 
 next morning, 29th May, without a struggle. 
 
 There needs no further remark, no general charac- 
 ter to present a portrait of this eminent individual. 
 Whoever has perused the history of his great exploits 
 in science, with a due knowledge of the subject, has 
 already discerned his place, highest among all the 
 great discoverers of his time. Even he who has little 
 acquaintance with the subjects of his labours may easily 
 perceive how brilliant a reputation he must have en- 
 joyed, and how justly ; while he who can draw no 
 such inference from the facts would fail to obtain any 
 knowledge of Davy's excellence from all the panegyrics 
 with which general description could encircle his name.* 
 
 * It may not be impertinent to relate here a singular proof of the ad- 
 miration in which his name was held by his countrymen, and how well it 
 became known even among the common people. Retiring home one 
 evening he observed an ordinary man showing the moon and a planet 
 through a telescope placed upon the pavement. He went up and paid his 
 pence for a look. But no such thing would they permit. " That's Sir 
 Humphry," ran among the people; and the exhibitor, returning his 
 money, said, with an important air which exceedingly delighted him, that 
 he could not think of taking anything from a brother philosopher. 
 
(123) 
 
 S I M S N. 
 
 THE wonderful progress that has been made in the 
 pure mathematics since the application of algebra to 
 geometry, begun by Vieta in the sixteenth, completed 
 by Des Cartes in the seventeenth century, and espe- 
 cially the still more marvellous extension of analytical 
 science by Newton and his followers, since the inven- 
 tion of the Calculus, has, for the last hundred years 
 and more, cast into the shade the methods of investi- 
 gation which preceded those now in such general use, 
 and so well adapted to afford facilities unknown while 
 mathematicians only possessed a less perfect instrument 
 of investigation. It is nevertheless to be observed that 
 the older method possessed qualities of extraordinary 
 value. It enabled us to investigate some kinds of 
 propositions to which algebraic reasoning is little 
 applicable; it always had an elegance peculiarly its 
 own ; it exhibited at each step the course which the 
 reasoning followed, instead of concealing that course 
 till the result came out ; it exercised the faculties more 
 severely, because it was less mechanical than the 
 operations of the analyst. That it afforded evidence 
 of a higher character, more rigorous in its nature than 
 that on which algebraic reasoning rests, cannot with 
 any correctness be affirmed ; both are equally strict ; 
 indeed if each be mathematical in its nature, and con- 
 sist of a series of identical propositions arising one out 
 of another, neither can be less perfect than the other, 
 for of certainty there can be no degrees. Nevertheless 
 it must be a matter of regret and here the great 
 master and author of modem mathematics has joined 
 
124 SIMSON. 
 
 in expressing it that so much less attention is now 
 paid to the Ancient Geometry than its beauty and 
 clearness deserve; and if he could justly make this 
 complaint a century and a half ago, when the old 
 method had but recently, and only in part, fallen into 
 neglect and disuse, how much more are such regrets 
 natural in our day, when the very name of the Ancient 
 Analysis has almost ceased to be known, and the 
 beauties of the Greek Geometry are entirely veiled 
 from the mathematician's eyes ! It becomes, for this 
 reason, necessary that the life of Sim son, the great 
 restorer of that geometry, should be prefaced by some 
 remarks upon the nature of the science, in order that, 
 in giving an account of his works, we may say his 
 discoveries, it may not appear that we are recording 
 the services of a great man to some science different 
 from the mathematical. 
 
 The analysis of the Greek geometers was a method 
 of investigation of peculiar elegance, and of no incon- 
 siderable power. It consisted in supposing the thing 
 as already done, the problem solved, or the truth of 
 the theorem established ; and from thence it reasoned 
 until something was found, some point reached, by 
 pursuing steps each one of which led to the next, and 
 by only assuming things which were already known, 
 having been ascertained by former discoveries. The 
 thing thus found, the point reached, was the discovery 
 of something which could by known methods be per- 
 formed, or of something which, if not self-evident, was 
 already by former discovery proved to be true ; and in 
 the one case a construction was thus found by which 
 the problem was solved, in the other a proof was ob- 
 tained that the theorem was true, because in both cases 
 the ultimate point had been reached by strictly legiti- 
 mate reasoning, from the assumption that the problem 
 had been solved, or the assumption that the theorem 
 was true Thus, if it were required from a given point 
 in a straight line given by position, to draw a straight 
 
SIMSON. 125 
 
 line which should be cut by a given circle in segments, 
 whose rectangle was equal to that of the segments of 
 the diameter perpendicular to the given line the thing- 
 is supposed to be done ; and the equality of the rect- 
 angles gives a proportion between the segments of the 
 two lines, such that, joining the point supposed to be 
 found, but not found, with the extremity of the dia- 
 meter, the angle of that line with the line sought but 
 not found, is shown by similar triangles to be a right 
 angle, i. <?., the angle in a semicircle. Therefore the 
 point through which the line must be drawn is the 
 point at which the perpendicular cuts the given circle. 
 Then, suppose the point given through which the line 
 is to be drawn, if we find that the curve in which the 
 other points are situate is a circle, we have a local 
 theorem, affirming that, if lines be drawn through any 
 point to a line perpendicular to the diameter, the rect- 
 angle made by the segments of all the lines cutting the 
 perpendicular is constant ; and this theorem would be 
 demonstrated by supposing the thing true, and thus 
 reasoning till we find that the angle in a semicircle is 
 a right angle, a known truth. Lastly, suppose we 
 change the hypothesis, and leave out the position of 
 the point as given, and inquire after the point in the 
 given straight line from which a line being drawn 
 through a point to be found in the circle, the segments 
 will contain a rectangle equal to the rectangle under 
 the perpendicular segments we find that one point 
 answers this condition, but also that the problem 
 becomes indeterminate ; for every line drawn through 
 that point to every point in the given straight line has 
 segments, whose rectangle is equal to that under the 
 segments of the perpendicular. The enunciation of 
 this truth, of this possibility of finding such a point 
 in the circle, is a Porism. The Greek geometers of 
 the more modern school, or lower age, defined a 
 Porism to be a proposition differing from a local 
 theorem by a defect or defalcation in the hypothesis ; 
 
126 SIMSON. 
 
 and accordingly we find that this porism is derived 
 from the local theorem formerly given, by leaving out 
 part of the hypothesis. But we shall afterwards have 
 occasion to observe that this is an illogical and imper- 
 fect definition, not coextensive with the thing defined ; 
 the above proposition, however, answers every defini- 
 tion of a Porism. 
 
 The demonstration of the theorem or of the construc- 
 tion obtained by investigation in this manner of pro- 
 ceeding, is called synthesis, or composition, in opposi- 
 tion to the analysis, or the process of investigation; 
 and it is frequently said that Plato imported the whole 
 system in the visits which he made, like Thales of 
 Miletus and Pythagoras, to study under the Egyptian 
 geometers, and afterwards to converse with Theodoras 
 at Gyrene, and the Pythagorean School in Italy. But 
 it can hardly be supposed that all the preceding geo- 
 meters had worked their problems and theorems at 
 random; that Thales and Pythagoras with their dis- 
 ciples, a century and a half before Plato, and Hip- 
 pocrates, half a century before his time, had no 
 knowledge of the analytical method, and pursued no 
 systematic plan in their researches, devoted as their 
 age was to geometrical studies. Plato may have im- 
 proved and further systematized the method, as he 
 was no doubt deeply impressed with the paramount 
 importance of geometry, and even inscribed upon the 
 gates of the Lyceum a prohibition against any one 
 entering who was ignorant of it. The same spirit of 
 exaggeration which ascribes to him the analytical 
 method, has also given rise to the notion that he was 
 the discoverer of the Conic Sections ; a notion which 
 is without any truth and without the least probability. 
 
 Of the works written by the Greek geometers some 
 have come down to us ; some of the most valuable, as 
 the 'Elements' and 'Data' of Euclid, and the ' Conies' 
 of Apollonius. Others are lost ; but, happily, Pappus, 
 a mathematician of some merit, who flourished in the 
 
SIMSON. 127 
 
 Alexandrian school about the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury, has left a valuable account of the geometrical 
 writings of the elder Greeks. His work is of a mis- 
 cellaneous nature, as its name, 'Mathematical Col- 
 lections,' implies ; and excepting a few passages, it 
 has never been published in the original Greek. Com- 
 mandini, of Urbino, made a translation of the whole 
 six books then discovered ; the first has never been 
 found, but half the second being in the Savilian library 
 at Oxford, was translated by Wallis a century later. 
 Commanclini's translation, with his learned commen- 
 tary, was not printed before his death, but the Duke 
 of Urbino (Francesco Maria) caused it to be published 
 in 1588, at Pisa, and a second edition was published 
 at Venice the next year : a fact most honourable to 
 that learned and accomplished age, when we recollect 
 how many years Newton's immortal work was pub- 
 lished before it reached a second edition, and that in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 The two first books of Pappus appear to have been 
 purely arithmetical, so that their loss is little to be 
 lamented. The eighth is on mechanics, and the other 
 five are geometrical. The most interesting portion is 
 the seventh ; the introduction of which, addressed to 
 his son as a guide of his geometrical studies, contains 
 a full enumeration of the works written by the Greek 
 geometers, and an account of the particular subjects 
 which each treated, in some instances giving a sum- 
 mary of the propositions themselves with more or less 
 obscurity, but always with great brevity. Among 
 them was a work which excited great interest, and for 
 a long time baffled the conjectures of mathematicians, 
 Euclid's three books of * Porisms :' of these we shall 
 afterwards have occasion to speak more fully. His 
 ' Loci ad Superficiem,' apparently treating of curves 
 of double curvature, is another, the loss of which was 
 greatly lamented, the more because Pappus has given 
 no account of its contents. This he had done in the 
 
128 SIMSON. 
 
 case of the 'Loci Plani' of Apollonius. Euclid's four 
 books on conic sections are also lost ; but of Apol- 
 lonius's eight books on the same subject, the most 
 important of the whole series, the ' Elements' excepted, 
 four were preserved, and three more were discovered 
 in the seventeenth century. His Inclinations, his 
 Tactions or Tangencies, his sections of Space and of 
 Ratio, and his Determinate section, however curious, 
 are of less importance ; all of them are lost. 
 
 For many years Commandini's publication of the 
 * Collections' and his commentary did not lead to any 
 attempt at restoring the lost works from the general 
 account given by Pappus. Albert Girard, in 1634, 
 informs us in a note to an edition to Stevinus, that he 
 had restored Euclid's 'Porisms,' a thing eminently 
 unlikely, as he never published any part of his resto- 
 ration, and it was not found after his decease. In 
 1637, Fermat restored the * Loci Plani' of Apollonius, 
 but in a manner so little according to the ancient 
 analysis, that we cannot be said to approach by means 
 of his labours the lost book on this subject. In 1615, 
 De la Hire, a lover and a successful cultivator of the 
 ancient method, published his Conic Sections, but 
 synthetically treated; he added afterwards other works 
 on epicycloids and conchoids, treated on the analytical 
 plan. L'Hopital, at the end of the seventeenth century, 
 published an excellent treatise on Conies, but purely 
 algebraical. At the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, Viviani and Grandi applied themselves to the 
 ancient geometry; and the former gave a conjectural 
 restoration (Divinatio) of Aristaeus's * Loci Solidi,' the 
 curves of the second or Conic order. But all these 
 attempts were exceedingly unsuccessful, and the world 
 was left in the dark, for the most part, on the highly 
 interesting subject of the Greek geometry. We shall 
 presently see that both Fermat and Halley, its most 
 successful students, had made but an inconsiderable 
 progress in the most difficult branches. 
 
SIMSON. 129 
 
 How entirely the academicians of France were either 
 careless of those matters, or ignorant, or both, appears 
 by the ' Encyclopedic'; the mathematical department 
 of which was under no less a geometrician than 
 D'Alembert. The definition there given of analysis 
 makes it synonymous with algebra : and yet mention 
 is made of the ancient writers on analysis, and of the 
 introduction to the seventh book of Pappus, with only 
 this remark, that those authors differ much from the 
 modern analysts. But the article * Arithmetic' (vol. i., 
 p. 677) demonstrates this ignorance completely ; and 
 that Pappus's celebrated introduction had been referred 
 to by one who never read it. We there find it said, that 
 Plato is supposed to have invented the ancient analysis ; 
 that Euclid, Apollonius, and others, including Pappus 
 himself, studied it, but that we are quite ignorant 
 of what it was : only that it is by some conceived to 
 have resembled our algebra, as else Archimedes could 
 never have made his great geometrical discoveries. It is, 
 certainly, quite incredible that such a name as D'Alem- 
 bert's should be found affixed to this statement, which the 
 mere reading of any one page of Pappus's books must 
 have shown to be wholly erroneous ; and our wonder 
 is the greater, inasmuch as Sim son's admirable res- 
 toration of Apollonius's ' Loci Plani' had been pub- 
 lished five years before the 'Encyclopedic' appeared. 
 
 Again, in the ' Encyclopedic,' the word Analysis, 
 as meaning the Greek method, and not algebra, is not 
 even to be found. Nor do the words synthesis, or 
 composition, inclinations, tactions or tangencies, occur 
 at all ; and though Porisms are mentioned, it is only 
 to show the same ignorance of the subject : for that 
 word is said to be synonymous with * lemma,' because 
 it is sometimes used by Pappus in the sense of sub- 
 sidiary proposition.* When Clairault wrote his ines- 
 timable work on curves of double curvature, he made 
 no reference whatever to Euclid's 'Loci ad Superficiem,' 
 
 * Euclid uses the word Corollary in his Elements. 
 K 
 
130 SIMSON. 
 
 much less did he handle the subject after the same 
 manner; he deals, indeed, with matters beyond the 
 reach of the Greek geometry. 
 
 Such was the state of this science when Robert 
 Simson first applied to it his genius, equally vigorous 
 and undaunted, with the taste which he had early 
 imbibed for the beauty, the simplicity, and the close- 
 ness of the ancient analysis. 
 
 EGBERT SIMSON was born on the 1 4th October (o.s.), 
 1687, at Kirton Hill, in the parish of Wester Kilbride, 
 in Ayrshire. His father, John Simson, was a mer- 
 chant in Glasgow ; his grandfather, Patrick, was mini- 
 ster of Renfrew, and Dean of the Faculties in the 
 University of Glasgow. Having been deprived at the 
 Restoration, on being reinstated at the Revolution, he 
 accompanied Principal Carstairs and a deputation as 
 one of the Commissioners from the Kirk of Scotland 
 to address the Sovereigns. Being a man of fine pre- 
 sence, it is related that the Queen and her maids of 
 honour mistook him for the Principal, till the King set 
 them right by presenting Carstairs to them. The 
 grandson, Robert, is said to have been the eldest of 
 seventeen children; and the estate of Kirton Hill, 
 which had been in the family for several generations, 
 being inconsiderable, it was necessary for him, as well 
 as his brothers, to be placed in some profession. The 
 assertion is made in one account, written by a son of 
 Professor Millar, and is likely to be correct, that he 
 was intended for the medical profession, and being 
 sent to Leyden studied under Boerhaave. He appears 
 to have been at first intended for the Church, and to 
 have changed his plan. Dr. Traill, however, says, 
 that he was always intended for the Church, and that 
 when the University of St. Andrew's, in 1746, wished 
 to confer on him a degree, they made him a Doctor of 
 Medicine, because he had studied botany in his youth. 
 Nothing can be more improbable than this story; for 
 
SIMSON. 131 
 
 to give him a degree they had only to make him 
 Doctor of Laws, instead of taking a step which for 
 ever threw discredit upon their medical honours. Mr. 
 Millar must have heard the truth from his father and 
 the other professors, who had the honour of knowing 
 Dr. Simson personally, and never could have imagined 
 or invented the circumstance of his studying under 
 Boerhaave.* 
 
 Of his early years we know little; but that he was 
 always extremely fond of reading is certain; and he 
 must have had a considerable turn for mechanical 
 pursuits if the tradition in the neighbourhood of Kirton 
 Hill be well founded, which ascribes to him the making, 
 or at least designing and placing a dial of a curious 
 form (which I have seen) on a neatly ornamented pe- 
 destal in the garden of his father's house. At the usual 
 early age of matriculation in Scotland, he was sent to 
 the University of Glasgow, and he had there made con- 
 siderable progress in his studies before the love of 
 mathematical pursuits appealed to possess him. His 
 attention was directed to theology, to logic, to Oriental 
 learning; and in the latter he had made such progress, 
 that a relation who taught the class having fallen ill, 
 Simson easily supplied his place for part of a session, 
 the Scottish academical year. It was while engaged 
 in theological studies that the mathematics first seized 
 hold of his mind. He used in after life to relate how, 
 wearied with the controversies to which his clerical 
 studies led him, he would refresh himself with philo- 
 sophical reading; and not seldom finding himself there 
 also tossed about by conflicting dogmas, he retired for 
 peace and shelter to the certain science of necessary 
 truth; "and then," said he, " I always found myself 
 refreshed with rest." 
 
 * The account which T have seen was in the late Earl of Buchan's pos- 
 session, and was extended by matters collected when he himself studied at 
 Glasgow. It seems by the mathematical appearance of it to have come 
 from James Millar, himself one of the professors. 
 
132 SIMSOIST. 
 
 It happened that no lecture or teaching of any kind 
 was given by the professor who filled the mathematical 
 chair, receiving its emoluments, and neglecting its 
 duties, when Simson went to the University. But 
 curiosity, a propensity ever strong in his nature through 
 his whole life, made him wish to see what the science 
 was, and he borrowed from a friend a copy of Euclid, 
 the work which he was destined afterwards to give 
 forth in a perfection that has made all other editions 
 of that great classic be forgotten. Over the elements 
 of the science he pored assiduously and alone, with 
 only the aid of suggestions occasionally given by a 
 student some years older than himself; and the study 
 falling in with his genius and his taste, he soon made 
 himself master of the first six books, comprising plain 
 geometry, and the eleventh and twelfth, treating of 
 solids, those at least which are bounded by planes or 
 by circular arches. But he did not neglect the other 
 branches of science taught at the College ; and he also 
 gave his attention to the literary parts of education, 
 so well mastering the Latin and Greek languages as to 
 become a learned and accurate scholar. It was in the 
 mathematics, however, that he chiefly excelled ; and 
 his accomplishments in that science becoming known 
 to the professorial body (the Senatus Academicus), 
 in whom is vested the patronage of the mathematical 
 chair, and an early vacancy being foreseen, they offered 
 him the succession in that event. Being then in his 
 twenty-second year, he modestly declined to undertake 
 so important a charge, but requested a year's delay, 
 during which he might repair to London, and become 
 more familiar with the science and its cultivators. We 
 may hence perceive that there could then have been 
 no one at all versed in the mathematics at Glasgow ; 
 and the allowing so important a branch of science to 
 remain for so many years untaught because the teacher 
 who received the ample emoluments of the chair either 
 could not or would not perform its duties, affords a 
 
SIMSON. 133 
 
 sufficient commentary upon the great abuse likely to 
 flow from vesting the patronage of a professorship in 
 the colleagues of the teacher. I have known a profes- 
 sor's son appointed to the same chair, with few or no 
 mathematical acquirements, because his father was 
 much and justly respected among the members of the 
 academical body. The same thing could not happen 
 in Edinburgh, where the Crown or the magistrates 
 have the patronage of all the professorships excepting 
 one, and that is in the representative of the founder.* 
 Simson repaired accordingly to London, where he 
 became intimately acquainted, among others, with 
 Jones the optician, with Henry Ditton of Christ's 
 Hospital, under whose tuition he placed himself, with 
 Carswell, above all, with Edmund Halley, then a cap- 
 tain in the Navy, afterwards so celebrated as Dr. 
 Halley ; of whom he used to assert that " he had never 
 known any other man of so acute and penetrating an 
 understanding, and of so pure a taste." From him he 
 received much personal kindness, and what he had 
 reason to value still more, the advice to prosecute his 
 study of the Ancient Geometry, and attempt restoring 
 its lost books. Halley made him a present of his copy 
 of Pappus, with notes in his own hand. But though 
 these accidental circumstances tended to direct his 
 attention towards the scrupulous rigour as well as sur- 
 passing elegance of the Greek methods, it is a great 
 mistake to suppose that he objected to the strictness 
 of the modern analysis as inadequate. That he deemed 
 its beauty inferior, and that he was right in so deem- 
 ing, is certain ; but that he questioned the solidity of 
 its foundations is wholly untrue. Not only did he al- 
 ways explain its principles to his pupils, though in a 
 manner peculiar to himself, but he has left behind him 
 a treatise demonstrating the fundamental laws of the 
 calculus, and we now possess it in a printed form. 
 
 * Agriculture, in the Pulteney FamHy. 
 
134 SIMSON. 
 
 Equally groundless is the notion that he questioned 
 the soundness of the Newtonian Philosophy. He was 
 not enabled to make Sir Isaac's acquaintance during 
 his residence in London ; but among those he lived 
 with he constantly had seen him viewed with a pecu- 
 liar observance, and H alley in particular regarded him 
 as hardly human, and his attainments in science as 
 exalting our species, while they ennobled himself, its 
 rarest individual. Simson's copy of the 'Principia' is 
 fully noted in the margin with illustrations, showing 
 that he entirely assented to the results of the investi- 
 gations in the several propositions, and only wished 
 to substitute certain steps in the demonstrations. 
 Professor Robison has also related (Art. Simson, Encyc. 
 Brit. xvii. 505) his constant remark, that the celebrated 
 proposition in the ' Principia' on inverse centripetal 
 forces " was the most important ever delivered to man- 
 kind in the mixed mathematics." 
 
 While he remained in London the expected vacancy 
 occurred in the chair at Glasgow, and he returned 
 thither. The professors appear to have thought it 
 right that their former neglect of duty should be com- 
 pensated by a very superfluous show of more than need- 
 ful attention to it on this occasion ; for they required 
 Mr. Simson to give proof of his fitness to succeed the 
 sinecure incumbent, by solving a geometrical problem, 
 of which it is all but absolutely certain that they could 
 have no knowledge, unless the question was so simple 
 as to afford no test of the candidate's capacity. He 
 produced, however, what they might better understand, 
 testimonials from known mathematicians in London, 
 a farther proof of there being no cultivators of the 
 science then resident in the metropolis of Scottish 
 manufactures. 
 
 He was thus appointed professor in 1711, and im- 
 mediately began the regular course of instruction, 
 which he continued for half a century. He taught 
 two classes five days a week for seven months every 
 
SIMSON. 135 
 
 year. Though geometry was his own favourite study, 
 he was a thorough algebraist also, and so well versed 
 in mathematical science at large, that he gave lectures 
 on its general history. With astronomy, and the other 
 branches of the mixed mathematics, he was no less 
 conversant ; and in various departments of physics he 
 had made great progress. In botany he was parti- 
 cularly expert ; it formed his chosen amusement dur- 
 ing the walks in which he relaxed from his severer 
 studies. His curiosity led him into other paths of 
 science. To logic, that of the schools, he had given 
 so much attention, that of a tract, composed by him 
 upon its principles, some portion remains among his 
 papers ; it is said to possess great merit ; and doubtless 
 this study was congenial to the one which he mainly 
 pursued, nor could it fail to aid his strict and luminous 
 method of both defining, demonstrating, and explain- 
 ing the truths of geometry. 
 
 Among his colleagues, after he had been professor 
 a few years, were some of the most eminent men of 
 that, or indeed of any age. Moore, professor of Greek, 
 and author of the admirable and elegant ' Grammar ;' 
 Hutcheson, and Adam Smith, successively teachers of 
 moral philosophy ; Cullen, the celebrated physician ; 
 Black, the great founder of modern chemistry all 
 taught while Simson flourished ; Millar only became 
 professor of law at the close of the brilliant period now 
 referred to, and Robison succeeded Black in 176 J, 
 soon after Simson's resignation. 
 
 But a teacher's influence is nothing in surrounding 
 himself with illustrious colleagues; of great pupils he 
 may more easily obtain a following. Of these, Dr. 
 Simson had some whose names are still honoured 
 among mathematicians. Williamson, afterwards his 
 assistant in the class, a man of great promise, whose 
 early death at the Factory of Lisbon, to which he was 
 chaplain, alone prevented him from following with 
 distinction his master's footsteps ; Scott, preceptor to 
 
136 SIMSON. 
 
 George III. when Prince of Wales, afterwards a Com- 
 missioner of Excise in London, perhaps the most ac- 
 complished of all amateur mathematicians who never 
 gave their works to the world ; Traill, author of the 
 excellent elementary treatise of algebra, of a very 
 learned and exceedingly ill-written, indeed, hardly 
 readable, life of his friend and teacher, but a man of 
 great capacity for science, entirely extinguished, to- 
 gether with his taste for its pursuits (as Professor 
 Playfair used to lament), by the sinecure emoluments 
 of the Irish Church ; but above all, Matthew Stewart, 
 Simson's favourite pupil, and whose suggestions, and 
 indeed contributions, he records in his works with 
 appropriate eulogy, as he does on one occasion an in- 
 genious theorem of Traill these were among his 
 scholars, and were, with Robison, the most distin- 
 guished of their number. His method of lecturing 
 is, by both of the pupils who have written his history, 
 Professor Robison and Dr. Traill, described as singu- 
 larly attractive. His explanations were perfectly clear, 
 and were delivered with great spirit, as well as with 
 the pure taste which presided over all his mathemati- 
 cal processes. His elocution was distinct and natural, 
 his whole manner at once easy and impressive. He 
 did not confine his tuition to the chair, but encouraged 
 his pupils to propound their difficulties in private, and 
 was always accessible to their demands of assistance 
 and advice. Hence the affectionate zeal with which 
 they followed his teaching and ever cherished his 
 memory. 
 
 Successful, however, as he proved in the chair, his 
 genius was bent to the diligent investigation of truth, 
 in the science of which he was so great a master. 
 The ancient geometry, that of the Greeks of which I 
 have spoken, early fixed his attention and occupied his 
 mind by its extraordinary elegance, by the lucid clear- 
 ness with which its investigations are conducted, by 
 the exercise which it affords to the reasoning faculties, 
 
SIMSON. 137 
 
 and above all, by the absolute rigour of its demonstra- 
 tions. He never undervalued modern analysis ; it is 
 a great mistake to represent him as either disliking 
 its process, or insensible to its vast importance for the 
 solution of questions which the Greek analysis is 
 wholly incapable of reaching. But he considered it 
 as only to be used in its proper sphere ; and that 
 sphere he held to exclude whatever of geometrical 
 investigation can be, with convenience and elegance, 
 carried on by purely geometrical methods. The appli- 
 cation of algebra to geometry, it would be ridiculous 
 to suppose that either he or his celebrated pupil 
 Stewart disliked or undervalued. That application 
 forms the most valuable service which modern analysis 
 has rendered to science. But they did object, and 
 most reasonably and consistently, to the introduction 
 of algebraic reasoning wherever the investigation 
 could, though less easily, yet far more satisfactorily, 
 be performed geometrically. They saw, too, that in 
 many instances the algebraic solution leads to con- 
 structions of the most complex, clumsy, unmanageable 
 kind, and therefore must be, in all these instances, 
 reckoned more difficult, and even more prolix than 
 the geometrical, from the former being confined to the 
 expression of all the relations of space and position, 
 by magnitudes, by quantity and number, (even after 
 the arithmetic of sines had been introduced,) while the 
 latter could avail itself of circles and angles directly. 
 They would have equally objected to carrying geome- 
 trical reasoning into the fields peculiarly appropriate 
 to modern analysis ; and if one of them, Stewart, did 
 endeavour to investigate by the ancient geometry 
 physical problems supposed to be placed beyond its 
 reach as the sun's distance, in which he failed, and 
 Kepler's problem, in which he marvellously succeeded, 
 that of dividing the elliptical area in a given ratio by 
 a straight line drawn from one focus this is to be 
 taken only as an homage to the undervalued potency 
 
138 SIMSON. 
 
 of the Greek analysis, or at most, as a feat of geome- 
 trical force, and by no means as an indication of any 
 wish to substitute so imperfect, however beautiful, an 
 instrument, for the more powerful, though more or- 
 dinary one of the calculus which " alone can work 
 great marvels." At the same time, and with all the 
 necessary confession of the merits of the modern 
 method, it is certain that those geometricians would 
 have regarded the course taken by some of its votaries 
 in more recent times as exceptionable, whether with a 
 view to clearness or to good taste : a course to the full 
 as objectionable as would be the banishing of alge- 
 braical and substituting of geometrical symbols in the 
 investigations of the higher geometry. La Place's great 
 work, the i Mecanique Celeste,' and La Grange's * Me- 
 canique Analytique,' have treated of the whole science 
 of dynamics and of physical astronomy, comprehending 
 all the doctrine of trajectories, dealing with geometri- 
 cal ideas throughout, and ideas so purely geometrical 
 that the algebraic symbols, as far as their works are 
 concerned, have no possible meaning apart from lines, 
 angles, surfaces ; and yet in their whole compass they 
 have not one single diagram of any kind. Surely, 
 
 _ ds 3 * 
 
 we may ask if jLy dx*+dy*, jj/dN can 
 
 y 
 
 sibly bear any other meaning than the tangent and 
 the radius of curvature of a curve line : that is, a 
 straight line touching a curve, and a circle whose cur- 
 vature is that of another curve where they meet; any 
 meaning, at least, which can make it material that they 
 should ever be seen on the page of the analyst. These 
 expressions are utterly without sense, except in refer- 
 ence to geometrical considerations ; for although x and 
 
 * Or (<fa4-<fy a )ft 
 
 (I) 
 
SIMSON. 139 
 
 y are so general that they express any numbers, any 
 lines, nay, any ideas, any rewards or punishments, any 
 thoughts of the mind, it is manifest that the square of 
 the differential of a thought, or the differential of the 
 differential of a reward or punishment, has no meaning; 
 and so of every thing else but of the very tangent or 
 the osculating circle's radius : consequently the gen- 
 erality of the symbols is wholly useless ; the particular 
 case of two lines being the only thing to which the 
 expressions can possibly be meant to apply. Why, 
 then, all geometrical symbols should be so carefully 
 avoided when we are really treating of geometrical 
 examples and geometrical ideas, and of these alone, 
 seems hard to understand. 
 
 As the exclusive lovers of modern analysis have 
 frequently and very erroneously suspected the ancients 
 of possessing some such instrument, and concealing 
 the use of it by giving their demonstrations syntheti- 
 cally after reaching their conclusions analytically, so 
 some lovers of ancient analysis have supposed that 
 Sir Isaac Newton obtained his solutions by algebraic 
 investigations, and then covered them with a synthetic 
 dress. Among others, Dr. Simson leant to this opin- 
 ion respecting the ' Principia.' He used to say that 
 he knew this from Halley, by whose urgent advice 
 Sir Isaac was induced to adopt the synthetic form of 
 demonstration, after having discovered the truths ana- 
 lytically. Machin is known to have held the same 
 language; he said that the 'Principia' was algebra in 
 disguise. Assuredly, the probability of this is far 
 greater than that of the ancients having possessed and 
 kept secret the analytical process of modern times. 
 In the preface to his ' Loci Plani,' Dr. Simson fully re- 
 futes this notion respecting the ancients : a notion 
 which, among others, no less a writer than Wallis had 
 strongly maintained.* 
 
 * Algebra Prsef. " Hanc Grsecos olim habuisse non est quod dubite- 
 mus ; sed studio celatam, nee temere propalandam. Ejus effectus (utut 
 
140 SIMSOX. 
 
 Dr. Slmson is by some supposed to have had at one 
 time the intention of discussing at large the proper 
 limits of the ancient and the modern analysis in the 
 investigation of mathematical truths. This no doubt 
 appears to be the meaning of a passage in his preface 
 to the Conic Sections : " In quantum autem differat 
 analysis geometrica ab ea quae calculo instituitur alge- 
 braico, atque ubi li&c aut ilia sit usurpanda, alias dis- 
 serendum" Professor Robison thought he had seen a 
 portion of the work; but he must have been mistaken; 
 for in answer to Mr. Scott's letter urging him to pub- 
 lish this, and referring to the preface in the words just 
 cited, he expressly says, that though this passage 
 might well mislead, he never meant, except by " blun- 
 dering in the expression, anything of the kind, had no 
 paper, and never wrote anything about the matter : " 
 and this was written in 1764, four years before his 
 death, and eleven or twelve years after Professor 
 Kobison attended his class. Nothing can be more 
 clear than that between 1764 and his death, in 1768, 
 he never attempted any work of moment; much more 
 any work such as the one in question, which we thus 
 have his own authority for saying he never had pre- 
 viously entertained any intention of composing. It is 
 much to be lamented that he never did give such a 
 work to -the world. His thoughts had often been 
 very profoundly directed to the subject; and no one 
 was so well fitted to handle it with the learning and 
 with the judgment which its execution required. 
 
 clam celatae) satis conspicui apud Archimedera, Apollonium, aliosque." It 
 is strange that any one of ordinary reflection should have overlooked the 
 utter impossibility of all the geometricians hi ancient times keeping the 
 secret of an art which must, if it existed, have been universally known in 
 the mathematical schools, and at a time when every man of the least 
 learning or even of the most ordinary education was taught geometry. 
 Montucla touches on this subject, but not with his wonted accuracy, 
 (I., 166.) Indeed, he seems to confound ancient with modern analysis, 
 although no one has more accurately described and illustrated the ancient 
 method, (I., 164, 275.) He adopts the erroneous notion of Plato having 
 discovered this method, but he does not fall into the other error of ascrib- 
 ing to him the discovery of Conic Sections, (ib. 1G8.) 
 
srasoN. 141 
 
 That lie did not undervalue algebra and the calculus 
 to which it has given rise, appears from many circum- 
 stances among others, from what has already been 
 stated ; it appears also from this, that in many of his 
 manuscripts there are found algebraical formulas for 
 propositions which he had investigated geometrically. 
 Maclaurin consulted him on the preparation of his 
 admirable work, the 4 Fluxions,' and received from 
 him copious suggestions and assistance. Indeed, he 
 adopted from him the celebrated demonstration of the 
 fluxion (or differential) of a rectangle.* But Simson's 
 whole mind, when left to its natural bent, was given 
 to the beauties of the Greek geometry; and he had 
 not been many months settled in his academical situ- 
 ation when he began to follow the advice which Halley 
 had given him, as both calculated, he said, to promote 
 his own reputation, and to confer a lasting benefit 
 upon the science cultivated by them both with an 
 equal devotion. It is even certain that the obscure 
 and most difficult subject of Porisms very early occu- 
 pied his thoughts, and was the field of his researches, 
 though to the end of his life he never had made such 
 progress in the investigation as satisfied himself. Be- 
 fore 1715, three years after he began his course of 
 teaching, he was deeply engaged in this inquiry; but 
 he only regarded it as one branch of the great and 
 dark subject which Halley had recommended to his 
 care. After he had completely examined, corrected, 
 and published, with most important additions, the 
 Conies of Apollonius, which happily remain entire, 
 but which, as we have seen, had been most inele- 
 gantly and indeed algebraically given by De la Hire, 
 L'Hopital, and others, to restore the lost books was his 
 great desire, and formed the grand achievement which 
 he set before his eyes. 
 
 We have already shown how scanty the light was 
 
 * Book i., chap, ii., prop. 3. 
 
142 SIMSOX. 
 
 by which his steps in this path must be guided. The 
 introduction to the Seventh book of Pappus contained 
 the whole that had reached our times to let us know 
 the contents of the lost works. Some of the sum- 
 maries which that valuable discourse contains are suffi- 
 ciently explicit, as those of the Loci Plani and the 
 Determinate Section. Accordingly, former geometri- 
 cians had succeeded in restoring the Loci Plani, or 
 those propositions which treat of loci to the circle and 
 rectilinear figures. They had, indeed, proceeded in 
 a very unsatisfactory manner. Schooten, a Dutch 
 mathematician of great industry and no taste, had 
 
 flven purely algebraic solutions and demonstrations. 
 ermat, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 
 seventeenth century, had proceeded more acccrdin 
 to the geometrical rules of the ancients; but he h 
 kept to general solutions, and neither he nor Schooten 
 had given the different cases, according as the data in 
 each proposition were varied ; so that their works 
 were nearly useless in the solution of problems, the 
 great purpose of Apollonius, as of all the authors 
 of the TOTTOC avaXwojUfvou the thirty-three ancient 
 books. As for the analysis, it was given by neither, 
 unless, indeed, Schooten's algebra is to be so termed. 
 Fermat's demonstrations were all synthetical. His 
 treatise, though written as early as 1629, was only pub- 
 lished among his collected works in 1670. Schooten's 
 was published among his ' Exercitationes Mathema- 
 ticae' in 1657. Of the field thus left open, Dr. 
 Simson took possession, and he most successfully 
 cultivated every corner of it. Nothing is left without 
 the most full discussion; all the cases of each proposi- 
 tion are thoroughly investigated. Many new truths 
 of great importance are added to those which had 
 been unfolded by the Greek philosopher. The whole 
 is given with the perfect precision and the pure ele- 
 gance of the ancient analysis; and the universal assent 
 of the scientific world has even confessed that there is 
 
SIMSON. 143 
 
 every reason to consider the restored work as greatly 
 superior to the lost original. 
 
 The history of this excellent treatise shows in a 
 striking manner the cautious and modest nature of its 
 author. He had completed it in 1738; but, unsatisfied 
 with it, he kept it by him for eight years. He could 
 not bring himself to think that he had given the 
 "ipsissimae propositiones of Apollonius in the very 
 order and spirit of the original work." He was then 
 persuaded to let the book appear, and it was pub- 
 lished in 1746. His former scruples and alarms re- 
 curred; he stopped the publication; he bought up the 
 copies that had been sold ; he kept them three years 
 longer by him; and it was only in 1749 that the work 
 really appeared. Thus had a geometrician complied 
 with the rule prescribed by Horace for those who 
 have no standard by which to estimate with exactness 
 the merit of their writings. 
 
 In the meantime he had extended his researches 
 into other parts of the subject. Among the rest he 
 had restored and greatly extended the work on Deter- 
 minate Section, or the various propositions respecting 
 the properties of the squares and rectangles of seg- 
 ments of lines passing through given points. There 
 is no doubt that the prolixity, however elegant, with 
 which the ancients treated this subject, is somewhat 
 out of proportion to its importance ; and as it is pecu- 
 liarly adapted to the algebraical method, presenting, 
 indeed, little difficulty to the analyst, the loss of the 
 Pergaean treatise is the less to be deplored, and its re- 
 storation was the less to be desired. Apollonius had 
 even thought it expedient to give a double set of solu- 
 tions ; one by straight lines, the other by semicircles. 
 Dr. Simson's restoration is most full, certainly, and 
 contains many and large additions of his own. It fills 
 above three hundred quarto pages. His predecessors 
 had been Snellius, whose attempt, published in 1608, 
 was universally allowed to be a failure ; and Anderson, 
 
144 SIMSON. 
 
 a professor of Aberdeen, whose work, in 1612, was 
 much better, but confined to a small part only of the 
 subject. 
 
 About the time that Dr. Simson finally published 
 the Loci Plani, he began his great labour of giving a 
 correct and full edition of the Elements. The manner 
 in which this has been accomplished by him is well 
 known. The utmost care was bestowed on the revi- 
 sion of the text; no pains were spared in collating 
 editions ; all commentaries were consulted ; and the 
 elegance and perfect method of the original has been 
 so admirably preserved, that no rival has ever yet risen 
 up to dispute with Simson's Euclid the possession of 
 the schools. The time bestowed on this useful work 
 was no less than nine years. It only was published in 
 1758. To the second edition, in 1762, he added a 
 similarly correct edition of the Data, comprising several 
 very valuable original propositions of his own, of Mr. 
 Stewart, and of Lord Stanhope, together with two 
 excellent problems to illustrate the use of the Data in 
 solutions. 
 
 We thus find Dr. Simson employed in these various 
 works which he successively gave to the world, elabo- 
 rated with infinite care, and of which the fame and 
 the use will remain as long as the mathematics are 
 cultivated, some of them delighting students who pur- 
 sue the science for the mere speculative love of con- 
 templating abstract truths, and the gratification of fol- 
 lowing the rigorous proofs peculiar to that science; 
 some for the instruction of men in the elements, which 
 are to form the foundation of their practical applications 
 of geometry. But all the while his mind never could 
 be wholly weaned from the speculation which had in 
 his earliest days riveted his attention by its curious 
 and singular nature, and fired his youthful ambition by 
 its difficulty, and its having vanquished all his prede- 
 cessors in their efforts to master it. We have seen 
 that as early as 1715 at the latest, probably much 
 
SIMSON. 145 
 
 earlier, the obscure subject of Porisms had engaged 
 his thoughts ; and soon after, his mind was so entirely 
 absorbed by it that he could apply to no other investi- 
 gation. The extreme imperfection of the text of Pappus, 
 the dubious nature of his description, his rejection of 
 the definition which appeared intelligible, his substi- 
 tuting nothing in its place except an account so general 
 that it really conveyed no precise information, the 
 hiatus in the account which he subjoins of Euclid's 
 three books, so that even with the help of the lemmas 
 related to these propositions of the lost work, no clear 
 or steady light could be descried to guide the inquirer 
 for the first porism of the first book alone remained 
 entire, the general porism being given wholly truncated 
 (mancum et imperfectum) all seemed to present 
 obstacles wholly insurmountable, and after various 
 attempts for years he was fain to conclude with Halley 
 that the mystery belonged to the number of those which 
 can never be penetrated. He lost his rest in the anxiety 
 of this inquiry ; sleep forsook his couch, his appetite 
 was gone ; his health was wholly shaken ; he was com- 
 pelled to give over the pursuit ; he was " obliged," he 
 says, " to resolve steadily that he never more should 
 touch the subject, and as often as it came upon him he 
 drove it away from his thoughts."* 
 
 It happened, however, about the month of April, 
 1722, that while walking on the banks of the Clyde 
 with some friends, he had fallen behind the company ; 
 and musing alone, the rejected topic found access to 
 his thoughts. After some time a sudden light broke 
 in upon him ; it seemed at length as if he could descry 
 something of a path, slippery, tangled, interrupted, but 
 still practicable, and leading at least in the direction 
 towards the object of his research. He eagerly drew 
 a figure on the stump of a neighbouring tree with a 
 
 * " Firmiter animum induxi haec nunqnam in posterum investigare. 
 Uncle quoties menti occuirebant, toties eas arcebam." (Op. Eel. 320. 
 Prajf. ad Forismata.) 
 
 L 
 
146 SIMSON. 
 
 piece of chalk ; he felt assured that he had now the 
 means of solving the great problem ; and although he 
 afterwards tells us that he then had not a sufficiently 
 clear notion of the subject (eo tempore Porismatum 
 naturam non satis compertam habebam),* yet he accom- 
 plished enough to make him communicate a paper 
 upon the discovery to the Koyal Society, the first 
 work he ever published (Phil. Trans, for 1723). He 
 was wont in after life to show the spot on which the 
 tree, long since decayed, had stood. If peradventure 
 it had been preserved, the frequent lover of Greek 
 geometry would have been seen making his pilgrimage 
 to a spot consecrated by such touching recollections. 
 The graphic pen of Montucla, which gave such interest 
 to the story of the first observation of the transit of 
 Venus by Horrox in Lancashire, and to the Torricellian 
 experiment,! is alone wanting to clothe this passage in 
 colours as vivid and as unfading. 
 
 This great geometrician continued at all the intervals 
 of his other labours intently to investigate the subject 
 on which he thus first threw a steady light. 
 
 His first care upon having made this discovery was to 
 extend the particular propositions until he had obtained 
 the general one. A note among his memoranda appears 
 to have been made, as was his custom, of the date at 
 which he succeeded in any of his investigations. J 
 " Hodie hsec de porismatis inveni, R. S., 23 April 
 1722." Another note, 27th April, 1722, shows that 
 he had then obtained the general proposition ; he 
 afterwards communicated this to Maclaurin when he 
 
 * Op. Eel. 320. t Hist, de Math. vol. i. 
 
 J In one there is this note upon the solution of a problem of tactions, 
 
 " Feb. 9, 1734 : Post horam primam ante meridiem ;" and much later 
 
 in life we find the same particularity in marking the time of discovery. 
 
 His birthday was October 14, and having solved a problem on that day, 
 
 1764. he says ... ^ . , -_,,, 
 
 9 14 Octobr. 1 1 64. 
 
 Deo Opt. Max. benignissimo Servatori 14 Octobr. 1687. 
 
 Laus et gloria. 77 (scil. 
 
SIMSON. 147 
 
 passed through Glasgow on his way to France ; and 
 on his return he communicated to Dr. Simson without 
 demonstration a proposition concerning conies derived 
 from it, which led his friend to insert some important 
 investigations in his Conic Sections. In 1723 the 
 publication of his paper took place in the Philosophical 
 Transactions ; it is extremely short, and does not ap- 
 pear to contain all that the author had communicated ; 
 for we find this sentence inserted before the last por- 
 tion of the paper : " His adjecit clarrissimus professor 
 propositiones duas sequentes libri primi Porismatum 
 Euclidis, a se quoque restitutas." The paper contains 
 the first general proposition and its ten cases, and then 
 the second with its cases. No general description or 
 definition is given of Porisms ; and it is plain that 
 his mind was not then finally made up on this obscure 
 subject, although he had obtained a clear view of it 
 generally. 
 
 At what time his knowledge of the whole became 
 matured we are not informed ; but we know that his 
 own nature was nice and difficult on the subject of his 
 own works ; that he never was satisfied with what he 
 had accomplished ; and he probably went on making 
 constant additions and improvements to his work. 
 Often urged to publish, he as constantly refused ; in- 
 deed he would say that he had done nothing, or next 
 to nothing, which was in a state to appear before the 
 world ; and moreover, he very early began to appre- 
 hend a decay of his faculties, from observing his recol- 
 lection of recent things to fail, as is very usual with 
 all men ; for as early as 1751, we find him giving this 
 as a reason for declining to undertake a work on Lord 
 Stanhope's recommendation, when he was only in his 
 sixty-fifth year. Thus, though he at first used to say 
 he had nothing ready for publication, he afterwards 
 added, that he was too old to complete his work satis- 
 factorily. In his earlier days he used occasionally to 
 affect a kind of odd mystery on the subject, and when 
 
148 SIMSON. 
 
 one of his pupils (Dr. Traill) submitted to him some 
 propositions, which he regarded as porisms, Dr. Sim- 
 son would neither admit nor deny that they were such, 
 but said with some pleasantry, "they are propositions." 
 One of them, however, he has given in his work as a 
 porism, and with a complimentary reference to its 
 ingenious and learned author. 
 
 Thus his life wore away without completing this 
 great work, at least without putting it in such a con- 
 dition as satisfied himself. It was left among his MSS., 
 and by the judicious munificence of a noble geometri- 
 cian, the liberal friend of scientific men, as well as the 
 successful cultivator of science, Earl Stanhope,* it 
 was, after his death, published, with his restoration of 
 Apollonius' treatise De Sectione determinata, a short 
 paper on Logarithms, and another on the Method of 
 Limits geometrically demonstrated, the w 7 hole forming 
 a very handsome quarto volume ; of which the Porisms 
 occupies nearly one-half, or 277 pages. 
 
 This work is certainly the master-piece of its distin- 
 guished author. The extreme difficulty of the subject 
 was increased by the corruptions of the text that re- 
 mains in the only passage of the Greek geometers which 
 has reached us, the only few sentences in which any 
 mention whatever is made of porisms. This passage is 
 contained in the preface or introduction to the seventh 
 book of Pappus, which we have already had occasion 
 to cite. But this was by far the least of the difficulties 
 which met the inquirer after the hidden treasure, the 
 restorer of lost science, though Albert Girard thought 
 or said, in 1635, that he had restored the Porisms of 
 Euclid. As we have seen, no trace of his labours k 
 left; and it seems extremely unlikely that he should 
 have really performed such a feat and given no proofs 
 of it. Halley, the most learned and able of Dr. Sim- 
 son's predecessors, had tried the subject, and tried it 
 
 * Grandfather of the present Earl, whose father also was a successful 
 cultivator of natural science, mechanical especially. 
 
siMsosr. 149 
 
 in vain. He thus records his failure : " Hactenus 
 Porismatum descriptio nee mihi intellecta nee lectori 
 profutura." These are his words, in a preface to a 
 translation which he published of Pappus's seventh 
 book, much superior in execution to that of Comman- 
 dini. But this eminent geometrician was much more 
 honest than some, and much more safe and free from 
 mistake than others who touched upon the subject that 
 occupied all students of the ancient analysis. He was 
 far from pretending, like Girardus, to have discovered 
 that of which all were in quest. But neither did he 
 blunder like Pemberton, whom we find, the very year 
 of Simson's first publication, actually saying in his paper 
 on the Rainbow " For the greater brevity I shall de- 
 liver them (his propositions) in the form" of porisms, 
 as, in my opinion, the ancients called all propositions 
 treated by analysis only" (Philosophical Transactions, 
 1723, p. 148) ; and, truth to say, his investigation is not 
 very like ancient analysis either. The notion of D'Alem- 
 bert, somewhat later, has been alluded to already ; he 
 imagined porism to be synonymous with lemma, misled 
 by an equivocal use of the word in some passages of 
 ancient authors, if indeed he had ever studied any of 
 the writers on the Greek geometry, which, from what 
 I have stated before, seems exceedingly doubtful. But 
 the most extraordinary, and indeed inexcusable igno- 
 rance of the subject is to be seen in some who, long 
 after Simson's paper had been published, were still in 
 the dark ; and though that paper did not fully explain 
 the matter, it yet ought to have prevented such errors 
 as these fell into. Thus Castillon, in 1761, showed that 
 he conceived porisms to be merely the constructions of 
 Euclid's Data. If this were so, there might have been 
 some truth in his boast of having solved all the Porisms 
 of Euclid ; and he might have been able to perform his 
 promise of soon publishing a restoration of those lost 
 books. 
 
 It is remarkable enough that before Halley's attempts 
 
150 SIMSON. 
 
 and their failure, candidly acknowledged by himself, 
 Fermat had made a far nearer approach to a solution 
 of the difficulty than any other of Simson's predeces- 
 sors. That great geometrician, after fully admitting 
 the difficulty of the subject, and asserting* that, in 
 modern times, porisms were known hardly even by 
 name, announces somewhat too confidently, if not 
 somewhat vaino-loriously, that the light had at length 
 dawned upon him,f and that he should soon give a full 
 restoration of the whole three lost books of Euclid. 
 Now the light had but broke in by a small chink, as a 
 mere faint glimmering, and this restoration was quite 
 impossible, inasmuch as there remained no account of 
 what those books contained, excepting a very small 
 portion obscurely mentioned in the preface of Pappus, 
 and the lemmas given in the course of the seventh 
 book, and given as subservient to the resolution of 
 porismatic questions. Nevertheless Fermat gave a 
 demonstration of five propositions, " in order," he says, 
 " to show what a porisrn is, and to what purposes it is 
 subservient." These propositions are, indeed, porisms, 
 though their several enunciations are not given in the 
 true porismatic form. Thus, in the most remarkable 
 of them, the fifth, he gives the construction as part of the 
 enunciation. So far, however, a considerable step was 
 made ; but when he comes to show in what manner he 
 discovered the nature of his porisms, and how he de- 
 fines them, it is plain that he is entirely misled by the 
 erroneous definition justly censured in the passage of 
 Pappus already referred to. He tells us that his pro- 
 positions answer the definition ; he adds that it reveals 
 the whole nature of porisms ; he says that by no other 
 account but the one contained in the definition, could 
 
 * " Intentata ac velut disperata Porismatum Euclidaea doctrina. Geo- 
 metric! (aevi recentioris) nee vel de nomine cognoverunt, aut quod essct 
 solummodo sunt suspicati." (Var. Opera, p. 166.) 
 
 t " Nobis in tenebris dudum caecutientibus, tandem se (Natura Poris- 
 matum) clara ad videndum obtulit, et pura per noctem luce refulsit." 
 (Epist. ib.) 
 
SIMSON. 151 
 
 we ever have arrived at a knowledge of the hidden 
 value ;* and he shows how, in his fifth proposition, the 
 porism flows from a locus, or rather he confounds po- 
 risms with loci, saying porisms generally are loci, and 
 so he treats his own fifth proposition as a locus; and 
 yet the locus to a circle which he states as that from 
 which his proposition flows has no connexion with it, 
 according to Dr. Simson's just remark ('Opera Reliqua,' 
 p. 345). That the definition on which he relies is truly 
 imperfect, appears from this : there could be no alge- 
 braical porism, were every porism connected with a 
 local theorem. But an abundant variety of geometri- 
 cal porisms can be referred to, which have no possible 
 connexion with loci. Thus, it has never been denied 
 that most of the Propositions in the Higher Geometry, 
 which I investigated in 1 797, were porisms, yet many 
 of them were wholly unconnected with loci ; as that 
 affirming the possibility of describing an hyperbola 
 which should cut in a given ratio all the areas of the 
 parabolas lying between given straight lines.t Here 
 the locus has nothing to do with the solution, as if the 
 proposition were a kind of a local theorem : it is only 
 the line dividing the curvilineal areas, and it divides 
 innumerable such areas. Professor Playfair, who had 
 thoroughly investigated the whole subject, never in 
 considering this proposition doubted for a moment its 
 being most strictly a porism. 
 
 Therefore, although Fermat must be allowed to 
 have made a considerable step, he was unacquainted 
 with the true nature of the porism; and instead of 
 making good his boast that he could restore the lost 
 books, he never even attempted to restore the investi- 
 gation of the first proposition, the only one that re- 
 mains entire. A better proof can hardly be given tf 
 the difficulty of the whole subject, t 
 
 Var. Op. p. 118. 
 
 f Phil. Trans. 1798, p 111. 
 
 j The respect due to the great name of Fermat, a venerable magistrate 
 
152 SIMSON. 
 
 Indeed it must be confessed that Pappus's account 
 of it, our only source of knowledge, is exceedingly 
 obscure, all but the panegyric which in a somewhat 
 tantalizing manner, he pronounces upon it. " Collec- 
 tio," says he, " curiosissima multarum rerum spectan- 
 tium ad resolutionem difficiliorum et generaliorum 
 problem atum " (lib. vii. Proem). His definition al- 
 ready cited is, as he himself admits, very inaccurate ; 
 because the connexion with a locus is not necessary to 
 the porismatic nature, although it will very often exist, 
 inasmuch as each point in the curve having the same 
 relation to certain lines, its description will, in most 
 cases, furnish the solution of a problem, whence a 
 porism may be deduced. Nor does Pappus, while 
 admitting the inaccuracy of the definition, give us one 
 of his own. Perhaps \ve may accurately enough de- 
 fine a porism to be the enunciation of the possibility 
 of finding that case in which a determinate problem 
 becomes indeterminate, and admits of an infinity of 
 solutions, all of which are given by the statement of 
 the case. 
 
 For it appears essential to the nature of a porism 
 that it should have some connection with an indeter- 
 minate problem and its solution. I apprehend that 
 the poristic case is always one in which the data be- 
 come such that a transition is made from the deter- 
 minate to the indeterminate, from the problem being 
 capable of one or two solutions, to its being capable of 
 an infinite number. Thus it would be no porism to 
 affirm that an ellipse being given, two lines may be 
 found at right angles to each other, cutting the curve, 
 and being in a proportion to each other which may be 
 
 aryjl most able geometrician, is not to be questioned. He was, indeed, one 
 of the first mathematicians of the age in which he flourished, along with 
 the Robervals, the Harriots, the Descartes. How near he approached the 
 differential calculus is well known. His correspondence with Roberval, 
 Gassendi, Pascal, and others, occupies ninet}" folio pages of his posthumous 
 works, and contains many most ingenious, original, and profound observa- 
 tions on various branches of science. 
 
SIMSON. 153 
 
 found: the two lines are the perpendiculars at the 
 centre, and are of course the two axes of the ellipse ; 
 and though this enunciation is in the outward form of 
 a porism, the proposition is no more a porism than any- 
 ordinary problem ; as that a circle being given a point 
 may be found from whence all the lines drawn to the 
 circumference are equal, which is merely the finding 
 . of the centre. But suppose there be given the pro- 
 blem to inflect two lines from two given points to the 
 circumference of an ellipse, the sum of which lines 
 shall be equal to a given line, the solution will give 
 four lines, two on each side of the transverse axis. 
 But in one case there will be innumerable lines which 
 answer the conditions, namely, when the two points 
 are in the axis, and so situated that the distance of 
 each of them from the farthest extremity of the axis is 
 equal to the given line, the points being the foci of the 
 ellipse. It is, then, a porism to affirm that an ellipse 
 being given, two points may be found such that if from 
 them be inflected lines to any point whatever of the 
 curve, their sum shall be equal to a straight line which 
 may be found ; and so of the Cassinian curve, in which 
 the rectangle under the inflected lines is given. In 
 like manner if it be sought in an ellipse to inflect from 
 two given points in a given straight line, two lines to 
 a point in the curve, so that the tangent to that point 
 shall, with the two points and the ordinate, cut the 
 given line in harmonical ratio; this, which is only 
 capable of one solution in ordinary cases, becomes 
 capable of an infinite number when the two points are 
 in the axis, and when the ellipse cuts it; for in 
 that case every tangent that can be drawn, and every 
 ordinate, cut the given line harmonically with the 
 curve itself.* 
 
 * The ellipse has this curious property, which I do not find noticed by 
 Maclaurin in his Latin Treatise on Curve Lines appended to the Algebra, 
 and dealing a good deal with Harmonical proportions. If from any 
 point whatever out of the ellipse there be drawn a straight line in any 
 
154 SIMSON. 
 
 Dr. Simson's definition is such that it connects itself 
 with an indeterminate case of some problem solved, 
 but it is defective, in appearance rather than in reality, 
 from seeming to confine itself to one class of porisms. 
 This appearance arises from using the word " given " 
 (data or datum) in two different senses, both as de- 
 scribing the hypothesis and as affirming the possibility 
 of finding the construction so as to answer the con- 
 ditions. This double use of the word, indeed, runs 
 through the book, and though purely classical, is yet 
 very inconvenient ; for it would be much more dis- 
 tinct to make one class of things those which are 
 assuredly data, and the other, things which may be 
 found. Nevertheless, as his definition makes all the 
 innumerable things not given have the same relation 
 to those which are given, this should seem to be a 
 limitation of the definition not necessary to the poristic 
 nature. Pappus's definition, or rather that which he 
 says the ancients gave, and which is not exposed to 
 the objection taken by him to the modern one, is 
 really no definition at all ; it is only that a porism is 
 something between a theorem and a problem, and in 
 which, instead of anything being proposed to be done, 
 or to be proved, something is proposed to be investi- 
 gated. This is erroneous, and contrary to the rules 
 of logic from its generality ; it is, as the lawyers say, 
 
 direction whatever cutting the ellipse, the line is cut harmonically by the 
 tangent, the ordinate, and the chords of the two arcs intercepted between 
 the point of contact of the tangent and the axis. The tangent, sine, and 
 chords are always an hannonical pencil, and consequently cut in the Har- 
 monica! ratio all lines drawn in all directions, from the given point. This 
 applies to all ellipses upon the same axis, (all having the same subtangent.) 
 and of course to the c?rcle. The ellipse, therefore, might be called the 
 Harmonica! Curve, did not another of the 12th order rather merit 
 that name, which has its axis divided harmonically by the tangent, 
 the normal, the ordinate, and a given point in the axis. Its differential 
 
 equation is 2 dy* -\-d x* =- -' which is reducible, and its integral 
 
 is an equation of the 12th order. There is also another Harmonical 
 Curve, a transcendental one, in which chords vibrate isochroin/usly. 
 
SIMSOX. 155 
 
 void for uncertainty. The modern one objected to by 
 Pappus is not uncertain ; it is quite accurate as far as 
 it goes ; but it is too confined, and errs against the 
 rules of logic by not being coextensive with the thing- 
 proposed to be defined. 
 
 The difficulty of the subject has been sufficiently 
 shown from the extreme conciseness and the many 
 omissions, the almost studied obscurity, of the only 
 account of it which remains, and to this must cer- 
 tainly be added the corruption of the Greek text. 
 The success which attended Dr. Simson's labours in 
 restoring the lost work, as far as that was possible, and, 
 at any rate, in giving a full elucidation of the nature of 
 porisms, now, for the first time, disclosed to mathe- 
 maticians, is, on account of those great difficulties by 
 which his predecessors had been baffled, the more to 
 be admired. But there is one thing yet more justly 
 a matter of wonder, when we contrast his proceedings 
 with theirs. The greater part of his life, a life exclu- 
 sively devoted to mathematical study, had been passed 
 in these researches. He had very early become pos- 
 sessed of the whole mystery, from other eyes so long 
 concealed. He had obtained a number of the most 
 curious solutions of problems connected with porisms 
 and was constantly adding to his store of porisms 
 and of lemmas subservient to their investigation. ^ For 
 many years before his death, his work had attained, 
 certainly the form, if not the size, in which we now 
 possess it. Yet he never could so far satisfy himself 
 with what has abundantly satisfied every one else, as 
 to make it public, and he left it unpublished among 
 his papers when he died. Nothing can be more unlike 
 those who freely boasted of having discovered the 
 secret, and promised to restore the whole of Euclid's 
 lost books. It is as certain that the secret was never 
 revealed to them as it is that neither they nor any 
 man could restore the books. But how speedily would 
 the Castillons, the Alberts, even the Feraiats, have 
 
156 SIMSON. 
 
 given their works to the world had they become 
 possessed of such a treasure as Dr. Simson had found I 
 Yet though ready for the press, and with its preface 
 composed, and its title given in minute particularity, 
 he never could think that he had so far elaborated and 
 finished it as to warrant him in finally resolving on its 
 publication. 
 
 There needs no panegyric of this most admirable 
 performance. Its great merit is best estimated by the 
 view which has been taken of the extraordinary 
 difficulties overcome by it. The difficulty of some 
 investigations the singular beauty of the propositions, 
 a beauty peculiar to the porism from the wonderfully 
 general relations which it discloses the simplicity of 
 the combinations the perfect elegance of the demon- 
 strations render this a treatise in which the lovers of 
 geometrical science must ever find the purest delight. 
 
 Beside the general discussions in the preface, and 
 in a long and valuable scholium after the sixth propo- 
 sition, and an example of algebraical porisms, Dr. 
 Simson has given in all ninety-one propositions. Of 
 these four are problems, ten are loci, forty-three are 
 theorems, and the remaining thirty-four are porisms, 
 including four suggested by Matthew Stewart, and 
 the five of Fermat improved and generalized ; there 
 are, besides, four lemmas and one porism suggested 
 by Dr. Traill, when studying under the Professor. 
 There may thus be said to be in all ninety-eight pro- 
 positions. The four lemmas are propositions ancillary 
 to the author's own investigations ; for many of his 
 theorems are the lemmas preserved by Pappus as an- 
 cillary to the porisms of Euclid. 
 
 In all these investigations the strictness of the Greek 
 geometry is preserved almost to an excess; and there 
 cannot well be given a more remarkable illustration 
 of its extreme rigour than the very outset of this 
 great work presents. The porism is, that a point 
 may be found in any given circle through which all 
 
SIMSON. 157 
 
 the lines drawn cutting its circumference and meet- 
 ing a given straight line shall have their segments 
 within and without the circle in the same ratio. This, 
 though a beautiful proposition, is one very easily 
 demonstrated, and is, indeed, a corollary to some of 
 those in the ' Elements.' But Dr. Simson prefixes a 
 lemma: that the line drawn to the right angle of a 
 triangle from the middle point of the hypotenuse, is 
 equal to half that hypotenuse. Now this follows, if 
 the segment containing the right angle be a semi- 
 circle, and it might be thought that this should be 
 assumed only as a manifest corollary from the pro- 
 position, or as the plain converse of the proposition, 
 that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle, but 
 rather as identical with that proposition ; for if we 
 say the semicircle is a right-angled segment, we also 
 say that the right-angled segment is a semicircle. 
 But then it might be supposed that two semicircles 
 could stand on one base : or, which is the same thing, 
 that two perpendiculars could be drawn from one 
 point to the same line; and as these propositions had 
 not been in the elements, (though the one follows 
 from the definition of the circle, and the other from 
 the theorem that the three angles of a triangle are 
 equal to two right angles), and as it might be supposed 
 that two or more circles, like two or more ellipses, 
 might be drawn on the same axis, therefore the lemma 
 is demonstrated by a construction into which the 
 centre does not enter. Again, in applying this lemma 
 to the porism (the proportion of the segments given 
 by similar triangles), a right angle is drawn at the 
 point of the circumference, to which a line is drawn 
 from the extremity of a perpendicular to the given 
 line ; and this, though it proves that perpendicular to 
 pass through the centre, unless two semicircles could 
 stand on the same diameter, is not held sufficient; but 
 the analysis is continued by help of the lemma to show 
 that the perpendicular to the given line passes through 
 
158 SIMSON. 
 
 the centre of the given circle, and that therefore the 
 
 Eoint is found. It is probable that the author began 
 is work with a simple case and gave it a peculiarly 
 rigorous investigation in order to explain, as he im- 
 mediately after does clearly in the scholium already 
 referred to, the nature of the porism, and to illustrate 
 the erroneous definitions of later times (veortpfKot) of 
 which Pappus complains as illogical. 
 
 Of porisms, examples have been now given both in 
 plain geometry, in solid, and in the higher : that is, in 
 their connexion both with straight lines and circles, 
 with conic sections, and with curves of the third and 
 higher orders. Of an algebraical porism it is easy to 
 give examples from problems becoming indeterminate; 
 but these propositions may likewise arise from a change 
 in the conditions of determinate problems. Thus, if 
 we seek for a number, such that its multiple by the 
 sum of two quantities shall be equal to its multiple by 
 the difference of these quantities, together with twice 
 its multiple by a third given quantity, we have the 
 equation (a-f 6) x=(a b) x+2cx and 2bx=2cx ; in 
 which it is evident, that if c=>, any number whatever 
 will answer the conditions, and thus we have this 
 porism: Two numbers being given a third may be 
 found, such that the multiple of any number whatever 
 by the sum of the given numbers, shall be equal to its 
 multiple by their differences, together with half its 
 multiple by the number to be found. That number is 
 in the ratio of 4 : 3 to the lesser given number. 
 
 There are many porisms also in dynamics. One 
 relates to the centre of gravity which is the poris- 
 matic case of a problem. The porism may be thus 
 enunciated: Any number of points being given, a 
 point may be found such, that if any straight line 
 whatever be drawn through it, the sum of the perpen- 
 diculars to it from the points on one side will be equal 
 to the sum of the perpendiculars from the points on 
 the other side. That point is consequently the centre 
 
SIMSON. 159 
 
 of gravity : for the system is in equilibrium by the 
 proposition. Another is famous in the history of the 
 mixed mathematics. Sir Isaac Newton, by a train of 
 most profound and ingenious investigation, reduced 
 the problem of finding a comet's place from three ob- 
 servations (a problem of such difficulty, that he says 
 of it, " hocce problema longe difficilimum omnimodo 
 aggressus,"*) to the drawing a straight line through 
 four lines given by position, and which shall be cut by 
 them in three segments having given ratios to each 
 other. Now his solution of this problem, the corollary 
 to the twenty-seventh lemma of the first book, has a 
 porismatic case, that is, a case in which any line that 
 can be drawn through the given lines will be cut by 
 them in the same proportions, like the lines drawn 
 through three harmonicals in the porism already given 
 of the harmonical curve. To this Newton had not 
 adverted, nor to the unfortunate circumstance that the 
 case of comets is actually the case in which the pro- 
 blem thus becomes capable of an infinite number of 
 solutions. The error was only discovered after 1739, 
 when it was found that the comet of that year was 
 thrown on the wrong side of the sun by the Newtonian 
 method. This enormous discrepancy of the theory 
 with observation, led to a full consideration of the sub- 
 ject, and to a discovery of the porismatic case. 
 
 When the studies of a philosopher, and especially 
 of a mathematician, have been described, his dis- 
 coveries recorded, and his writings considered, his 
 history has been written. His private life is generally 
 unvaried, filled with speculative inquiry, amused by 
 scientific reading, variegated only by philosophic con- 
 versation, unless when its repose is broken by contro- 
 versy, an incident scarcely possible in the story of 
 mathematicians. Dr. Simson loved to amuse his 
 leisure hours, and unbend his mind in the relaxation 
 
 * Pi-incipia, lib. iii., prop. xli. 
 
160 SIMSON. 
 
 of society ; and from the simplicity of his manners and 
 the kindliness of his disposition, as well as from his 
 very universal information, he was ever a most wel- 
 come member of the circles which he frequented. He 
 lived in his college chambers to the last, but received 
 his friends occasionally at a neighbouring tavern, 
 where a room was always kept at his disposal. He 
 attended a club near the college, and in good weather 
 its members dined every Saturday at Anderston, a 
 suburb of Glasgow. In these meetings his chair was 
 always reserved for him, being left vacant when he 
 happened to be absent. It is also said to have been 
 his habit to sit covered. He was fond of playing for 
 an hour or two in the evening at whist, and of calcu- 
 lating chances, at which he generally failed ; but he 
 was on the whole a good player, though he was not 
 very patient of his partner's blunders, nor always bore 
 a bad hand of such partner with philosophic meek- 
 ness. He was fond of music, and sometimes would 
 sing a Greek ode to a modern air. Professor Eobison 
 says he twice heard him sing in this manner " a Latin 
 hymn to the Divine Geometer," and adds, that the 
 tears stood in his eyes as he gave it with devotional 
 rapture. His voice was fine, says the Professor, and 
 his ear most accurate. That he did not always inter- 
 rupt his geometrical meditations in the hours of relax- 
 ation is very plain, not only from the singular anec- 
 dote already related of his discovery of porisms, but 
 from the date of " Anderston " attached to some of his 
 solutions, indicating that they had occurred to him 
 while attending the Saturday meetings of the club in 
 that suburb. In all his habits he was punctual and 
 regular, even measuring the exercise which he took 
 by the number of paces he walked. Anecdotes are 
 related of him when interrupted by some one on his 
 accustomed walk, and after hearing what was said, 
 continuing at the number he had just before marked, 
 and surprising his acquaintance by speaking the next 
 
SIMSON. 161 
 
 number aloud. He was exceedingly absent ; and the 
 younger part of the university pupils were wont to 
 play upon this peculiarity. It is related that one of 
 the college porters being dressed up for the purpose, 
 came to ask charity, and in answer to the Professor's 
 questions, gave an account of himself closely resem- 
 bling his own history. When he found so great a re- 
 semblance, adds the story, he cried out, "What's your 
 name? " and on the answer being given, " Eobert 
 Simson," he exclaimed with great animation, " Why, 
 it must be myself! " when he awoke from his trance. 
 Notwithstanding his absent habits, he was an exceed- 
 ingly good man of business; he filled the office of 
 Clerk of the Faculty in the University for thirty years, 
 and managed its financial and other concerns with 
 great regularity and success. Like all minds of a 
 higher order, his not only had no contempt for details, 
 but a love of them ; and while clerk he made a tran- 
 script with his own hand of the University records, for 
 which he received a vote of thanks from the Senatus 
 Academicus. 
 
 In 1758, being turned of threescore and ten, he 
 found it necessary to employ an assistant ; when one 
 of his favourite pupils, Dr. Williamson, was appointed 
 his helper and successor. The University passed a 
 resolution stating his merits fully, recording in detail 
 his services to the college and to science at large, and 
 pronouncing a warm but just panegyric upon him. 
 He continued for ten years in the pursuit of his 
 favourite studies, and the enjoyment of the same social 
 intercourse as before. His health, which through his 
 long life had been unbroken, remained entire till within 
 a few weeks of its close, and he died on the 1st of Octo- 
 ber, 1768, having almost completed his eighty-first year. 
 
 He is represented to have been of a calm and 
 pleasing presence, of a portly figure, of easy and not 
 ungraceful manners. A portrait of him in the college 
 library remains, and is said to do him justice. His 
 
 M 
 
162 SIMSON. 
 
 pupil, Dr. Moore, the Greek professor, and author of 
 the celebrated Grammar, also an excellent mathema- 
 tician and great admirer of the ancient geometry, wrote 
 the inscription which appears under it, marking its 
 author's own taste in more ways than one : 
 
 " Geometriam sub tyranno barbaro, sseva servitute, diu langnentem. 
 vindicavit unus." 
 
 His character was lofty and pure : nothing could 
 exceed his love of justice, and dislike of anything 
 sordid or low; nor could he ever bear to hear men 
 reviling one another, and, least of all, speaking evil of 
 the absent or the dead. In this he closely resembled 
 his celebrated pupil Mr. Watt. His religious as well 
 as moral feelings were strong, and they were habitual. 
 No one in his presence ever ventured on the least 
 irreverent or indecorous allusion; and we find the 
 periods of his geometrical discoveries mentioned with 
 the date and the place, and generally an addition of 
 "Deo" or "Christo laus," an example of which we 
 have above presented. 
 
 He never was married. Of his brothers, one, Thomas, 
 was Professor of Medicine at St. Andrew's, and author 
 of an ingenious and original work on the Brain ; his 
 son succeeded him as professor. Another brother was 
 a dissenting minister at Coventry; and a third, also 
 settled there, had a son, Robert, first in the army, 
 afterwards in the English Church Mr. Pitt, probably 
 from his love of the mathematics, having presented 
 him to a living in the north of England. He was Dr. 
 Simson's heir-at-law, and to him the estates were left. 
 He sold them in 1789, as well Kirton Hill as Knock 
 Ewart, which had been purchased by the Professor's 
 father in 1713. A niece of Dr. Simson was married 
 to Dr. Moore, the well-known novelist, and was mother 
 of the General. That illustrious warrior was therefore 
 great nephew of the mathematician. Mrs. Moore sur- 
 vived to a recent period, and died in extreme old age. 
 
SIMSON. 163 
 
 He bequeathed his mathematical library and manu- 
 scripts to the University of Glasgow, with special direc- 
 tions touching their disposition, custody, and use. They 
 form, it is believed, the most complete collection of 
 books and papers in that department of science any- 
 where to be seen. 
 
 The extraordinary genius of Dr. Simson for mathe- 
 matical pursuits has been fully described in recording 
 his achievements in that difficult branch of science. 
 That he greatly furthered the progress of mathematical 
 knowledge by his excellent publications of the ele- 
 mentary works of Euclid and Apollonius cannot be 
 denied ; nor can it be doubted that to him we owe a 
 revival of the taste for the ancient analysis, the pure 
 geometry, and the means now afforded of gratifying it. 
 At the same time there is some room for lamenting 
 that his great powers of mind and his patient industry 
 of research were not devoted to the pursuit of more 
 useful objects ; and there is good reason to agree in 
 the opinion expressed by one of his most eminent 
 pupils, Professor Robison, that he might have better 
 succeeded in his favourite object of recovering the 
 purely geometrical methods of investigation, had he 
 relaxed a little more from their rigour in applying 
 them to the present state of science, and shown the 
 ancient analytical investigation disencumbered of its 
 prolixity, relieved from its extreme scrupulousness, and 
 subservient to the investigations of the problems now 
 become the main subjects of mathematical inquiry. 
 This has in a great measure been performed by the 
 most celebrated of his school, Matthew Stewart, who 
 actually has solved Kepler's problem, and treated al- 
 most the whole doctrine of central forces by means of 
 the ancient method.* At the same time we have only 
 to cast our eye upon his diagrams to be convinced that 
 
 * His paper on the sim's distance, in which he also employs the ancient 
 analysis, has been long since proved erroneous by my friend Mr. Dawson 
 of Sedbergh, who wrote anonymously a demonstration of the error in 1772. 
 
164 SIMSON. 
 
 though he has solved the problems and demonstrated 
 the theorems with a most wonderful skill, by means 
 purely geometrical, yet he never could have obtained 
 either the solutions or the demonstrations had not 
 Newton preceded him, " his own analysis carrying the 
 torch before."* The most celebrated proposition in all 
 the * Principia,' the general solution of the inverse pro- 
 blem of central forces,f (lib. i. prop, xli.) is closely 
 followed by Stewart, and the diagrams are nearly the 
 same. 
 
 This, however, is not the only ground of regret ; for 
 had it been so, the teacher's defect has been thus sup- 
 plied by the scholar. But good cause remains to 
 lament that both of those great masters did not abate 
 somewhat of their devotion to the Greek Geometry, 
 and instead of being captivated only with the view of 
 its incomparable beauty, did not help forward by 
 their discoveries those branches of the science which, 
 though they may have far less grace, have yet a far 
 wider range and far greater usefulness. Surely it is 
 deeply to be lamented that such extraordinary powers 
 of original investigation as both these great men pos- 
 sessed should, especially in the case of Stewart, have 
 been wasted upon what Professor Robison's learned 
 wit terms " a superstitious palasology," and in the over- 
 coming of difficulties raised by themselves of reaching 
 the point in view by a devious and hard ascent, when a 
 short and an easy path lay open before them of doing, 
 and not very well doing, by an imperfect though ele- 
 gant tool, and with no help from machinery, the same 
 work which might with far better success and greater 
 facility have been performed by the most perfect in- 
 strument that ever man invented; as the laborious, 
 patient, and ignorant Hindu, will with a knife carve 
 
 * " Sua mathesi facem praeferente." Halley. 
 
 f I am aware of Professor Robison's statement, already cited, of Dr. 
 Simson's opinion that the thirty-ninth proposition is the greatest of all, 
 but I cannot help suspecting the forty-first to be intended. 
 
STMSON. 165 
 
 some ivory trinket, on which he spends a lifetime 
 that might have been employed in the most impor- 
 tant works by the aid of fit implements nay, who 
 might have turned by a simple lathe myriads of the 
 same kind of toy. 
 
(166) 
 
 ADAM SMITH, 
 
 WITH AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GREAT WORK. 
 
 IN the last years of the seventeenth century were born 
 two men, who laid the foundation of ethical science as 
 we now have it, greatly advanced and improved beyond 
 the state in which the ancient moralists had left it, and 
 as the modern inquirers took it up after the revival of 
 letters, Bishop Butler and Dr. Hutchinson. The former, 
 bred a Presbyterian, and exercised in the metaphysical 
 subtleties of the Calvinistic school, had early turned 
 his acute and capacious mind to the more difficult 
 questions of morals, and having conformed to the 
 Established Church, he delivered, as preacher at the 
 Eolls Chapel, to which office he was promoted by Sir 
 Joseph Jekyjl, at the suggestion of Dr. Samuel Clarke, 
 a series of discourses, in which the foundations of our 
 moral sentiments and our social as well as prudential 
 duties were examined with unrivalled sagacity. Dr. 
 Hutchinson having published his speculations upon 
 the moral sense, and the analogy of our ideas of beauty 
 and virtue, while a young teacher among the Presby- 
 terians in the north of Ireland, was afterwards for many 
 years Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University 
 of Glasgow, and there delivered his Lectures, which, 
 by their copious illustrations, their amiable tone of 
 feeling, their enlightened views of liberty and human 
 improvement, and their persuasive eloquence, made a 
 deeper impression than the more severe and dry com- 
 positions of Butler could ever create, and laid the 
 foundation in Scotland of the modern ethical school. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 167 
 
 In this he restored and revised, rather than created a 
 taste for moral and intellectual science, which had pre- 
 vailed in the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth cen- 
 turies, but which the prevalence of religious zeal and 
 of political faction had for above two hundred years 
 extinguished. He restored it, too, in a new, a purer, 
 and a more rational form, adopting, as Butler did nearly 
 at the same time, though certainly without any com- 
 munication, or even knowledge of each other's specu- 
 lations, the sound and consistent doctrine which rejects 
 as a paradox, and indeed a very vulgar fallacy, the 
 doctrine that all the motives of human conduct are 
 directly resolvable into a regard for self-interest.* 
 Nothing more deserving of the character of a demon- 
 stration can be cited than the argument in a single 
 sentence, by which he overthrows the position, that 
 we seek other men's happiness, because by so doing we 
 gratify our own feelings. This presupposes, says he, 
 that there is a pleasure to ourselves in seeking their 
 happiness, else the motive, by the supposition, wholly 
 fails. Therefore there is a pleasure as independent of 
 selfish gratification, as the thing pursued is necessarily 
 something different from the being that pursues it. 
 
 These two great philosophers, then, may be reckoned 
 the founders of the received and sound ethical system, 
 to which Tucker, by his profound and original specu- 
 lations, added much. Hartley and Bonnet, who were 
 a few years later, only introduced a mixture of gross 
 
 * Hutchinson had taught his doctrines in Dublin some years before 
 Butler's 'Sermons' were published in 1726, and had even published his 
 ' Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue,' for the second edition of that work 
 appeared in the same year. The ' Sermons ' had indeed been preached at 
 the Rolls, where he began to officiate as early as 1718 ; but nothing can 
 be more unlikely than that any private intimation of their substance should 
 have been conveyed to the young Presbyterian minister in Ireland. In- 
 deed, his book was written soon after he* settled at the academy, in 1716, 
 which he taught near Dublin ; for the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Molesworth, 
 who was appointed in that year, revised the manuscript of it. Butler and 
 Hutchinson were contemporaries; one born 1692, the other 1694. Dr. 
 Smith was born considerably later, in 1723 ; Mr. Hume in 1711. 
 
168 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 error in their preposterous attempts to explain the 
 inscrutable union of the soul and the body, and to 
 account for the phenomena of mind by the nature or 
 affection of the nerves ; while at a somewhat earlier 
 date, Berkeley, an inquirer of a much higher order, 
 had applied himself to psychological, and not to ethical 
 studies. 
 
 As ethics in its extended sense comprehends both 
 the duties and capacities, and the moral and intellectual 
 qualities of individuals, and their relations to each other 
 in society, so may it also extend to the interests and the 
 regulation of society, that is, to the polity of states in 
 both its branches, both the structure and the functions 
 of government, with a view to securing the happiness 
 of the people. Hence it may include everything that 
 concerns the rights, as well as the duties of citizens, all 
 that regards their good government, all the branches of 
 jurisprudence, all the principles that govern the pro- 
 duction and distribution of wealth, the employment 
 and protection of labour, the progress of population, 
 the defence of the state, the education of its inhabi- 
 tants ; in a word, political science, including, as one of 
 its main branches, political economy. When, there- 
 fore, ethical speculations had made so great progress, 
 it was natural that this important subject should also 
 engage the attention of scientific men ; and we find, 
 accordingly, that in the early part of the eighteenth 
 century the attention of the learned and, in some but 
 in a moderate degree, of statesmen also, was directed 
 to these inquiries. Some able works had touched in 
 the preceding century upon the subjects of money and 
 trade. Sound and useful ideas upon these were to be 
 found scattered through the writings of Mr. Locke ; 
 But at a much earlier period, Mr. Min, both in 1621 
 and 1664, had cornbatted successfully, as far as reason- 
 ing went, without any success in making converts, the 
 old and mischievous, but natural fallacy, that the pre- 
 cious metals are the constituents of wealth. Soon after 
 
ADAM SMITH. 169 
 
 Min's second work, * The Increase of Foreign Trade,' 
 Sir Wm. Petty still further illustrated the error of those 
 who are afraid of an unfavourable balance of trade, 
 and exposed the evil policy of regulating the rate of 
 interest by law. A few years before Sir Wm. Petty's 
 most celebrated work, his ' Anatomy of Ireland,' ap- 
 peared Sir Josiah Child's * Discourse of Trade,' 1668, 
 in which, with some errors on the subject of interest, 
 he laid down many sound views of trade, the principle 
 of population, and the absurdity of laws against fore- 
 stalling and regrating. In 1681 he published his 
 ' Philopatris,' which shows the injurious effects of mo- 
 nopolies of every kind, and explains clearly the nature 
 of money. But Sir Dudley North's ' Discourse,' pub- 
 lished in 1691, took as clear and even as full a view of 
 the true doctrines of commerce and exchange as any 
 modern treatise ; building its deductions upon the fun- 
 damental principle which lies at the root of all these 
 doctrines, that, as to trade, the whole world is one 
 country, of which the natives of each state severally 
 are citizens or subjects ; that no laws can regulate prices; 
 and that whatever injures any one member of the great 
 community injures the whole. 
 
 It must be observed that beside the treatises thus 
 early published on oeconomical science, we find occa- 
 sionally very sound doctrines unfolded, and very just 
 maxims of policy laid down, by well known writers, 
 who incidentally touch upon (economical subjects in 
 works written with other views. Thus Fenelon, in his 
 celebrated romance of 4 Telemachus,' has scattered 
 various reflexions of the truest and purest philosophy, 
 upon the theory of commercial legislation, as well as 
 upon many other departments of administration. It 
 is due to the memory of a Romish prelate, and a royal 
 preceptor in an absolute monarchy, to add that all his 
 writings breathe a spirit of genuine religious tolerance, 
 and of just regard to the civil rights and liberties of 
 mankind. 
 
170 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, the writers of Italy ap- 
 pear to have taken the lead in these inquiries. The 
 active and lively genius of the people, the division of 
 the country into small states, the access to the ears of 
 the Government which this naturally gives to learned 
 men, the interest in the improvement of his country 
 which the citizen of a narrow community is apt to feel, 
 gave rise to such a multitude of writers on subjects of 
 political economy, that when the Government of the 
 Italian Republic, with a princely liberality, directed 
 Custodi to publish a collection of their works at the 
 public expense, in 1803, they were found to fill no less 
 than fifty octavo volumes. 
 
 The earliest of these writings, which lay down sound 
 principles to guide commercial legislation, is the Memoir 
 ('Discorso Economico') of Antonio Bandini of Siena, 
 addressed in 1737 to the Grand Duke of Tuscany upon 
 the improvement of the great Maremma district. The 
 author recommended free trade in corn ; advised the 
 granting of leases to tenants, that they might have an 
 interest in the soil ; and proposed the repeal of all 
 vexatious imposts, and a substitution in their stead of 
 one equal tax upon all real property, without excepting 
 either the lands of the nobles or of the church. This 
 able and enlightened work, in which the germs of the 
 French economical doctrines are plainly unfolded, was 
 only published in 1 775 ; but when Leopold succeeded 
 his brother in 1765, he showed his accustomed wisdom 
 and virtue in the government of Tuscany, by adopting 
 many of Bandini's suggestions for improving the Mar- 
 emma. Other writers followed in the same course. 
 Fernando Galiani, of Naples, published in 1750 his 
 treatise, ' Delia Moneta,' explaining on sound principles 
 that the precious metals are only to be regarded as 
 merchandise, and showing clearly the connexion be- 
 tween value and labour. The discourse, Sopra i Bilanci 
 delle Nazione, by Carli, of Capo dTstria, in 1771, laid 
 down the true doctrine respecting the balance of trade. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 171 
 
 Genovesi, a Neapolitan, in 1768, supported the position 
 of perfect freedom in the corn trade, though not in 
 that of other merchandise or of manufactures. But in 
 1769, Pillo Verri, a Milanese, in his work, ' Sulle Leggl 
 Vincolanti' maintained the doctrine of absolute and 
 universal freedom of commerce. The same thing was 
 maintained about the same period in the work of Ferdi- 
 nando Paoletti, a Florentine, entitled, * Veri mezzi di 
 rendere feiice le Societal So that, both before and 
 after the French economists began their useful and 
 enlightened labours, the fundamental doctrine of Adam 
 Smith's celebrated work had been laid down by a great 
 number of writers in the different parts of the Italian 
 Peninsula.* 
 
 The progress made in France by the same class of 
 philosophers and statesmen was very considerable, and 
 about the same time. Although the Italian writers 
 rather preceded, yet there is no doubt their works were 
 unknown beyond the Alps for many years after the 
 French had applied themselves successfully to the cul- 
 tivation of economical science. It is supposed, and 
 apparently with reason, that a mercantile man, who 
 also held the rank of a landed gentleman, Vincent 
 Seigneur de Gournay of St. Malo, educated for trade 
 at Cadiz, but always a bold thinker and a diligent 
 student, was the first who adopted the principles of a 
 liberal and enlightened commercial policy. His repu- 
 tation both as an eminent merchant and as a learned 
 inquirer had become considerable, when he was ap- 
 pointed, in 1751, to the office ofJntendant de Commerce, 
 answering in some sort to our President of the Board 
 of Trade. His administration was a constant struggle 
 with the narrow prejudices of the old system, which 
 rests on encouragement, protection, prohibition, end- 
 
 * Not having access to Custodi's work, and only having seen some of 
 the treatises contained in it, I have relied on the statement given in the 
 learned article on Political Economy, ('Penny Cyclopaedia,' vol. xviii., 
 p. 389-40.) 
 
172 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 less intermeddling with the distribution of capital, and 
 the employment of labour. He was so often and so 
 powerfully thwarted, that his reforms were anything 
 but complete. All he attempted was in the right 
 direction ; and M. Turgot, his disciple, who afterwards, 
 in his own administration of the higher department of 
 finance, carried the same views farther, has given us a 
 luminous abstract of those sound principles which De 
 Gournay laid down. The duty of government, ac- 
 cording to him, was to give all branches of industry 
 that freedom of which the monopolizing spirit of dif- 
 ferent classes had so long deprived them ; to protect 
 men in making whatever use they please of their 
 capital, their skill, their industry ; to open among the 
 makers and sellers of all goods the greatest competition, 
 for the benefit of the buyers in the low price and good 
 quality of the things sold, and among buyers the 
 greatest competition, that the producer or the importer 
 may have the due stimulus to his exertions ; and to 
 trust the natural operations of men's interests for the 
 increase of national wealth and the general improve- 
 ment of society, when all fetters are removed, and all 
 absurd and pernicious encouragements by the State 
 withheld. 
 
 It was not for some years after these enlightened 
 and rational principles had been adopted, promul- 
 gated, and acted upon by M. de Gournay, that Dr. 
 Quesnay, who had, from his youth upwards, attended 
 to agricultural questions, and even somewhat to farm- 
 ing pursuits, but had been always immersed in the 
 studies of his profession, began to cultivate economical 
 science. He had published several works of the 
 greatest ability and learning on medical and surgical 
 subjects, had acquired extensive practice, and risen to 
 the rank of the King's first physician* before he had 
 
 * A very interesting work was published by my worthy friend Mr. 
 Quintin Crawford, in his ' Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature,' being 
 the journal of Madame de Hausset, the waiting gentlewoman of Madame 
 
ADAM SMITH. 173 
 
 matured his speculations so as to publish any treatise 
 on pdlitical subjects ; and though he was eighteen 
 years older than M. de Gournay, the latter had been 
 several years at the head of the commercial adminis- 
 tration before the Doctor's first work appeared his 
 excellent papers on the Corn Trade in the Encyclo- 
 paedia.* His celebrated ' Tableau EconomiqueJ in 
 which the accumulation and distribution of wealth is 
 stated with great ingenuity and originality, though in 
 a somewhat abstruse form, appeared in 1758 ; and his 
 greatest work, the ' PhysiocratieJ ten years later. His 
 doctrine was, that the cultivation of the soil alone adds 
 to the wealth of any state ; that they alone who till 
 the ground are entitled to be called productive la- 
 bourers ; that their industry alone yields a net or 
 
 de Pompadour. It contains some anecdotes of Dr. Quesnay extremely 
 curious and characteristic, and shows on what an intimately familiar foot- 
 ing the great philosopher lived with the royal voluptuary, who had the 
 sense to relish his conversation, and used to call him " his thinker," (mon 
 penseur.) Mr. Crawford gives an accurate sketch of his character ; and 
 after mentioning that, his followers always termed him " Le Maitre," and 
 decided their disputes by " Le Maitre 1'a dit," like the disciples of Plato, 
 he tells us that, at his death, a funeral oration was pronounced by M. de 
 Mirabeau, before the assembled sect, all in deep mourning. ^ He adds, 
 what may easily be believed, that this discourse was a " chef-d'oeuvre de 
 ridicule et d'absurdite." A great discussion, as it seems to me on a ques- 
 tion very unimportant, has been raised by political economists, not much 
 to the credit of their philosophical feelings, whether Quesnay's family were 
 of as-low a station as some represent them, and whether it be really true 
 that they could not afford to have him taught to read in his boyhood. 
 Surely the Memoirs of the Academy must be reckoned a decisive authority 
 on this question. In the historical part of the volume for 1774, it is dis- 
 tinctly stated, as a matter well known, (p. 122,) that his father was an 
 Avocat au Parlement de Montfort, and an intimate friend of the Procur- 
 eur du Eoi. Grimm mentions Quesnay in a very different manner from 
 most others. He thus speaks of the economists and the great founder of 
 their sect : " Depuis que 1'oeconomie politique est devenue en France la 
 science a la mode, il est forme une secte qui a voulu dominer dans cette 
 partie. M. Quesnay s'est fait chef de cette secte." " Le vieux Quesnay 
 est un cynique decide. M. de Fobernais n'est pas tendre; ainsi cette 
 querelle ne se passera pas sans quelques faits d'armes." (Corr.~) He re- 
 peatedly gives him the same epithet of cynique ; probably the light con- 
 versation of Grimm had not attracted his notice, or gained his respect. 
 
 * The article 'Fermier' appeared in 1756; 'Grains' in 1757; M. 
 Turgot's able articles appeared in 1756. 
 
174 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 clear produce ( ( produit net') in the shape of rent over 
 and above the expense of raising it by payirTg the 
 workman's wages, and replacing with the ordinary 
 profit the capital expended ; that all other labour, as 
 that of manufacturers who fashion the raw produce, of 
 merchants or retail dealers who distribute it, whether 
 raw or worked up, and professional men who do not 
 operate upon produce at all, are, though highly useful, 
 yet wholly and all equally unproductive, because those 
 classes only receive their wages, or the profit of their 
 stock, from the productive class the agriculturists. 
 From this theory he deduced practical inferences all 
 of great importance, but of different degrees of value 
 or accuracy ; that all commerce, both external and in- 
 ternal, both in the raw and manufactured produce of 
 any country, should be left entirely free ; that all in- 
 dustry of every class should be alike unfettered ; that 
 all men should be left to employ their capital and 
 their labour as their own view of their own interest 
 directs them ; that no tax should be imposed on any 
 goods or any labour except a single impost, and that 
 upon the net produce, the rent of land this (the im- 
 pot fonciere) taking the place of all others, and alone 
 being levied to support the state. 
 
 Dr. Quesnay's ingenuity and learning, the boldness 
 of his views, their great simplicity, their originality, 
 all made a powerful impression ; but from these very 
 causes, and still more from the harshness and obscurity 
 of the style in which they were unfolded perhaps 
 one might say enfolded, they were better calculated 
 to find acceptance with the learned few than with the 
 general mass of readers. Upon these few, however, 
 they soon made a deep impression, which was in- 
 creased by their author's simple and amiable manners, 
 his exemplary purity, though living in a corrupt court, 
 and the admirable talent which he had in conversation, 
 of exposing his doctrines, like our Franklin, by the 
 aid of apposite fables or apologues. He became thus 
 
ADAM SMITH. 175 
 
 easily the leader, or head of a sect, and lie was looked 
 up to by his disciples with the same reverence that 
 the followers of the ancient sages paid to the objects 
 of their veneration. The Marquis of Mirabeau, father 
 of the famous revolutionary leader ; M. Mercier de la 
 Riviere ; M. Dupont de Nemours ; M. Condorcet, and 
 M. Turgot, for some time Controller General of the 
 Finances, were the most celebrated of this school. 
 Their chief died as early as 1774, but they continued 
 to instruct mankind by their writings, which, however 
 ingenious and learned, were almost all deprived of 
 their full eifect upon the bulk of readers, by the dry, 
 scholastic, and even crabbed style in which they were 
 composed, and the want of that simple arrangement 
 and that plain manner of unfolding their system which 
 forms the first and the essential merit of didactic com- 
 position. 
 
 It must be added that on the structure of govern- 
 ment, the doctrines of the sect were far less enlight- 
 ened than upon its functions. While they held the 
 whole happiness of society to depend upon a wise 
 and honest administration of the supreme power in 
 the state, they never considered how necessary it 
 was to provide a security for that course being pur- 
 sued, by establishing checks upon the rulers. Their 
 doctrine was that what they called a despotisme legale, 
 or an absolute power vested in the sovereign, and 
 exercised according to fixed laws, is the most perfect 
 form of government; and they entirely forgot that 
 either no change whatever can be made in these laws, 
 let ever so great a change happen in the circumstances 
 of the community, or that all laws may be abrogated 
 or altered at the monarch's pleasure, and thus, that the 
 epithet ''-legal" dropt from their definition. In short 
 they forgot, that their theory to be tolerable required 
 the despot to be an angel, in which case, no doubt, 
 their constitution would be perfect, but in no other. 
 It is singular, that with all this, we find in the authen- 
 
176 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 tic accounts of their founder's habits that he never 
 could feel at his ease in the presence of Louis XV., 
 and confessed the reason to be, his thinking all the 
 while that he stood before a man who had the power 
 of destroying him. This is recorded in the Memoirs 
 to which I have above referred, and we find two in- 
 stances in the same work, illustrating the practical ope- 
 ration of the " despotisme legale" To the Doctor's 
 great dismay, M. de Mirabeau, his steady follower, 
 was suddenly hurried away to the fortress of Vincennes, 
 because an expression in his speculative work on Tax- 
 ation being misunderstood by the King, had given 
 him offence ; and when Turgot was anxious to obtain 
 the King's assent, on the occasion of his proposing one 
 of the great municipal reforms which he supported, he 
 took the indirect, if not humiliating course of speaking 
 to the Doctor and to the mistress's waiting-woman, to 
 whom the Doctor gave a note of the plan, which by 
 this circuit reached the Koyal ear. 
 
 But our view of what has been accomplished in 
 economical science, before the period to which the 
 following Life refers, would be most imperfect, if we 
 passed over the Essays of Mr. Hume. They were 
 published in 1752, and gave the first clear refutation 
 of the errors which had so long prevailed in Commer- 
 cial Policy, and the first philosophical as well as prac- 
 tical exposition of those sound principles, which ought 
 to be the guide of statesmen in their arrangements, as 
 well as of philosophers in their speculations upon this 
 important subject. I have treated of this admirable 
 work in the life of that illustrious writer.* 
 
 It was necessary to give a summary of the progress 
 which had been made in ethical and economical philo- 
 sophy before the time of Dr. Smith, in order that we 
 might duly appreciate the invaluable services which 
 he rendered to both those branches of science, and to 
 
 * VoL ii 
 
ADAM SMITH. 177 
 
 prevent us from supposing, as men are always prone 
 to do, that he whose merit as a great improver can 
 hardly be estimated too highly, was also the creator of 
 the system which he so largely 'contributed to extend 
 and to consolidate. We may now proceed to the his- 
 tory of his life. 
 
 Adam Smith was born at Kirkaldy, in the Scotch 
 county of Fife, on the 5th of June, 1723, and was 
 a posthumous child, his father having died a few 
 months before. That gentleman was ^Controller of 
 the Customs at the port, having been originally bred 
 to the law, and afterwards held the office of Private 
 Secretary to Lord Loudon, Secretary of State, and 
 keeper of the Great Seal. His wife was a daughter 
 of Mr. Douglas, of Strathenry. They had no other 
 child but the philosopher, whose education devolved 
 upon his mother, and was most carefully and affection- 
 ately conducted. 
 
 When a child of only three years old, he was stolen 
 by a gang of the vagrants, called in Scotland, tinkers, and 
 resembling gipsies in their habits the same race which 
 Fletcher of JSaltoun describes as having in his day 
 become so numerous that they formed a considerable 
 proportion of the Scottish people. It was a fortunate 
 circumstance, that being soon missed, his uncle, at 
 whose house he was residing, pursued the wretches, 
 and restored him to his affrighted parent. 
 
 He received the first rudiments of his education at 
 the school of David Miller, an eminent teacher, several 
 of whose pupils filled important public stations in after 
 life. Being of weak constitution in his early years, 
 books formed his only amusement, and his companions 
 retained all their lives a lively recollection of his 
 devotion to reading and of the great tenacity of his 
 memory. He was also remarkable even in those early 
 days for that absence which so distinguished him in 
 company ever after. At the age of fourteen, as is 
 usual in Scotland, he was sent to the University, and 
 
 N 
 
178 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 remained at Glasgow for three years, when he obtained 
 an exhibition to Baliol College. 
 
 At Oxford he remained for seven years, and applied 
 himself to the acquisition of various learning. He 
 became master of both ancient and modern languages, 
 and exercised himself in translation, especially from 
 the French, a mode which, like his illustrious friend 
 Robertson, he always recommended, as tending to 
 improve the student's style, by giving a facility in the 
 use of his own language. But it is somewhat remark- 
 able that his chief study was of mathematical and 
 physical science, a walk little frequented at the Uni- 
 versity, and which, except as subservient to other 
 speculations, he himself appears to have ever after 
 abandoned. For some time, however, he must have 
 retained both the taste and the capacity for those 
 exalted studies ; for Mr. Stewart recollects his father, 
 the celebrated geometrician, reminding him of a 
 problem proposed to him by Dr. Smith, which had 
 occupied his attention after he had left College, and 
 had come to reside at Glasgow. 
 
 On his return from Oxford he went to reside for two 
 years at Kirkaldy, with his mother, for whom he enter- 
 tained through his whole life an extraordinary and a 
 perfectly well-grounded affection, being ever happier in 
 her society than in any other; and he enjoyed the un- 
 speakable blessing of having her days prolonged till he 
 had himself reached a good old age. The plan of his 
 family had been, that he should enter the English 
 Church, and with this view he had been sent to Ox- 
 ford. But Mr. Stewart says, that he did not find this 
 profession suit his tastes; perhaps it did not accord 
 with his habits of thinking ; certain it is that he aban- 
 doned all thoughts of it, and contented himself with 
 those chances of very moderate preferment which the 
 Scotch Universities present to lovers of literature and 
 science. 
 
 It is clearly proved by the course and by the tone of 
 
ADAM SMITH. 179 
 
 his remarks on English universities,* that the discipline 
 and habits of Oxford had in no way gained either his 
 affection or his respect. Probably he could not easily 
 forget the silly bigotry which caused his superiors to 
 seize his copy of Hume's ' Treatise of Human Nature' 
 when he was surprised reading it, and to administer a 
 reprimand for the offence. 
 
 In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, accompanied by 
 his mother ; and he read for about three years a course 
 of Lectures on Khetoric under the patronage of Lord 
 Kames, himself a very succcessful follower of critical 
 studies, and whose writings were the first to introduce 
 in this island a sound philosophy upon those subjects. 
 Dr. Smith also became intimately acquainted with the 
 eminent men of letters who then adorned the Scottish 
 capital, and some of whom were not yet well known 
 to the world. Mr. Hume, Dr. Robertson, Dr. Blair, 
 were among those literary men; Mr. Wedderburne after- 
 wards Lord Loughborough, and Mr. Johnstone after- 
 wards Sir William Pulteney, were severally members 
 of the Scottish Bar. In 1751 he was elected to the 
 Professorship of Logic in the University of Glasgow, 
 which he exchanged the year after for that of Moral 
 Philosophy. It had till four years before been filled by 
 Hutcheson, under whom he had studied with all the 
 admiration which the ingenuity and elqquence of that 
 great teacher so naturally inspired, and with the affec- 
 tion which was commanded by his amiable character. 
 
 This important situation of a public teacher, one of 
 the most exalted to which any man can aspire, was 
 certainly of all others the most perfectly adapted to his 
 genius, as it was the best suited to his habits and his 
 tastes ; for the love of speculation was in him combined 
 with the desire of communicating information to others 
 and of promoting their improvement. Even in society 
 all his life, there was something didactic in the style of 
 
 * Wealth of Nations,' book v., chap. 1 
 
180 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 his conversation. He was fond of laying down princi- 
 ples, illustrating them, and tracing their consequences. 
 He was not, indeed, in such careless discussions, always 
 either very practical or very reflecting and circumspect 
 as to conclusions; and his hasty opinions, whether of 
 men or of things, were often the result of momentary 
 impressions, which he was quite ready to correct upon 
 reconsideration. But the interest which he took in his 
 subject always animated his discourse ; and no one 
 could more appropriately, or with greater claims to his 
 hearer's attention, illustrate the bearing of the truths 
 which he meant to convey. His language, too, was 
 choice, both elegant, various, and plain ; his manner 
 having been formed upon the best models which he 
 had, as we have seen, diligently studied, as indeed he 
 had the principles of rhetoric, the subject of his earliest 
 lectures. Nor had he any difficulty of extempore com- 
 position, though like many greater speakers, he at first 
 was apt to hesitate until he became warmed with his 
 subject, and then he could prelect with as great fluency 
 of language as copiousness of illustration. It may thus 
 be well supposed that on the subjects of his lectures, 
 when he had given them the full consideration which 
 was required for preparing himself, he could convey 
 instruction in a manner at once sound, luminous, and 
 attractive. Accordingly we find all accounts agree in 
 representing him as a teacher of the very highest order, 
 and his pupils as receiving instruction with a respect 
 approaching to enthusiasm. Even the talents of Hutche- 
 son had failed to recommend these studies to as general 
 and cordial acceptation. The taste for metaphysical and 
 ethical inquiries was greatly increased ; discussions of 
 the doctrines he taught became the favourite occupa- 
 tion in all the literary circles, and formed the subjects 
 of debate in the clubs and societies of the place ; even 
 the peculiarities of his manner and pronunciation were 
 eagerly caught up and imitated, though there was noth- 
 ing which he less affected than the graces of delivery, 
 
ADAM SMITH. 181 
 
 and nothing in which he less excelled ; but it seemed 
 like the free and spontaneous tribute to genius and 
 learning which courtly servility had paid to one monarch 
 by assuming his wry neck, and to another by adopting 
 his false grammar,* so that he may perhaps be allowed 
 to have more than any other celebrated teacher of our 
 own times, attained the observance with which the 
 ancient sects cultivated their masters, while his friend 
 and coadjutor, De Quesnay, in this respect passed all 
 who never actually taught. 
 
 The late eminent Professor Millar, who had been a 
 pupil of Dr. Smith's, and who remained to his death 
 one of his most intimate friends, has given a valuable 
 account of his lectures which Mr. Stewart inserted in 
 his * Biographical Sketch.' When he taught the Logic 
 Class, he appears to have rather converted the course 
 into one upon rhetoric and belles lettres, only giving 
 an introductory view of the School Logic and Meta- 
 physics. The reason given for what appears to me a 
 great departure from the proper duties of that chair, 
 is, that he considered the best illustration of the mental 
 powers to consist in examining the several ways of 
 communicating our thoughts by speech, and tracing 
 the principles upon which literary composition becomes 
 most subservient to persuasion or entertainment. It 
 really seems difficult to imagine a more unsatisfactory 
 reason for teaching rhetoric as logic. The difference 
 of the two studies was much more accurately perceived 
 by another great light, Lord Coke, who places them 
 rather in contrast than in resemblance to each other, 
 when he quaintly compares the original writ to logic, 
 and the count or pleading to rhetoric, which assuredly 
 it only resembles in being as unlike logic, as the plea 
 is unlike the writ. But I apprehend, that whatever 
 might be given as a ratio justified, the ratio suasoria was 
 
 * Augustus and Louis XIV. Happily the Roman parasites could not, 
 like the Parisians, bequeath their monarch's deformity, but mon carosse is 
 still French. 
 
182 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 the accidental possession of a course of lectures already 
 delivered at Edinburgh in his earlier years ; and that, 
 had this course been directed to explain the learning 
 of the Schools, the rules of argumentation, the prin- 
 ciples of classification, and the limits of the various 
 branches of science, the proper office of logic, we 
 should not have heard of the somewhat unaccountable 
 theory which has been cited from Mr. Millar's note. 
 
 After one course, however, of this description, he 
 taught Moral Philosophy for twelve years, with extra- 
 ordinary ability and the greatest success. It is most 
 deeply to be lamented that of the four branches into 
 which his course was divided, the two most interesting 
 should not have reached us, the MS. having been de- 
 stroyed a short time before his death. He first unfolded 
 the sublime and important truths of Natural Theology, 
 and the faculties and principles of the mind on which 
 it rests, by far the most elevated of all human specula- 
 tions, and one, as Archbishop Tillotson* has most 
 soundly declared, which so far from being worthy of 
 jealousy on their part who maintain the doctrines of 
 Eevelation, is of necessity the very foundation essen- 
 tial to support its fabric. Whether we regard the hopes 
 of man as built upon his unassisted reason, or as con- 
 firmed by the light of religion, no study can match 
 
 * " All religion is founded upon right notions of God and his perfection, 
 insomuch that divine revelation itself does suppose those for its founda- 
 tions, and can signify (disclose or reveal) nothing to us unless they be first 
 known and believed. For unless we be first firmly persuaded of 'the pro- 
 vidence of God and of his superintendence over mankind, why should we 
 suppose that he makes any revelation of his will to us ? Unless it be first 
 actually known that God is a God of truth, what ground is there for be- 
 lieving his word ? So that the principles of natural religion are the foun- 
 dations of that which is revealed." (Serm. xli.) This sermon was preached 
 before the King and Queen, 27th October, 1692, at the thanksgiving for 
 the naval victory, and contains even a more searching exposure of the 
 errors of Romanism than the celebrated sermon (xl.) on the Church of 
 Rome. The sermon on " Steadfastness in Religion," seems to me his 
 Grace's other masterpiece in contending with Rome. It is a demonstra- 
 tion of the great practical doctrine of the right of private judgment, and it 
 tallies in spirit with the above passage in the 41st. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 183 
 
 that of Natural Theology in the loftiness of its nature, 
 and the importance of its tendency. "Neque enim 
 homines ad Deos ulla re propius accedunt quam salu- 
 tem hominibus dando." (Cic. 'Pro Lig.') He next 
 explained the doctrines of Ethics, or the rules and 
 principles by which men judge of the qualities in 
 point of wisdom and goodness, of human action. The 
 third division of his course was, properly speaking, a 
 branch of the second ; it embodied general jurispru- 
 dence, the structure of government, and the theory of 
 legislation. In the fourth and last branch he treated 
 of the principles upon which the wealth, power, and 
 generally the prosperity of communities depend, and of 
 the institutions relating to commerce, finance, instruc- 
 tion, and defined, in a word, the functions of govern- 
 ment as contradistinguished from its structure. Of the 
 second and fourth divisions he afterwards gave the 
 substance in his published works ; unhappily, the whole 
 of his papers containing the first and the third series of 
 Lectures, were destroyed by himself some time before 
 he died, together with the Lectures on Rhetoric, which 
 are described by Mr. Millar as having been composed 
 with extraordinary care, and as having contained critical 
 discussions of great delicacy of taste, as well as exten- 
 sive learning. I cannot help regarding it as a circum- 
 stance, however unfortunate for the world, peculiarly 
 happy for his executors, that these invaluable manu- 
 scripts were not left in their hands, with the injunction 
 which his will contained to burn them, for if ever men 
 can be conceived to lie under a temptation to strain at 
 placing their public duty in opposition to their private 
 obligations, it certainly would have been those eminent 
 persons, Dr. Black and Dr. Hutton, shrinking from the 
 painful office of performing the trusts of their friend's 
 will. 
 
 While Dr. Smith was engaged in the duties of his 
 Professorship at Glasgow, he published the first works 
 which he gave to the world. In 1755 he contributed 
 
184 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 to the ' Edinburgh Eeview,' of which I have spoken in 
 the * Life of Robertson/ a paper of great merit, being a 
 criticism on Johnson's Dictionary. Allowing full praise 
 to the merits of that important work, he yet very clearly 
 showed the want of strict philosophical principle with 
 which it is justly chargeable, the different senses of 
 words being rarely arranged in classes, or the particular 
 modifications of each signification under the more gen- 
 eral, and as it were leading or prevailing sense, and 
 words apparently synonymous, being very often dis- 
 tinguished with little care. He illustrates his remarks 
 by examining the words, but and humour, as given by 
 Johnson, and by giving them on his own more syste- 
 matic plan. The article is masterly in all respects, 
 and carries conviction to every attentive reader. The 
 specimen is as well executed as possible, and makes it 
 a matter of regret, not indeed that the author should 
 have confined his own labours as a lexicographer, to 
 pointing out the way instead of walking in it himself, 
 but that his plan should not have been adopted and 
 executed by others whose labour might have been 
 better spared for so useful a work. This service to 
 letters, indeed to science itself, still remains to be 
 rendered, and if individuals should be scared from so 
 toilsome an undertaking, it seems well suited to the 
 joint exertions of some literary society. The zeal and 
 activity of Voltaire, it may be mentioned, broke out 
 almost on his death-bed, in persuading his colleagues 
 of the Academy to accomplish a work of this kind, in 
 some sort fellow to the one I speak of; for it was to 
 remodel their Dictionary, giving the historical progress 
 of the meaning attached to the words, with quotations 
 from contemporary writers, and each Academician was 
 to have taken a letter ; he had begun himself to write 
 upon the letter A, with his wonted industry, when that 
 hand arrested him, to which the laborious and the idle 
 alike must submit, closing his long and brilliant career. 
 Dr. Smith's other paper in the Review is a letter to 
 
ADAM SMITH. 185 
 
 the editors upon the propriety of extending their plan, 
 which had been confined to the criticism of works pub- 
 lished in Scotland. He enters at some length into the 
 general state of literature on the Continent, and shows 
 a familiar acquaintance with it, that could only have 
 been acquired by very extensive reading in the works 
 of foreign writers. The advice which he gave would 
 in all probability have been followed; but the Keview 
 was given up, as I have elsewhere stated,* in conse- 
 quence of the ferment excited by the fanatical part of 
 the Kirk. 
 
 In 1759 Dr. Smith published his 'Theory of Moral 
 Sentiments,' being the greater part of the second divi- 
 sion of his course of lectures, and the explanation of 
 the principles upon which his ethical system rested. 
 To the 'Theory' was subjoined a 'Dissertation on the 
 Origin of Language,' a subject to which he had paid 
 great attention. There is some doubt whether this 
 was not added to the second edition of the work. 
 Mr. Stewart is inclined to think that it was not in the 
 first, but a different opinion has been confidently ex- 
 pressed by others. The success of this publication 
 was great, and it was immediate. The book became at 
 once generally popular ; and Mr. Hume, who was in 
 London at the time of its first appearance, wrote him 
 a most lively and humorous letter, in which he gives 
 the history of his friend's complete success. In this 
 letter there is mentioned a circumstance, too, which we 
 shall presently see was destined to have a great influence 
 on his future prospects. The celebrated Charles Towns- 
 end said, on reading the book, that he should make it 
 worth the author's while to undertake the charge of 
 the young Duke of Buccleugh's education, whose 
 mother, the dowager Duchess, he had married. 
 
 The success of this excellent work, however, was 
 confined, at least for a long time, to the author's own 
 
 * ' Life of Robertson,' vol. ii. 
 
186 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 country. It was soon translated into French, and the 
 publisher sought to give it more attraction by adding 
 an absurd title to the original one he called it * Meta- 
 physique de 1'Ame.' Grimm commends this as ex- 
 tremely clever ; but adds that it had failed to obtain for 
 the book any attention, and that it had entirely failed at 
 Paris, which, however, he observes, proved nothing 
 against its merits.* 
 
 After the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' was pub- 
 lished, Dr. Smith naturally made considerable changes 
 in his course of lectures during the four years that he 
 remained in Glasgow College. He greatly curtailed 
 the second branch, having incorporated so large a 
 portion of it in his book ; and he extended the third 
 and fourth heads those parts which related to juris- 
 prudence and political economy giving more copious 
 illustrations of the principles on which these important 
 sciences are grounded. In particular, his discussions 
 of commercial policy were more elaborately conducted; 
 and he profited by his intimacy with merchants and 
 manufacturers of eminence in the great trading city in 
 which he resided to obtain practical information which 
 might illustrate, if not guide, his speculative views 
 possibly also correcting those views by bringing them 
 to the test of experience by free discussion. 
 
 The progress of his opinions in making converts to 
 the modern doctrines concerning trade is represented 
 as having been considerable, even among those whose 
 prejudices in favour of the older maxims were of long 
 standing ; but of course his philosophy was more readily 
 adopted, and more extensively diffused by the pupils, 
 who came to the consideration of the subject w r ith no 
 
 * " On a traduit depuis quelque terns la ' Theorie des Sentimens Mo- 
 raux,' de M. Adam Smith, Professeur a Glasgow, en deux volumes in 8vo. 
 Le traducteur ou le libraire, pour lui donner un titre plus piquant, Fa 
 nomine spirituellement ' Metaphysique de TAme ;' cet ouvrage a beau- 
 coup de reputation en Angleterre, et n'a eu aucun succeS a Paris. Cela 
 ne decide rien contre son merite." (Corr. IV., 291.) 
 
ADAM SMITH. 187 
 
 bias upon their minds from former habits of thinking 
 or long-formed professional opinions. 
 
 In 1763 the project, already mentioned, of Charles 
 Townsend, was carried into execution, and Dr. Smith 
 was induced to resign his professorship, with the view 
 of attending the Duke of Buccleugh on his travels. 
 The settlement of an adequate annuity upon him made 
 this arrangement one sufficiently consistent with ordi- 
 nary prudence. But it may reasonably be doubted, if, 
 after enjoying the advantages of a residence during a 
 year or two abroad, his happiness would not have been 
 better consulted by returning to the duties and habits 
 of his academical life. Nothing, certainly, can be more 
 clear, than that the official appointment to which this 
 change in his plans ultimately led, was one deeply to 
 be lamented, and indeed to be disapproved in every 
 respect, however well meant. It is somewhat hum- 
 bling to our national pride to reflect that our Govern- 
 ment could find no better employment, and no fitter 
 reward for the most eminent philosopher of the age, 
 than making him a revenue officer. For the last 
 twelve years of his precious life he was condemned to 
 go through the routine business of a Commissioner of 
 the Customs ; as, some time after, one of the greatest 
 poets who ever appeared in this island was made an 
 exciseman, at seventy pounds a-year, for a bare sub- 
 sistence, and daily threatened with removal, to die of 
 hunger, if he did not square his conversation by the 
 opinions on French politics which his superiors enter- 
 tained.* 
 
 It must, however, be added, that nothing could 
 better suit Dr. Smith, than the opportunity which his 
 connexion with the Duke gave him of visiting France 
 
 * It is a gratifying proof of the progress which has since those times 
 been made, that no minister could in our day propose such preferment to 
 such men. An instance may probably be cited of an eminent poet being 
 early in this century so employed ; but there was a wide difference in the 
 emoluments, and the place was nearly a sinecure. 
 
188 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 and Switzerland. They repaired in the spring of 1764 
 to Paris, where they only remained a few days, and 
 proceeding to Toulouse, passed in that provincial 
 capital a year and a-half. Except that the French 
 spoken on the Garonne is by no means so pure as that 
 of the Loire and other districts in the centre of the 
 country, the place was well chosen for a residence 
 connected with education. There was an university 
 of good repute with an excellent library ; it was also 
 the seat of one of the most important parliaments, and 
 of an engineer and artillery head-quarters (a requisite of 
 good society in my late friend Mr. Wickham's opinion) ; 
 the society was polished and not dissipated, commerce 
 and manufactures having somewhat unaccountably 
 never established themselves in a city which seems 
 well-suited to both from its central position and the 
 neighbourhood of the canal, as well as from the fer- 
 tility of the surrounding country. It is not doubtful 
 that Dr. Smith obtained, by his residence in this ancient 
 and flourishing city, and his intercourse with the well- 
 informed and polished circles of its society, much of 
 that accurate information respecting French affairs 
 which plainly appears in his writings, and which, as 
 he habitually distrusts the statements of political autho- 
 rities, was the result of his own inquiries and observa- 
 tions.* From Toulouse they went to Geneva, where 
 they passed two months, and then remained ten months 
 in Paris. Here he enjoyed an intimate acquaintance 
 with all the most eminent men of science and of letters, 
 particularly D'Alembert, Necker, Marmontel, Helvetius, 
 Morellet, Turgot, and above all, Quesnay, whose tastes 
 
 * He has preserved in his ' Theory of Moral Sentiments ' an anecdote, 
 which, unless it is to be found in the earlier editions, I should imagine 
 him to have heard at Toulouse ; that when the unhappy Galas was mur- 
 dered by the law, and among other torments a monk was sent to obtain 
 his confession, the wretched sufferer, already broken on the wheel ex- 
 claimed, " Can you, yourself, father, believe me guilty?" (I., 303.) The 
 paragraph certainly is in one of the chapters which he says was altered in 
 the edition of 1788. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 189 
 
 and pursuits so much resembling his own formed the 
 bond of a strong attachment. Though differing in 
 opinion upon some fundamental points, he regarded 
 his system as " the nearest approximation to truth that 
 had ever been made in economical science, while the 
 singular modesty and simplicity" of the man had a 
 powerful attraction for so congenial a nature. He was, 
 as is well known, only prevented by Quesnay's death 
 from dedicating to him the ' Wealth of Nations.' It 
 appears by a letter of Morellet, published in his 
 Memoirs, that notwithstanding Dr. Smith's residence 
 at Toulouse, and his intimate acquaintance with the 
 French language, he had never so far mastered it as to 
 speak it tolerably well; but he could, though difficultly, 
 converse in it without much inconvenience. " II par- 
 loit," says the Abbe, " fort mal notre langue, mais nous 
 parlames theorie commerciale, banque, credit publique, 
 &c." As the date of 1762 is given for this acquain- 
 tance, it might be deemed that this applies to his 
 passing through Paris in 1764, rather than his resi- 
 dence there in 1766 ; but as the Abbe mentions having 
 seen and conversed with him repeatedly, and adds, 
 that Turgot, as well as Helvetius, had made his ac- 
 quaintance, the time referred to must have been at his 
 return from the south ; for the twelve days spent at 
 Paris, on his way to Toulouse, could not have given 
 time to form their acquaintance. 
 
 Upon his return to England in the autumn of 1766, 
 he went to reside with his mother at his native town 
 of Kirkaldy, and remained there for ten years. All 
 the attempts of his friends in Edinburgh to draw him. 
 thither were vain ; and from a kind and lively letter 
 of Mr. Hume upon the subject, complaining that 
 though within sight of him on the opposite side of the 
 Frith of Forth, he could not have speech of him. it 
 appears that no one was aware of the occupations in 
 which' those years were passed. At length, early in 
 1776, .the mystery was explained by the appearance 
 
190 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 of his great work the t Inquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations ;' at first published 
 in two quarto volumes, and afterwards in three octavo, 
 Mr. Hume lived to see it, having died in the autumn 
 of the same year ; and he immediately wrote to express 
 his high sense of its merits, specifying accurately 
 the chief points of its excellence " depth, solidity, 
 acuteness, with much illustration of curious facts ;" to 
 which, if we add the extraordinary merit of showing 
 in what way economical reasoning should be conducted 
 with a constant recourse to the general principles 
 of human nature, and a distrust of all empirical details, 
 though with a due attention to ascertained facts of a 
 general and not a topical or accidental class we sum 
 up the great services rendered to science, as well as to 
 government and legislation generally, by this cele- 
 brated work. In regard to the originality of its views, 
 it ranks, perhaps, less highly, as most of its doctrines 
 had been broached by the Italian writers and the 
 French economists, and still more by Mr. Hume in his 
 * Political Discourses.' We must, however, bear in 
 mind, that Dr. Smith had begun to lecture upon those 
 subjects as early as the year after he settled in 
 Glasgow, that is, in 1752, when Mr. Hume's Essays 
 were published; and in 1755 he drew up a paper 
 containing an abstract of his doctrines, which he 
 asserts that he taught the winter before he left Edin- 
 burgh, and consequently in 1750. As far as regards 
 himself, therefore, we may affirm that those opinions 
 were not borrowed from any others, but were the re- 
 sults of his own speculations.* 
 
 The two years immediately following the publication 
 of his work he passed chiefly in London, and lived in the 
 society of the persons most distinguished for political 
 and for literary eminence. His appointment as Com- 
 
 * He says that they are contained in lectures which he had composed 
 and had caused to be written in the hand of an amanuensis, who left his 
 service in 1749 or the beginning of 1750. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 191 
 
 tnissioner of the Customs was wholly without his soli- 
 citation, or, indeed, knowledge, until the offer was 
 made. In 1762 the University of Glasgow had con- 
 ferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, and in 
 1788 he was chosen their Kector-^an office in the gift 
 of the students, voting by four divisions or nations. 
 His letter of thanks on this occurrence shows how ex- 
 tremely gratified he was with the honour. 
 
 Upon his appointment to the Customs he settled in 
 Edinburgh, where his venerable parent lived with him 
 till her death in 1784, as well as his cousin, Miss 
 Douglas, who died in 1788. These two losses sorely 
 afflicted his gentle and affectionate heart, for he was 
 tenderly attached to both his relations, and had never 
 known domestic comforts but in their society. He 
 lived hospitably, and saw much of his friends the 
 great lights of Scottish society in those days : Dr. 
 Black, Dr. Hutton, Dr. Kobertson, Dr. Cullen, were 
 his chosen companions ; and he took much pleasure 
 in superintending the education of his kinsman, Mr. 
 Douglas, afterwards Lord Strathenry, to whom he left 
 his choice library (the only thing, as he used to say, 
 in which he was a fop), as well as that portion of his 
 papers which he did not destroy. 
 
 But now, although his income exceeded his wants, 
 his far more precious time was no longer his own. 
 The trivial but incessant duties of his office exhausted 
 his spirits, and distracted, though they could not fix 
 his attention. For several years he ceased to cultivate 
 letters or science, or only gave his attention to them, 
 as matters of amusement, and as food for conversation. 
 He had, indeed, in the two portions of his lectures of 
 which nothing had been published, the rich materials 
 of works in the very highest degree interesting and 
 important. But when we reflect that ten years had 
 been required, and those years passed in seclusion, to 
 systematize, to arrange, and to compose the work 
 into which were moulded the economical part of his 
 
192 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 lectures, we may well believe that he now, as his age 
 declined and his infirmities increased, shrunk from 
 performing the same office to the other portions of the 
 lectures, when the avocations of his public duty gave a 
 perpetual interruption to his studies. It is remarkable, 
 too, how little, with all his great practice, he ever 
 acquired the art of composition. He told Mr. Stewart 
 a short time before his death, that " after all his prac- 
 tice, he composed as slowly and with as great difficulty 
 as at first." Hence it naturally surprises us to learn 
 that he never wrote, but walking about the room, 
 dictated to an amanuensis, from which we must con- 
 clude that before he began, he had well considered the 
 language as well as the matter, and spoke to the writer, 
 as it were, a prepared speech.* 
 
 He began to feel the approach of age at a somewhat 
 early period, notwithstanding the temperate, calm, and 
 equable life which he had ever had ; nor had he 
 reached three score when he was sensible, not that his 
 faculties, but that his bodily strength and spirits were 
 somewhat impaired. The domestic losses to which I 
 have adverted left him solitary and helpless ; and 
 though he bore them with an equal mind, as became 
 a great philosopher, his health gradually declined. 
 The immediate cause of his death, which happened in 
 July, 1790, was a chronic obstruction in the bowels, 
 under which he lingered for a considerable time, and 
 suffered great pain ; but he bore it with perfect resig- 
 nation. When he left Edinburgh in 1773, on a journey 
 to London, the object of which has not been explained, 
 but which gave him the expectation of a long absence 
 from Scotland, he wrote a letter to Mr. Hume, intrust- 
 
 * Mr. Stewart adds, that Dr. Smith mentioned Mr. Plume's facility of 
 writing as a contrast to his own, stating " that the last vols of his History 
 were printed from the original copy, with a few marginal corrections." I 
 have shown in his life, that this could not have been the case ; for I have 
 proved, both from Mr. Hume's MSS., and from his own account of his 
 difficulty in writing, that Dr. Smith's impression was erroneous. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 193 
 
 ing him with the charge of his papers, and intimating 
 that, except the * Speculative History of Astronomy,' 
 he desired all his other writings to be destroyed, 
 stating that they were contained in eighteen folio 
 paper books, which were not even to be examined 
 before destroying them. Dr. Hutton's account of 
 what afterwards passed, coincided with this intention, 
 and must be subjoined, as it is extremely interesting. 
 " When he became weak and saw the approaching 
 end of his life, he spoke to his friends again upon the 
 subject of his papers. They entreated him to make 
 his mind easy, as he might depend upon their ful- 
 filling his desire. He was then satisfied, but some 
 days afterwards finding his anxiety not entirely re- 
 moved, he begged one of them to destroy the volumes 
 immediately. This accordingly was done, and his 
 mind was so much relieved that he was able to receive 
 his friends in the evening with his usual complacency. 
 They had been in use to sup with him every Sunday, 
 and that evening there was a pretty numerous society 
 of them. Dr. Smith not being able to sit up with 
 them as usual, retired to bed before supper, and as he 
 went away took leave of his friends by saying, ' I be- 
 lieve we must adjourn this meeting to some other 
 place ! " He died a very few days afterwards. Mr. 
 Kiddel, an intimate friend of Dr. Smith's, who was 
 present at one of the conversations on the subject of 
 the manuscripts, mentioned to Mr. Stewart, in addi- 
 tion to Dr. Hutton's note, that he "regretted he 
 had done so little, adding, ' I meant to have done 
 more, and there are materials in my papers of which I 
 could have made a great deal, but that is now out of 
 the question.' " 
 
 In the latter period of his life, and while suffering 
 under the illness which proved fatal, he made some 
 important additions to his 'Theory of Moral Senti- 
 ments.' Of these, some of the most eloquent passages 
 of his whole writings, Mr. Stewart has beautifully said, 
 o 
 
194 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 "that the moral and serious strain which prevails 
 through those additions, when connected with the cir- 
 cumstances of his declining health, adds a peculiar 
 charm to his pathetic eloquence, and communicates a 
 new interest, if possible, to those sublime truths, which 
 in the academical retreat of his youth awakened the 
 first ardours of his genius, and on which the last efforts 
 of his mind reposed." 
 
 In 1795, a volume of posthumous works was pub- 
 lished, consisting of four Essays. The first is a por- 
 tion of the extensive work which he had begun, on 
 the principles which lead to and direct philosophical 
 inquiries ; these he illustrates from the history of as- 
 tronomy, of ancient physics, and ancient logic and 
 metaphysics. His second is an Essay upon the imi- 
 tative arts ; the third on certain affinities of English 
 and Italian verse, and the fourth on the external 
 senses. The only part of this work that appears to be 
 nearly finished, is the ' History of Astronomy ; ' but 
 the whole of the Essays are replete with profound and 
 ingenious views, and show an extensive and accu- 
 rate acquaintance with all the branches of inductive 
 science. 
 
 The true picture of a great author's intellectual cha- 
 racter is presented by his writings ; and of the depth, 
 the comprehensiveness, the general accuracy of his 
 views, on the various subjects to which his mind was 
 bent, there can be but one opinion. His understanding 
 was enlarged, and it was versatile ; his sagacity, when 
 he applied himself deliberately to inquiry or to discus- 
 sion, was unerring ; his information was extensive and 
 correct ; his fancy was rich and various ; his taste, 
 formed upon the purest models of antiquity, was simple 
 and chaste. 
 
 His integrity was unimpeachable, and the warmth of 
 his affections knew no chill, even when the languor of 
 age, and the weight of ill health, was upon him ; his 
 nature was kindly in the greatest degree, and his bene- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 195 
 
 volence was extensive, leading him to indulge in acts 
 of private charity, pushed beyond his means, and 
 concealed with the most scrupulous delicacy towards 
 its objects. Stern votaries of religion have complained 
 of his deficiencies in piety, chiefly because of his letter 
 upon the death of his old and intimate friend Mr. Hume ; 
 but no one can read the frequent and warm allusions 
 with which his works abound to the moral government 
 of the world, to reliance upon the all-wise Disposer, to 
 the hopes of a future state, and not be convinced that 
 his mind was deeply sensible of devout impressions. 
 Nay, even as to his estimate of Mr. Hume's character, 
 we are clearly entitled to conclude that he regarded his 
 friend as an exception to the rule that religion has a 
 powerful and salutary influence on morals, because he 
 has most forcibly stated his opinion, that whenever the 
 principles of religion which are natural to it are not 
 perverted or corrupted "the world justly places a double 
 confidence in the rectitude of the religious man's be- 
 haviour." (' Mor. Sent.' I., 427.) Surely, Dr. John- 
 son himself could desire no stronger testimony to reli- 
 gion, no more severe condemnation of infidelity.* 
 
 In his simple manners, and the easy flow of his con- 
 versation, wholly without effort, often with little re- 
 flection, the carelessness of his nature often appeared; 
 and the mistakes which he would occasionally fall into, 
 by giving immediate vent to what occurred to him on 
 a first impression, or a view of the subject from a single 
 point, sometimes would furnish subject of merriment 
 to his friends.f It was, probably, from the same sim- 
 plicity and earnestness that he was apt in conversation 
 to lay down principles and descant upon topics some- 
 
 * See * Theory of Moral Sentiments,' Part III., chap, i., ii., and v. 
 
 f In some few instances, these traces of imperfect judgment have found 
 a place in his works. His giving Gray the preference to almost all poets, 
 " as equalling Milton in sublimity and Pope in eloquence and harmony," 
 is the most singular, because the best by far of Gray's poems, the Elegy, 
 makes no pretension to sublimity at all. (' Theory of Moral Sentiments,' 
 I. 311.) 
 
196 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 what in the way of a lecture ; but no one found this 
 tiresome, all feeling that it was owing to his niind being 
 in the matter, and to his simple and unsophisticated 
 nature. Never was there anything about him in the 
 least like a desire to engross the conversation. On the 
 contrary, he could sit a silent spectator of other men's 
 gaiety, which he was perceived to enjoy even when he 
 took no part in what excited it. 
 
 Somewhat akin to these peculiarities was his habitual 
 absence, not only muttering in company as unconscious 
 of their presence, but even unaware of the obstructions 
 he might encounter while walking in the streets. One 
 that knew him, which the sufferer did not, was a good 
 deal amused to hear a poor old woman, whose stall he 
 had overturned while he moved on with his hands be- 
 hind his back and his head in the air, exclaim in some 
 anger, " doating brute !"* Another was amused at the 
 remark of an old gardener, near Kirkaldy, who only 
 knew him by having answered his questions, somewhat 
 incoherently put in his walks, when the ' Wealth of 
 Nations ' appeared, and he found who was its author : 
 " Weel a weel !" quoth he, " they tell me that lad Adam 
 Smith has put out a great book. I am sure it would 
 be long before I would think of doing a thing of the 
 kind." It is related by old people at Edinburgh, that 
 while he moved through the Fishmarket in his ac- 
 customed attitude, and as if wholly unconscious of his 
 own existence or that of others, a female of the trade 
 exclaimed, taking him for an idiot broken loose, 
 " Heigh ! Sirs, to let the like of him be about ! And 
 yet he's weel eneugh put on" (dressed). It was often 
 so too in society. Once during dinner at Dalkeith he 
 broke out in a long lecture on some political matters 
 of the day, and was bestowing a variety of severe 
 epithets on a statesman, when he suddenly perceived 
 his nearest relative sitting opposite, and stopt ; but he 
 
 * The Scotch word is " doited" or " donnert" and expresses one whose 
 faculties are entirely gone, if ever they existed. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 197 
 
 was heard to go muttering, " Deil care, deil care, it's 
 all true." 
 
 The ' Theory of Moral Sentiments,' although it be 
 not the work by which Dr. Smith is best known, and 
 for which he is most renowned, is yet a performance 
 of the highest merit. The system has not, indeed, been 
 approved by the philosophical world, and it seems liable 
 to insuperable objections when considered even with 
 an ordinary degree of attention, objections which never 
 could have escaped the acuteness of its author but for 
 the veil so easily drawn over an inquirer's eyes when 
 directed to the weak points of his own supposed dis- 
 covery. The principle or property in our nature which 
 leads us to sympathise or feel with the feelings of others, 
 to be pleased when our feelings are in accordance with 
 theirs, to be displeased when they are in discord, must 
 be on all hands admitted to exist; and thence may fairly 
 be deduced the inference, that our approval of another's 
 conduct is affected by the consciousness of this accord 
 of our feelings, and our self-approval by the expecta- 
 tion of his feelings according with our own. But 
 when we resolve our whole approval of his conduct 
 and of our own into this sympathy, we evidently assume 
 two things : first, that the accord is a sufficient ground 
 of approbation ; and, secondly, that this approbation is 
 not independent but relative, or reflected, and rests 
 upon either the feelings of others and upon our own 
 speculations respecting those feelings, or upon our sym- 
 pathy with those feelings, or upon both the one and 
 the other. Now, the first of these things involves a 
 petitio principii, and the second involves both a petitio 
 principii and a dangerous doctrine. It cannot surely 
 be doubted that a sense of right may exist in the mind, 
 a disposition to pronounce a thing fit and proper, in- 
 nocent or praiseworthy, unfit or unbecoming, guilty 
 or blameworthy, without the least regard either to the 
 feelings or the judgments of other men. It is quite 
 
198 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 certain, that, in point of fact, we feel this sentiment of 
 approbation or disapprobation without being in the 
 least degree sensible of making any reference to other 
 men's feelings, and no sympathy with them is inter- 
 posed between our own sentence of approval or dis- 
 approval and its object. But it is enough to say, and 
 it seems to answer the theory at once, that even if our 
 sympathy were admitted to be the foundation of our 
 approval, our inability to sympathise the ground of our 
 disapproval, this in no way explains why we should 
 approve because of the accord and disapprove because 
 of the discord. 
 
 The theory, with the utmost concession that can 
 be made to it as to the ground-work, leaves the super- 
 structure still defective, and defective in the same de- 
 gree in which the 'Theory of Utility' is defective ; we 
 are still left to seek for a reason why approval follows 
 the perception of corresponding feelings in the one 
 case, of general utility in the other. Dr. Paley is so 
 sensible of this, that after resolving all questions of 
 morals into questions of utility, he is obliged to call 
 in the Divine Will as the ground of our doing or ap- 
 proving that which is found to be generally useful. 
 Other reasoners on the same side of the question pass 
 over the defect of their system altogether, while some 
 try the question by assuming that we must desire 
 or approve that which is useful ; while a third class, 
 much more consistently, consider that the approving 
 of what is generally useful, and disapproving of what 
 is generally hurtful, arises from the exercise of an in- 
 herent faculty or moral sense, an innate principle or 
 property in our nature, irresistible and universal. The 
 like defect is imputable to Dr. Smith's theory, and is 
 only to be supplied either by Dr. Paley 's method of 
 reasoning, or by the last supposition to which I have 
 referred. But all this concedes a great deal more 
 than is due to the ' Theory of Sympathy,' and assumes 
 it to stand on as good a foundation as that of ' Utility.' 
 
ADAM SMITH. 199 
 
 Now one consideration, which has in part been antici- 
 pated, shows that such is not the case. We may sym- 
 pathise with another, that is, we may feel that in his 
 position our own inclinations would be exactly the 
 same with those under which he appears to be acting, 
 and yet we may equally feel that we should deserve 
 blame, and not approval. Why? "Because," says 
 Dr. Smith, " we take into the account also that others, 
 that is to say, men in general, not under the influence 
 of excitement to disturb their feelings or their judg- 
 ments, will disapprove." But why should they ? If 
 they are to place themselves, as we are desired to do, 
 in the situation of the propositus, of him whose con- 
 duct is the subject of consideration, they must each of 
 them feel, as we do ourselves, that in his situation they 
 would do as he is doing, or, at least, would be inclined 
 so to do. Therefore, this appeal to others in general, 
 this calling in the general sense to correct the indivi- 
 dual, can have no effect upon the hypothesis ; it can 
 only exert any influence, or apply any correction, upon 
 some other hypothesis. It appears, therefore, that in 
 every view the theory is unsound. 
 
 At the same time, nothing can be more clear than 
 the very high merit and the very great value of the 
 work in which that theory is explained, illustrated, and 
 applied. 
 
 In the first place, it is the first modern systematic 
 work on ethics which exhausts the subject by going 
 over its whole range, both as regards the principles of 
 our nature, whereby we distinguish moral thoughts, 
 words, and actions, and as regards the grounds of our 
 approving or disapproving of these. The writings of 
 his predecessors, particularly, as we have seen, those 
 of Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume, had done much, but 
 they had left much to be done in forming a compre- 
 hensive and general system. 
 
 Secondly. The important operation of sympathy was 
 never before explained and traced, its effects upon our 
 
200 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 feelings and our judgments, its sudden and even instan- 
 taneous action, its direct and indirect, and immediate 
 and reflex workings ; all the modifications which it 
 undergoes. There remains a great body of important 
 truth, even concerning sympathy, in the work, after 
 we shall have deducted the portion of it which cannot 
 be supported. Sympathy is a great agent in our moral 
 system, though it may not be allowed either to be the 
 only one, or one of unlimited power ; and its agency 
 was never before so fully perceived, or so clearly traced. 
 
 Thirdly. In a system of ethics the truth or falsehood 
 of the fundamental principle is not, as in a physical or 
 mathematical speculation, the only point to be regarded, 
 and upon our determination respecting which the whole 
 value of the theory depends. The exhibiting an ex- 
 tensive and connected view of feeKngs and judgments, 
 of moral qualities and sentiments, referring the whole 
 to one principle of convenient arrangement, and trac- 
 ing their connection with each other, as well as with 
 the common source, may be of great importance, be- 
 cause of great use, although the arrangement itself is 
 defective, and the pivot on which it hinges insufficient 
 to bear it. This merit belongs in a very eminent de- 
 gree to Dr. Smith's theory, which brings together a 
 much larger collection of moral facts, and exhibits a 
 much greater variety of moral arguments than any other 
 ethical treatise in ancient or modern times. 
 
 Fourthly. There are whole compartments of the work 
 which are of inestimable value, without any regard to 
 the theory, and independent of those portions more 
 connected with it, of which we have admitted the value. 
 Thus the copious and accurate and luminous account 
 of the other systems of morals, forming the seventh 
 part, which occupies a fourth of the book, would have 
 been a valuable work detached from the rest. To relish 
 it we do not require the striking contrast of perusing 
 such works as the dry and uninteresting and indistinct 
 histories of Enfield and Stanley. So the third section 
 
ADAM SMITH. 201 
 
 of the first part, on the influence of success, or the event, 
 upon our feelings and judgments of actions, what the 
 author terms the influence of fortune, has great origin- 
 ality, and is at once judicious and profound. The like 
 may be said of the fifth part, which treats of the influ- 
 ence of custom and fashion. 
 
 Lastly. The admirable felicity, and the inexhaustible 
 variety of the illustrations in which the work every- 
 where abounds, sheds a new and a strong light upon 
 all the most important principles of human nature ; and 
 affords an explanation of many things which are wholly 
 independent of any theory whatever, and which de- 
 serves to be known and understood, whatever theory 
 may obtain our assent. 
 
 The beauty of the illustrations, and the eloquence of 
 the diction, are indeed a great merit of this work. 
 That the author living nearly twenty years in a College, 
 or in a small country town, and with his habits, both of 
 study and mental absence or distraction, should have 
 all the while been so curious an observer even of 
 minute particulars in conduct, manners, habits, is ex- 
 ceedingly singular, and seems to justify a conjecture 
 of Mr. Stewart, that he often gave a partial attention 
 to what was passing around him, and was afterwards 
 able to recall it by an effort of recollection, as if he 
 had given his whole mind to it at the time. His style, 
 indeed, is peculiarly good ; his diction is always ap- 
 propriate and expressive, quite natural, often pictur- 
 esque, even racy and idiomatic beyond what men are 
 apt to acquire who gather their language rather from 
 books than from habitually hearing it spoken by the 
 natives. Johnson, though an Englishman, has filled his 
 * Rambler' with very inferior English, in comparison of 
 such passages as these : " We seldom resent our friends 
 being at enmity with our friends, though upon that 
 account we may sometimes affect to make an awkward 
 quarrel with them ; but we quarrel with them in good 
 earnest, if they live in friendship with our enemies." 
 
202 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 (Vol. I. p. 20.) " Smaller offences are always better 
 neglected ; nor is there any thing more despicable than 
 that froward and captious humour which takes fire 
 upon every slight occasion of quarrel." (I. 86.) 
 
 Look through the heavy and wearisome pages of the 
 great English moralist's most admired ethical writings, 
 his ' Rambler,' his ' Idler,' his ' Rasselas,' where will you 
 find anything like this picture of the progress of an 
 upstart, which, however, is in a much more balanced 
 and sententious style than Dr. Smith generally adopts. 
 " In a little time he generally leaves all his own friends 
 behind him, some of the meanest of them excepted, 
 who may perhaps condescend to become his depen- 
 dants ; nor does he always acquire any new ones. The 
 pride of his new connections is as much affected at 
 finding him their equal, as that of his old ones had 
 been by his becoming their superior : and it requires 
 ths most obstinate and persevering modesty to atone for 
 this mortification to either. He generally grows weary 
 too soon, and is provoked by the sullen and suspicious 
 pride of the one, and by the saucy contempt of the 
 other, to treat the first with neglect and the second 
 with petulance, till at last he grows habitually insolent, 
 and forfeits the esteem of all." Then he concludes 
 beautifully and truly : " He is happiest who advances 
 more gradually to greatness; whom the public destines 
 to every step of his preferment long before he arrives 
 at it ; in whom, upon that account, when it comes, it 
 can excite no extravagant joy, and with regard to 
 whom it cannot reasonably create either any jealousy in 
 those he overtakes, or any envy in those he leaves 
 behind." (Vol. I. p. 97.) 
 
 Here, too, is a noble passage of indignant eloquence, 
 which I hope will not be deemed to carry with it any 
 offence to the remote descendants of those assailed; 
 but if it should, they can only be offended from a con- 
 sciousness of the stain enduring, and that stain can be 
 easily wiped out, so that the memory of the past shall 
 
ADAM SMITlt. 203 
 
 redound only to the glory of the present generation. 
 He is speaking of the North American Indians. " The 
 same contempt of death and torture prevails among 
 all the savage nations. There is not a negro from the 
 coast of Africa who does not in this respect possess a 
 magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is 
 too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never 
 exerted more cruelly her empire on mankind, than 
 when she subjected this nation of heroes to the refuse 
 of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the 
 virtues neither of the countries which they come from 
 nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, 
 brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the 
 contempt of the vanquished." (Vol. II. p. 37.) 
 
 How well has he painted the man of system, and 
 how many features of this portrait have we recognised 
 in Mr. Bentham, and others of our clay ! u He is apt 
 to be very wise in his own conceit, and is often so 
 enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal 
 plan of government that he cannot suffer the smallest 
 deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish 
 it completely, in all its parts, without any regard 
 either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices 
 which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he 
 can arrange the different members of a great society 
 with as much ease as the hand arranges the different 
 pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that 
 the pieces upon the chess-board have no other prin- 
 ciple of motion beside that which the hand impresses 
 upon them; but that in the great chess-board of 
 human society, every single piece has a principle of 
 action of its own, altogether different from that which 
 the legislature might 'choose to impress upon it. If 
 these two principles coincide and act in the same 
 direction, the game of human society will go on easily 
 and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and 
 successful. If they are opposite or different, the game 
 will go on miserably, and the society must be at all 
 
204 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 times in the highest degree of disorder." " For a man 
 to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all 
 at once, and in spite of all opposition, anything which 
 his own idea of policy and law may seem to require, 
 must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is 
 to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard 
 of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only 
 wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, that his 
 fellow creatures should accommodate themselves to 
 him, and not he to them." (Vol. II. p. 110.) 
 
 There are scattered through this and Dr. Smith's 
 other work abundant indications of the scorn in which 
 he held faction and the spirit it engenders ; but I am 
 far from being averse to cite passages which may be 
 supposed to reflect on my own policy and conduct, 
 while a minister or a party chief, or to confine my 
 quotations to those opinions with which I might be 
 supposed more to agree. The following passage must 
 be fairly admitted to contain much truth, though not 
 stated in terms sufficiently measured : " The leaders 
 of the discontented party seldom fail to hold out some 
 plausible plan of reformation, which they predict will 
 not only remove the inconveniences, and relieve the 
 distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent 
 in all time coming any return of the like inconveni- 
 ences and distresses. They often propose on this ac- 
 count to remodel the constitution, and to alter in some 
 of its most essential parts that system of government 
 under which the subjects of a great empire have en- 
 joyed perhaps peace, security, and even glory, during 
 the course of several centuries together. The great 
 body of the party are commonly intoxicated with the 
 imaginary beauty of this ideal system of which they 
 have no experience, but which has been presented to 
 them in all the most dazzling colours in which the elo- 
 quence of their leaders could display it. The leaders 
 themselves, though they may originally have meant 
 nothing but their own aggrandisement, become many 
 
ADAM SMITH. 205 
 
 of them in time the dupes of their own sophistry, and 
 are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest 
 and foolishest of their followers. Even though the 
 leaders should have preserved their own heads, as in- 
 deed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet 
 they dare not always disappoint the expectations of 
 their followers, but are often obliged, though contrary 
 to their principles and their conscience, to act as if 
 they were under the common delusion." No one can 
 doubt the truth of the conclusion to which his account 
 of reforming schemes leads him ; it is proved by con- 
 stant experience, which also shows, though he leaves 
 this out of his view, that they who refuse all reform 
 often are the cause of excessive and perilous innova- 
 tion: "The violence of the party refusing all pallia- 
 tions, all temperaments, all reasonable accommodations, 
 by requiring too much, frequently obtains nothing; 
 and those inconveniences and distresses which with a 
 little moderation might in a great measure have been 
 removed and relieved, are left altogether without the 
 hope of remedy." (Vol. II. p. 107.) 
 
 Such is the ' Theory of Moral Sentiments.' The great 
 reputation, however, of Dr. Smith, and especially his 
 European reputation, is founded upon the ' Wealth of 
 Nations.' We have seen how the principles of a more 
 sound, liberal, and rational policy in all that regards 
 commerce and finance, had been gradually taking the 
 place of the old and narrow views upon which all 
 countries regulated their economical systems, and we 
 have found the improvement begun as early as the 
 seventeenth century. Towards the end of that, and in 
 the earlier part of the following, the alarms of the dif- 
 ferent states which form the great European Common- 
 wealth were so much excited by the ambition of Louis 
 XIV., that the only subject which either interested 
 statesmen or speculative inquirers related to questions 
 of military and foreign policy. But the regency of a 
 most able prince and wise ruler, profligate though his 
 
206 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 private life might be, succeeded that splendid and mis- 
 chievous reign, and the greatest, indeed the only, 
 error of the Duke of Orleans, his confidence in a clever 
 and unprincipled projector, however hurtful to his 
 country for the moment, yet produced no permanent 
 mischief, while it rather tended to encourage specula- 
 tions connected with money and trade and taxation. 
 Accordingly, both in France and Italy, those subjects 
 occupied "the attention of learned men during the first 
 half of the eighteenth century, and we have seen how 
 great a progress was made between 1720 and 1770 in 
 establishing the sound principles of which a consider- 
 able portion had been anticipated nearly a hundred 
 years before. In England, Mr. Hume had contributed 
 more largely to the science than all the other inquirers 
 who handled these important subjects. In France the 
 Economists had reduced them to a system, though they 
 mingled them with important errors, and enveloped 
 them in a style exceedingly repulsive, and not well 
 calculated to instruct even the few readers whom it 
 suffered the importance of the subject matter to attract. 
 But it remained to give a more ample exposition of 
 the whole subject ; to explain and to illustrate all the 
 fundamental principles, many of which had been left 
 either assumed or ill defined, and certainly not clearly 
 laid down nor exhibited in their connexion with the 
 other parts of the inquiry; to purge the theory of the 
 new errors which had replaced those exploded; to 
 expound the doctrines in a more catholic and less sec- 
 tarian spirit than the followers of Quesnay displayed, 
 and in a less detached and occasional manner than 
 necessarily prevailed in the Essays of Hume, though 
 from his admirably generalizing mind no series of sepa- 
 rate discourses ever moulded themselves more readily 
 into a system. This service of inestimable value Dr. 
 Smith's great work rendered to science ; and it like- 
 wise contained many speculations, and many deductions 
 of fact upon the details of economical inquiry, never 
 
ADAM SMITH. 207 
 
 before exhibited by any of his predecessors. It had 
 also the merit of a most clear and simple style, with a 
 copiousness of illustration, whether from facts or from 
 imagination, attained by no other writer but Mr. Hume, 
 unsurpassed even by him, and which might well be 
 expected from the author of the 'Theory of Moral 
 Sentiments.' 
 
 ANALYTICAL VIEW OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. 
 
 I. Labour is the source of all human enjoyment; it 
 may be even reckoned the source of all possession, 
 because not even the property in severalty of the soil 
 can be obtained, without some exertion to acquire and 
 secure the possession ; while labour is also required to 
 obtain possession of its minerals, or of the produce 
 which grows uncultivated, or the animals which are 
 reared wild. All wealth, therefore, all objects of neces- 
 sary use, of convenience, of enjoyment, are either 
 created or fashioned, or in some way obtained, by 
 human labour. The first inquiry then, which presents 
 itself \ relates to the powers of labour ; the next to the 
 distribution of its produce. These two subjects are 
 treated in the first book of the ' Wealth of Nations,' 
 in eleven chapters, to which is added a kind of appen- 
 dix, called by the author a * Digression, upon Money 
 Prices,' or as he terms it, "the variations in the value 
 of silver, and the variations in the real prices of com- 
 modities." The unskilful and even illogical aspect of 
 this division is manifest ; for under the head of labour, 
 are comprehended the subjects of profit and rent as 
 well as wages. But subject to this objection against 
 the arrangement, and to the still more material objec- 
 tion which may be urged against one portion of the 
 doctrine, the first book is of very great value, and 
 unfolds at length the fundamental principles of econo- 
 mical science. 
 
 i. The first sub-division relating to the powers of 
 
208 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 labour, embraces the subject of its division and its price; 
 the former is treated of in the three first chapters ; the 
 latter in the fifth and eighth, but also occasionally in 
 the sixth, seventh, and tenth. 
 
 1. The division of labour, both increases its produc- 
 tive powers, and increases the excellence of its produce. 
 Men will work more when their attention is confined 
 to a single operation, than when it is distracted by 
 several, because time is saved by not passing from one 
 thing to another, and because the power or skill of the 
 workman is increased when he has but one thing to 
 occupy him. But independent of his increased skill 
 making him do more work, it makes him perform 
 better the work which he does, and hence both the 
 quantity is augmented, and the quality is improved of 
 what his labour produces. The origin of this division 
 is the principle which makes men exchange or barter 
 their different possessions, and among these their dif- 
 ferent powers. Either one differs from another in his 
 capacity, or each by confining his attention to a single 
 pursuit, acquires a peculiar capacity for that pursuit. 
 In either case, they who are differently qualified will 
 employ themselves differently, and one will exchange 
 the produce of his labour with the other for the pro- 
 duce of his ; or, which is the same thing, each will 
 work for the other, and both will thus be better served. 
 The extent of the market will always fix a limit to the 
 division of labour, which can have no great range in 
 confined situations ; but where it is much divided, a 
 vast multitude of workmen will concur in producing a 
 single article of exchange. Dr. Smith mentions the 
 case of eighteen persons being employed in making a 
 pin, and being thus enabled to make 86,000 pins in a 
 day, or 4,800 each person ; whereas had they worked 
 alone, perhaps they might not have been able to make 
 one a-piece. He adds, that the meanest individual of 
 a civilized country uses, or commands, in some small 
 portion at least, the labour of many thousands, and is 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 209 
 
 thus better accommodated tlian a savage chief, who 
 wholly possesses 10,000 slaves, and has their lives and 
 liberties at his disposal. Among the beneficial effects, 
 however, of the division of labour, one is to save labour 
 by different contrivances, and especially by the inven- 
 tion of machinery. This in many instances, though by 
 no means in all, improves the quality of the article ; in 
 all cases, it increases its quantity. It therefore greatly 
 augments the power of labour. 
 
 2. Labour is the measure of the exchangeable value 
 of all commodities, because the possession of all is 
 governed by labour ; and in the case of exchanging 
 one against another, the produce of the labour by which 
 both were obtained is mutually given and received. 
 But it is easier to compare two commodities with each 
 other than either of them with labour as their common 
 measure ; not to mention that it is not easy to compare 
 the different kinds of labour, as hard and easy working, 
 skilful and unskilful, with one another. Hence, prices 
 are generally estimated by the proportion which the 
 commodities bear to one another. Labour is thus es- 
 timated as well as other commodities, in commodities, 
 and its natural wages are the whole of its produce. 
 But as each labourer seeks for employment, and as each 
 employer is desirous of giving as little for labour as he 
 can, therefore the competition of workmen for work 
 enables the employer to obtain it at much less than the 
 whole produce. When there is a superabundance of 
 workmen and more hands than are wanted, the com- 
 petition of workmen lowers their wages. When there 
 is a scarcity of workmen and more work than hands to 
 do it, the competition of employers raises wages. But, 
 in all cases, except where a man labours for himself, 
 less than the produce of the labour is paid to reward 
 it, and the difference belongs to the employers. 
 
 It is most material to observe, first, that there is a 
 tendency in the competition of workmen to lower their 
 wages ; secondly, that there is a point below which 
 
 p 
 
210 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 wages cannot descend. Both these positions are founded 
 on this : that the labourers are, generally speaking, 
 persons wholly dependent on their labour. Therefore, 
 in the first place, they cannot keep their labour out of 
 the market when the demand for it is slack, as a man 
 of property will keep his goods back when their price 
 is low ; and, in the second place, the labourer would 
 cease to work if he could not earn enough to support 
 himself in the manner in which persons of the lower 
 order usually live, with a surplus for supporting his 
 family, without which his race would be extinct. Hence 
 there is a necessary connection between the wages of 
 labour and the prices of the necessaries of life ; and 
 though the demand for work, compared with its sup- 
 ply, must regulate wages within certain limits, that is, 
 between the lowest point to which they can fall and 
 the highest to which they can rise, the latter point de- 
 pends upon the demand, the former upon the cost of 
 maintaining the labourer and his family. This will not 
 vary with each variation of the prices of necessaries ; 
 indeed, a scarcity, by throwing hands out of employ- 
 ment, may even lower wages instead of raising 
 them. But upon the average price of necessaries the 
 amount of wages certainly does and must depend ; for, 
 if the average price is high, some proportion must 
 be kept by wages, else the workman would either 
 perish or emigrate, and so labour would leave the 
 market, until its recompense became equal to the cost 
 of living ; and again, if the average is low, the compe- 
 tition of workmen and the increase of their numbers 
 by the progress of population will bring down the price, 
 that is the wages, to the level of prices ; so that the 
 average rate of wages never can be much beyond the 
 cost of living, that is, it must fall towards the average 
 price of the necessaries of life. 
 
 We may here stop to observe how soon we are 
 brought, by discussing speculations on the foundations 
 of labour and value, or real prices, to the very practi- 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 211 
 
 cal question of the Corn Laws. They who are against 
 all legislative measures, whether for revenue or pro- 
 tection, that can obstruct the importation of corn, con- 
 tend for the most part that their plan will lower the 
 price of bread, though some of the most distinguished 
 advocates of free trade in corn deny that it could pro- 
 duce any such effect. For my own part, I can hardly 
 doubt, that it might in some, though no great degree, 
 lower the average price of grain and of bread. But if 
 it produced this effect, undoubtedly its tendency would 
 be to lower the average rate of wages. This I say, 
 would be its tendency ; but that tendency would be coun- 
 teracted by the operation of two causes, both the in- 
 creased amount of the capital employed in manufactur- 
 ing labour would tend to restore the rate of wages, and 
 the extension of foreign commerce, operating upon do- 
 mestic industry in all its branches, would produce the 
 same effect; not to mention that the money rate of wages 
 might fall, and the real rate remain the same, in con- 
 sequence of living having become cheaper. I must, 
 however, admit that the interest of the working classes in 
 this question is not so manifest, though we should not 
 wholly neglect it, as that of the capitalist. The main 
 reason why the labourer has no very material interest 
 in it, is this : In almost every state of society, indeed 
 in every state, except that of a new and unpeopled 
 country, the tendency above explained of the labourer 
 to cause a glut of his only merchandise, his labour, in 
 the market, is sure to bring down his profits, that is, 
 his wages, to the lowest or nearly the lowest amount on 
 which he can subsist. No change of this kind, there- 
 fore, in the national policy appears likely to effect any 
 permanent improvement in his lot. 
 
 Hitherto we have been treating only of labour, and 
 of matters immediately and directly connected with it; 
 but in the remaining six chapters of the first book, Dr. 
 Smith considers other subjects, namely, capital and 
 its profits, or the revenue it yields, and also the man- 
 
212 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 ner in which all exchanges are effected. As every 
 thing is the produce of labour, as " all is the gift of in- 
 dustry," there may be some ground for thus reducing 
 all within the bounds of the same book ; nevertheless, 
 these other subjects would have been more logically 
 kept distinct from labour, inasmuch as the live chapters 
 which we have analysed, relate to labour alone, and to 
 labour of every kind, and labour forms the only sub- 
 ject of their discussion ; whereas the remaining six re- 
 late to other things as well as labour, and the greater 
 part of these discussions refer not to labour at all. 
 
 ii. The second subdivision of the book relates to 
 the manner of effecting exchanges ; and this introduces, 
 first, the subject of money ; ancl great part of the fifth 
 chapter treats of the money price of commodities, as 
 contradistinguished from their real price. It includes, 
 secondly, the subject of prices. The sixth and seventh 
 chapters treat of this. 
 
 1. The great inconvenience of traffic by barter, which 
 made it impossible for one person to exchange any com- 
 modity with another, unless each wanted exactly the 
 same quantity which the other had to give, equally 
 impossible to obtain what was wanted in one place, 
 without sending what was redundant to the other place, 
 and equally impossible to obtain what was wanted at 
 one time from a person who did not want the thing 
 given for it at the same time, set men upon making 
 two inventions, the one of falling upon some commo- 
 dity generally desirable, produced in moderate quan- 
 tities, and capable of being easily and exactly divided 
 into portions as well as easily transported and easily 
 preserved, which might be exchanged for all other 
 commodities, and thus become, as it were, a material 
 or tangible measure of their exchangeable value, as 
 well as an easy medium of carrying on all exchanges ; 
 the other of agreeing, that when any bargain was made 
 for the exchange of commodities, he who did not im- 
 mediately want to have the article delivered to which 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 213 
 
 lie was entitled, might receive some document ascer- 
 taining his claim to receive it when he wished, and he 
 who did not wish to part with it, but desired to have 
 the equivalent commodity immediately, might find the 
 document binding him to pay something for the delay, 
 in case the other party wished it : the former of these 
 inventions is money ; the latter is credit, or paper cur- 
 rency. In some rude countries shells have been used 
 for money ; in others, leather ; almost universally, how- 
 ever, the metals have been so employed, and chiefly 
 those which from their beauty and their scarcity, are 
 the most valuable ; gold, silver, and copper, though 
 sometimes iron has been so used. Bills of exchange 
 and promissory notes have greatly facilitated the opera- 
 tions of commerce, by enabling debts to be transferred, 
 so that there should be no necessity of employing either 
 goods or money to pay more than the net balance due 
 from one given country, or from one district of the 
 same country to another, upon the whole mutual 
 dealings of both countries or both districts ; and also 
 by enabling credit to do the office of coin, and thus 
 to economize the use of the precious metals. The 
 fifth chapter enters at large into the subject of the 
 coinage, and the variations, both in the actual amount 
 of gold and silver at different times existing in the 
 country, and in the real value of the precious metals 
 themselves, from the varying quantities yielded by the 
 mines of the world, and somewhat also from the varia- 
 tions in the demand for them ; these metals being like 
 all other commodities, liable to fluctuation from the 
 supply and the demand varying, and their value being- 
 measured by the goods or the labour they can pur- 
 chase. 
 
 2. In a rude or perfectly natural state of society, 
 when each person enjoys the whole produce of his 
 labour, exchange would be regulated by the time of 
 labour, the hardness of the work, the perilous or dis- 
 agreeable nature of the occupation, the skill required 
 
214 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 to carry it on ; but as society advances, when men are 
 set to work for others and paid by their employers, 
 there goes a part of the produce to the employer, and 
 the consideration in the exchange or sale of the pro- 
 duce consists of two parts the wages of the work- 
 man, and the profits of his employer. When the la- 
 bour has been employed upon land by those who are 
 not the owners, they must pay to the owners some- 
 thing for the use of it ; and this is called rent, which 
 Dr. Smith considers as entering into the price of pro- 
 duce, together with wages and profits, that is, the time 
 of the labourers and the profits of the farmer ; so that 
 he considers wages alone, or wages and profits of 
 stock alone, or wages, profits, and rent together, as 
 entering into and composing the price of all commo- 
 dities. He also considers all prices as of two kinds 
 the natural and the actual or market price ; the for- 
 mer being that which replaces the wages paid for pro- 
 ducing the article, with the profits of the employer, 
 and in cases of agricultural produce, with the rent of 
 the landowner also ; * the other, the price as regulated 
 by the proportion between the supply and the demand 
 in the market, where it is exposed for sale or for bar- 
 ter, and which price may be either equal to, or greater, 
 or less than the natural price. 
 
 The portion of these chapters which relates to rent 
 is now admitted to be founded upon an erroneous 
 view of that subject. Rent can never, properly speak- 
 ing, form any part of price. It has been shown, first 
 by Dr. Anderson in 1776, afterwards by Sir E. West 
 and Mr. Malthus in 1812 and 14, ignorant of Dr. 
 Anderson's discovery, that rent arises from the bring- 
 ing of inferior lands into cultivation, which makes it 
 
 * It is proper to observe, that the peculiarity of rent was not -wholly 
 passed over by Dr. Smith. He expressly says, that while high or low 
 wages and profits are the cause of high or low prices, high or low prices 
 are the causes and not the effects of high or low rents. (Book I., chap. 
 xi., Introduction.) 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 215 
 
 the farmer's interest to pay a consideration for the use 
 of the better land first cultivated ; so that, instead of 
 -he rent affecting the price of corn, the price of corn 
 affects the rent ; and that land is let at a rent because 
 corn cannot be grown any longer at the same price, 
 and not that corn is sold at the higher price because 
 land yields a rent. The price of corn again is always 
 regulated by the application of capital to inferior soils. 
 It never can materially rise above or fall materially 
 below the expense required for raising and bringing 
 to market the com produced on the worst soils actu- 
 ally cultivated. This is perhaps the most considerable 
 step that has been made in political economy since the 
 * Wealth of Nations ' was published. 
 
 iii. The profits of stock are the subject of the third 
 subdivision. These vary with the wealth and pro- 
 perty of the community as wages do, but in a very 
 different manner; for the increase of capital, which 
 tends to raise the rate of wages, lowers by competition 
 the rate of profit, as indeed the rise of wages does 
 also. The progress of the community, however, in 
 prosperity, has a tendency to raise both the wages of 
 labour and the profits of stock ; while a retrograde 
 state of a country never fails to lower both profits and 
 wages. The profit of money, or interest, follow the 
 like rules. It depends upon the proportions of bor- 
 rowers to lenders ; that is, on the supply of money 
 compared with the demand for it, and the profits made 
 by those who borrow it to invest in trade. It de- 
 pends not at all upon the mere quantity of the pre- 
 cious metals. The profits of stock form generally the 
 subject of the ninth chapter. The tenth relates to the 
 rate of wages and profits in different employments, 
 and consists of two parts the one treating of the in- 
 equalities arising from the nature of the employment 
 of labour or capital, the other treating of the inequali- 
 ties produced by the policy of states. 
 
 1. The inequalities of the first class affecting wages 
 
216 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 of labour are fivefold, arising severally from the dis- 
 agreeable nature of the employment, the expense or 
 difficulty of learning it, the inconstancy and pre- 
 cariousness of the demand, the great trust reposed in 
 the workman or the capitalist, and the improbability 
 of success in the work or investment ; each of these 
 disadvantages requires a certain increase of gain to the 
 labourer, or to the capitalist, as a compensation for the 
 disagreeableness, the education, the period of inaction, 
 the trust, the risk of loss. Of these five circumstances 
 two only affect the profits of stock the agreeableness 
 or disagreeableness of the trade, and the scarcity or 
 risk attending it. 
 
 2. Were industry and commerce left free, these in- 
 equalities alone could affect wages and profits : but 
 the policy of states has added to these causes of in- 
 equality several others, which disturb the natural rate 
 of both wages and profits much more than the circum- 
 stances already enumerated. 
 
 (1.) The laws requiring several years' apprentice- 
 ship to be served before trades can be set up, prevent 
 the free circulation of labour both from place to place, 
 and from one profession to another. They tend to 
 give a monopoly to both employers and capitalists, and 
 thus to lower the wages of labour, and raise the pro- 
 fits of stock. The various other restrictions imposed 
 by corporations have a like tendency. 
 
 (2.) Institutions for encouraging one kind of indus- 
 try, and giving it a power greater than it naturally 
 would possess, have the effect of drawing more to it 
 than would naturally resort to it, and thus, from the 
 numbers who must fail, lower the wages of labour. 
 Free schools and colleges are liable to this imputation, 
 which, however, Dr. Smith admits to be much cor- 
 rected by the important benefits conferred if education 
 is thus made materially better or cheaper. 
 
 (3.) The exclusive privileges of corporations pro- 
 duce the same effect in obstructing the free circulation 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 217 
 
 of both labour and capital from place to place, and in 
 the same trade, which the laws of apprenticeship do in 
 preventing the circulation of labour from place to 
 place, and from trade to trade. The poor laws of 
 England are shown by Dr. Smith to have the most 
 mischievous effects on the circulation of labour, and 
 indeed of capital also. But these have now happily 
 ceased thus to operate, as have in all our municipal 
 towns, except London, the exclusive privileges of 
 corporations. 
 
 iv. The rent of land forms the subject of the eleventh 
 and last chapter of the first book. It is not the profit 
 of the stock vested in land, or even of that vested in 
 its improvement, but the portion of the produce paid 
 to the owner for the natural powers or productiveness 
 of the soil. This subdivision consists of three parts 
 produce always affording rent, produce sometimes 
 affording rent, sometimes not, and variations in the re- 
 lative value of these two kinds of produce, whether 
 compared with each other, or with other commodities. 
 
 1. The articles necessary to the food of man always 
 enable the land on which they are raised to yield a 
 rent, beside both supporting the labourers by wages, 
 and replacing the cultivator's stock with a profit. 
 The first part of the chapter enters minutely into the 
 prices of these articles relatively, and in comparison of 
 money or other commodities. 
 
 2. Certain articles of clothing, as wool and the skins 
 of wild animals, articles used in building, as timber, 
 stone, fuel as coal, some metals, all yield rent in 
 certain situations and certain circumstances, not in 
 others. 
 
 3. The value of articles only occasionally yielding 
 rent will vary with that of the produce that always 
 yields it. Some of the precious metals are dependent 
 not on one district, but on the market of the world, 
 from the metals being everywhere the instrument or 
 medium of exchange. These things are to be regarded 
 
 V" OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
218 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 as making their price vary, and with it the rent of the 
 mines. As society improves the demand of the 
 market may increase, while the produce of the mines 
 remains the same ; or the produce may increase more 
 than the demand increases; or the produce and demand 
 may increase together and equably. In the first case, the 
 money price of goods will fall, and the mine become 
 more valuable ; in the second, the money price will 
 rise, and the mine fall in value ; in the third case, the 
 money price of goods will remain stationary, and with 
 it the value of the mine. By the value of the mine, 
 we, of course, mean the value of the same amount of 
 its produce in the several cases. 
 
 This leads Dr. Smith to enter at great length into 
 the important question, how far the value of silver, the 
 general medium of exchange in the market of the 
 world, has varied at different periods during the four 
 last centuries. 
 
 (1.) The first period is from 1350 to 1570, and he 
 shows that the increased supply from the discovery of 
 America could not have sensibly affected the value of 
 silver during these two centuries. The progress of 
 commerce of all kinds, internal and external, must 
 have been the retarding cause, which prevented the 
 influx of the additional quantity of metal from sensibly 
 raising the money price of commodities. 
 
 (2.) From 1570 to 1640 the newly discovered mines 
 produced their full effect in raising all the prices, and 
 lowering the exchangeable value of silver. That effect 
 was completed between the years 1630 and 1640. 
 Prices had then risen to between three and four times 
 their former rate, although the increase of commerce 
 had increased also the demand for the metallic cur- 
 rency. 
 
 (3.) From 1640 to 1776 Dr. Smith does not consider 
 that any material change has taken place in the relative 
 value of silver and other commodities; and he examines 
 with much particularity, and in great detail, the facts 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 219 
 
 on which the prevailing suspicion rests, and traces the 
 progress of the supply and demand from the produce 
 of the mines on the one hand, and the advance of 
 society on the other. He also has occasion to show 
 how groundless are the notions of those who regard 
 the precious metals as constituting wealth, that is all 
 wealth, when they are but a commodity valuable for 
 use or for ornament, but still more valuable for aiding 
 the commerce of the world as an indispensable medium 
 of exchange. 
 
 II. The subject of the second book is stock its 
 nature, accumulation and employment; and it consists 
 of five several subdivisions the distribution of stock, 
 the nature and use of money, the profitable employ- 
 ment of stock by its owners, its profitable employment 
 by others on loan, and the various employments of 
 stock. Each subdivision is considered in one of the 
 five chapters into which the book is distributed. 
 
 i. The stock which any one possesses is of two kinds 
 that which he retains for his support, or which he 
 has exchanged for articles of present use, and this re- 
 mains in his possession, or which he takes from his 
 revenue arising from the other portions of his stock : 
 this is the second kind, and is used in obtaining a profit 
 by its employment. This second kind is commonly 
 called capital, which is of two kinds fixed and circu- 
 lating ; the former (fixed) consisting of capital vested 
 in land, or tools, or machinery, or manufactures, or 
 shipping, which yield profit without being exchanged 
 or parted with ; the latter (circulating) being vested in 
 goods which, to yield a profit, must be sold or ex- 
 changed. The stock of the community consists of the 
 same two subdivisions stock used for support, and 
 capital or stock employed at a profit ; and the national 
 capital in the same way is either fixed, being of four 
 kinds machines or instruments, buildings used for 
 profit, improvements in land, acquired talents, useful 
 and profitable, or circulating, likewise of four kinds 
 
220 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 currency, provisions in the hands of the raisers of 
 them, unmanufactured materials of articles of consump- 
 tion, and manufactured articles of consumption. But 
 the circulating capital of the community differs from 
 that of an individual ; because the latter is wholly ex- 
 cluded from his net revenue, his profits, while the former 
 may enter into the whole trade of the community and 
 be replaced with a profit. 
 
 ii. The only part of the circulating capital of the 
 community which cannot be maintained without dimi- 
 nishing the net revenue is the money of the community. 
 It resembles the fixed capital, first, in requiring like 
 machinery an expense for keeping it up ; secondly, in 
 making no part of revenue ; and, thirdly, in adding to 
 the revenue by improvements which may economise 
 its use. Under this head Dr. Smith discusses the prin- 
 ciples of banking and of currency. 
 
 iii. The capital employed by the owner is distin- 
 guished by Dr. Smith into two kinds, as it puts in 
 motion and maintains productive or unproductive 
 labour. In this phraseology he follows the French 
 Economists, but he differs materially from them in his 
 classification of labour, considering as productive im- 
 portant branches of what they consider as unproductive. 
 The Economists considered the labourer employed 
 upon land as alone productive, because he alone 
 replaces the capital and labour with their ordinary 
 profit, and adds also a net profit; he alone replaces 
 the cost of his subsistence, of the seed sown by him, 
 of the tools used by him, and of the farmer's stock or 
 capital with a profit, and also adds a net produce, the 
 rent of the land, thus augmenting the whole capital of 
 the community ; while the retail dealer, the manu- 
 facturer, and the merchant only receive from the pro- 
 duce of the soil purchased with their goods, their 
 subsistence and the profits of their capital, but make no 
 addition to the capital of the community. Still more, 
 they reckon unproductive the labour of professional 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 221 
 
 men and others who do not fix and realize their skill 
 or their work in any exchangeable commodity at all. 
 Dr. Smith shows with irresistible force of reasoning 
 and great felicity of illustration, the great errors of this 
 theory; and he reckons manufacturers and traders 
 productive labourers ; but then he excludes from this 
 class all the labour of professional men. Dr. Smith's 
 arguments on this subject are partly contained in this, 
 the third chapter of the second book, and partly, 
 indeed chiefly in the ninth chapter of the third book, 
 under the head of Agricultural Systems of Political 
 Economy. I believe it may now be safely affirmed, 
 that his reasoning is generally admitted to be erro- 
 neous ; and that as the Economists were wrong in draw- 
 ing the line between productive and unproductive 
 labour, so as to exclude that of traders and manu- 
 facturers, he is equally wrong in so drawing it as to 
 exclude that of professional men. It is now generally 
 admitted that the defence, the police, the government 
 in general of a country, increasing the value of its 
 whole capital, is as productive a labour as that of the 
 locksmith who protects portions of the capital from 
 pillage, or the trader who transports it from place to 
 place ; and that the efforts of those who instruct, or 
 rationally amuse the community, give new value to its 
 capital, which their labour enables the owner to expend 
 in purchasing education or entertainment. 
 
 It seems now agreed that in the complicated system 
 of civilized society, indeed in any society where the 
 division of labour is carried to any considerable extent, 
 it becomes wholly impossible to say who feeds, who 
 clothes, who instructs, who defends, who amuses the 
 community, as it is to say which of the farm servants 
 raises the crop, or which of the artisans makes the 
 machine or the tool ; and that nothing can be more 
 unsound than the distinction drawn between one kind 
 of labour and another, because one realizes nothing 
 tangible, its produce vanishing in the act of its pro- 
 
222 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 duction, and because employing many servants or 
 many soldiers is expensive, and employing many arti- 
 sans is profitable ; for what gives increased value to all 
 capital is productive, and the employing more farm 
 servants or more artisans than we require would be as 
 unprofitable as employing more soldiers or servants. 
 
 These and other propositions connected with this 
 subject, though now generally admitted, were much 
 resisted when I first explained and defended them 
 above forty years ago ; and I shall refer the reader to 
 an Appendix containing the principal parts of the 
 tract then published, because it happened to be the 
 foundation of much that has since been written on 
 this controversy without any acknowledgement, and 
 what is of more importance, without a due regard to 
 the limits of the question then discussed."* 
 
 iv. Stock lent at interest is evidently capital to be 
 replaced with a profit ; but it may be used by the bor- 
 rower either for his consumption, or as capital to be 
 employed by him with a profit ; and it is chiefly as 
 capital that it is used. The profit paid to the lender 
 is called interest and depends, like all the other profits 
 of stock, upon the competition in the market, that is, 
 the proportion of the lenders to the borrowers in the 
 money market. The greater or less abundance of the 
 precious metals, or of paper currency, has no effect 
 upon the rate of interest ; for, as Mr. Hume, who first 
 clearly explained this subject, says. " If every man in 
 the country were to awake one morning with double 
 the amount of money in his coffers, all money prices 
 would be doubled ; but profits, though calculated in a 
 different coin, would really be the same, and the pro- 
 fits of lenders, and of merchants, and of manufacturers 
 would not even be nominally increased ; for these 
 profits are to be reckoned by their proportion to the 
 capital employed in the one case, lent in the other ; 
 
 * It was in No. VIII. of the < Edinburgh Review' that the paper was 
 published, July, 1804. 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 223 
 
 and he who before would have vested one hundred 
 pounds either in trade or loan, would now vest two 
 hundred pounds, and would receive ten pounds in- 
 stead of the five he before received, being the very 
 same per centage in each case." In this chapter Dr. 
 Smith, with a very singular deviation from his general 
 principles, regards laws regulating the rate of interest 
 with favour, provided the legal rate be fixed a little 
 above the market rate. This opinion has been most 
 unanswerably exposed and refuted by Mr. Bentham, 
 in his admirable ' Defence of Usury,' published about 
 the time of Dr. Smith's decease. 
 
 v. The capital of a country can only be employed 
 in one or other of these four ways in agriculture, 
 mines, works, fisheries ; or in manufactures ; or in the 
 wholesale trade, foreign and domestic ; or in the retail 
 trade. Dr. Smith considers it clear, that agriculture 
 puts in motion most productive labourers, manufac- 
 turers next to agriculture, then retail trade, and whole- 
 sale trade least of all. He also holds that agriculture 
 augments the capital of the community most rapidly, 
 manufactures next, then retail trade, and lastly whole- 
 sale. The wholesale trade he divides into three 
 branches, properly speaking into four the home trade, 
 the foreign direct trade of consumption, the foreign 
 indirect or round about trade of consumption, and the 
 carrying trade. The first he considers the most bene- 
 ficial employment of capital, because it replaces two 
 national capitals ; the second and third are, according 
 to him, less beneficial, because they replace one na- 
 tional and one foreign capital; while the carrying 
 trade replaces two capitals, both foreign. I believe 
 the views contained in this chapter are pretty generally 
 admitted to be erroneous, that is to say, as regards the 
 relative importance assigned to different branches of 
 trade or employments of capital. This seerns as re- 
 gards the comparison of agriculture, manufactures, and 
 trade, to follow, from what has been stated under the 
 
224 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 third subdivision of this subject, and from what is more 
 fully explained in the Appendix. In truth Dr. Smith 
 here, as elsewhere, while he differs with the Econo- 
 mists, falls into some of their most erroneous views. 
 He regards agriculture as wholly different from manu- 
 factures, because nature here works with man, and 
 adds to the amount of his possessions. But the powers 
 of nature are as much required to aid us in a chemical, 
 nay, even in a mechanical process, as in agriculture. 
 The fermentation of grains to distil a beer or a spirit 
 from them is as much an operation of nature as the ger- 
 mination of the seeds to grow the crop ; it is as impos- 
 sible for man to augment the quantity of matter in 
 tilling the ground, as in working up the produce ; all he 
 does in either case is to new-mould, and to fashion ; and 
 the rude produce is as useless before he manufactures 
 it, as the water, the salts, and the gaseous bodies, of 
 which vegetables consist, are useless before the pro- 
 cess of vegetation. The difference in trades which re- 
 place foreign, and those which replace home capitals, 
 is better founded, although the sounder view is to con- 
 sider all nations which interchange each other's com- 
 modities as one great community, and to regard the 
 gain of each, even by the labour which the capital of 
 any other puts in motion, and by the accumulation of 
 profits which thence arises, as the gain more or less 
 directly of that other ; thus extending the doctrine of 
 the division of labour to the whole community of 
 nations, upon which doctrine we have seen depends 
 the refutation of the errors respecting productive and 
 unproductive labour in the case of any one nation. 
 
 III. The different progress of wealth in different 
 nations forms the subject of the third book, which 
 therefore treats in four successive chapters, first, of 
 the national progress of opulence, by the cultivation 
 of the country, and then by the improvement of the 
 towns ; next of foreign commerce, as capital is safer in 
 the first than the second, and in the second than in 
 
WEALTH OP NATIONS. 225 
 
 the third employment. Secondly, the various discour- 
 agements to agriculture by the circumstances and the 
 barbarous policy of the European states after the fall 
 of the Roman empire. Thirdly, the rise and progress 
 of the towns in the dark ages. Fourthly, the improve- 
 ment promoted in the country by tHe progress of the 
 towns, which gave the agriculturist an increased market 
 for his produce, applied their capital to the improve- 
 ment and purchase of his land, and introduced a more 
 regular police, as well as a freer state of society gen- 
 erally. 
 
 IV. The fourth book, the most important of the 
 ' Wealth of Nations,' is devoted to the consideration of 
 the two great systems of political economy, the Mer- 
 cantile and the Agricultural; the discussion of the 
 former occupies eight chapters, and one-fourth part of 
 the whole work ; that of the latter is comprised in a 
 single chapter of moderate extent. 
 
 Part I. This elaborate, most able, and most com- 
 pletely satisfactory inquiry commences with showing 
 the popular mistake or confusion which lies at the 
 bottom of the mercantile system, runs through its 
 whole doctrines, and gives rise to all its practical ap- 
 plications, that gold and silver, being the instruments 
 of exchange and the ordinary measures of value, are 
 therefore wealth itself independent of their value as 
 instruments and measures, and that the great object of 
 statesmen should be to multiply them in any given 
 country, in order thereby to increase that country's 
 wealth. Rulers having begun upon this view, pro- 
 hibited the exportation of the precious metals ; but 
 this was found most vexatious to commerce, and there- 
 fore the traders urged the governments of different 
 countries to suffer the exportation, by which goods 
 might be obtained, the re-exportation of which would 
 restore with a profit the specie that had been sent to 
 buy these, and thus augment its whole mass. These 
 merchants, however, wholly adopting the fundamental 
 
 Q 
 
226 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 error, and regarding specie as alone constituting wealth, 
 further urged that the direct prohibition to export them 
 could scarce ever be effectual, on account of the small 
 bulk of the metals and their easy smuggling, the evil 
 of evading the law adding to the cost of getting the 
 metal ; but they represented the true policy to consist 
 in so regulating the balance of trade, as to make the 
 exports exceed the imports of goods generally, the 
 difference being of course paid in gold ancf silver. 
 These arguments prevailed generally, both with spec- 
 ulative men and with practical statesmen ; the home- 
 trade, by far the most important of all in every country, 
 was undervalued ; foreign commerce was regarded as 
 the great source of wealth ; and positive restraints were 
 imposed upon importation, while direct encouragements 
 were given to exportation. The restraints were of two 
 kinds, restraints upon foreign goods, which were or 
 could be manufactured at home, and this was a restraint 
 on trade in these particular commodities with all coun- 
 tries indiscriminately and restraints upon almost all 
 goods from countries with which the balance of trade 
 was supposed unfavourable. Encouragement to ex- 
 portation was given in four ways, by drawbacks of the 
 excise imports, or certain duties imposed ; by actual 
 bounties on exportation or on home manufactures, by 
 treatise of commerce to obtain commercial privileges 
 or favours, by planting colonies and monopolizing 
 their trade. These are the six grand resources of the 
 Mercantile System its great expedients for obtaining 
 an increase of the precious metals by making the coun- 
 try export much and import little. Accustomed as we 
 now are to the plain and obvious consideration, that 
 those metals, like all other merchandise, can only be 
 bought with other merchandise, that when this mer- 
 chandise exists, it will obtain the metals ; that unless 
 it exists none can by any means be procured ; that the 
 natural industry of the country can alone give it exist- 
 ence ; that this industry, if cramped by regulations, 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 227 
 
 can never raise it so cheaply or so profitably as when 
 left free ; that all restraints upon importation diminish 
 the value of home produce by raising the price of the 
 foreign, which is its price ; that all bounties are a waste 
 of the capital, and obstruct the very ends they are in- 
 tended to gain ; finally, that the metals themselves are 
 not wealth, but only one part, and a very small and 
 most insignificant part, of the national capital, Avhich 
 might be augmented to exuberance, and make the na- 
 tion abundantly and superabundantly wealthy, without 
 any specie at all, if means could be devised of restrain- 
 ing the excessive issue of a paper currency, or any other 
 instrument could be devised for conveniently effecting 
 exchanges accustomed as we now are to these obvious 
 views of this subject, we seem to wonder that the ela- 
 borate exposure of manifest error to which the sioc 
 chapters of Dr. Smith's work are devoted, each chapter 
 examining one of the resources of the mercantile sys- 
 tem, should ever have been required in order to over- 
 throw the fabric. But it is because he wrote those 
 invaluable chapters that these doctrines, which though 
 often before attacked, as we have seen, both abroad 
 and at home, yet continued everywhere to prevail, and 
 especially to prevail among the rulers of the world, at 
 length received their demonstrative refutation, and that 
 we now can look back with wonder on the darkness 
 which this great light dispelled. 
 
 i. If the importation of any commodity is restricted, 
 there is an inducement held out to the raising or the 
 manufacturing of that commodity at home ; capital is 
 drawn towards its production which would not other- 
 wise have been so employed, and workmen are engaged 
 in raising or manufacturing it who would have been 
 otherwise occupied. But this is hurtful on two ac- 
 counts ; men's regard for their own interest is sure to 
 make them work and employ workmen in the way most 
 likely to yield them a profit; and the natural advantages 
 of each country or district of a country for raising or 
 
228 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 for manufacturing certain commodities must always 
 determine where they can be grown or made the 
 cheapest. The inducing men to cultivate one branch 
 rather than another of industry, must therefore prevent 
 their industry from being most profitably employed, 
 and the confining the inhabitants of the country to the 
 commodities produced by its own inhabitants makes 
 them pay dearer for them than they otherwise would 
 do ; and thus lowers the real value of all the other pro- 
 duce of the country. Dr. Smith states the exceptions 
 to which the general rule is liable. They are said by 
 him to be two-fold, but in reality he allows four excep- 
 tions. Defence being more important than wealth, he 
 greatly praises the provisions of the ' Navigation Law,' 
 whereby, in order to increase the amount of British 
 shipping, and to destroy the carrying trade of Holland, 
 none but British ships could be employed either in the 
 colonial, or the coasting, or the carrying trade, or in 
 importing from any foreign country any article not the 
 produce of that country, also prohibiting British ships 
 to import from one country the produce of any other. 
 Again : when any tax is laid upon one article of 
 home-growth or manufacture, he considers it right to 
 lay an equal or countervailing duty upon the importa- 
 tion of the same article. He also allows that when 
 any article has been unnaturally encouraged by former 
 prohibitions, or by the restriction of importation, jus- 
 tice, as well as policy, requires that the prohibition or 
 restriction should only be taken off " slowly, gradually, 
 and after a very long warning." Finally, he conceives 
 it just and right to retaliate on Foreign States, which 
 have restricted the dealing in our commodities by re- 
 straining our people from dealing in theirs, providing 
 we can thus hope to obtain an alteration in their policy. 
 But the consideration how far such experiments are 
 likely in any case to succeed, he says, belongs not so 
 much to the philosopher or the lawgiver as to him 
 whom he is pleased to mention as the " insidious and 
 
WEALTH OP NATIONS. 229 
 
 crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, 
 whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctu- 
 ation of affairs." (Vol. II. p. 201.) I trust I may be ex- 
 cused for saying that my councils were always directed 
 by more liberal and permanent views than Dr. Smith 
 himself on this one point entertained ; being always 
 pointed to dissuade my " brother animals" from any 
 such retaliating process as he approves, and to recom- 
 mend liberal principles as more likely in the end to 
 remove the prejudices of Foreign States. In one thing 
 we all appeared quite to agree with Dr. Smith, that " to 
 expect the entire restoration of freedom of trade would 
 be as absurd as expecting to see an Oceana or an 
 Utopia established." (Vol. II. p. 206.) 
 
 ii. The unreasonableness of general restraints upon 
 importations from particular countries on account of 
 the balance of trade is next shown, first, on the prin- 
 ciples of the Mercantile System, and secondly, upon 
 general and sounder principles. 
 
 1. Supposing that the freest trade were allowed with 
 any given country with which the balance was sup- 
 posed unfavourable, it by no means follows that this 
 would prevent a gain with all countries in the amount 
 of specie imported, because the importation of more 
 goods from the given country than we exported to it 
 might very possibly enable us to export more to some 
 other countries with which we had no other means of 
 trading, because even if all the goods imported from 
 the given country were consumed, and not re-exported, 
 the balance would be better preserved if they were 
 bought cheaper there than they could be elsewhere. 
 Add to this, the impossibility of ascertaining with any 
 tolerable approach to accuracy the balance of trade 
 with any country from the inaccurate valuations in 
 custom-house books, and from the course of exchange 
 being influenced, not merely by the dealings between 
 any two countries, but by the dealings of each with 
 all other countries, as well as by the state of the 
 
230 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 coin in both, by the arrangements made for defray- 
 ing the expense of coinage, and by the practice of 
 paying sometimes in bank money and sometimes 
 in specie currency. The course of exchange will 
 frequently appear to be in favour of nations which 
 pay in bank money, and against those which pay 
 in currency, though the real exchange may be the 
 other way in each case. This leads to a long but very 
 valuable digression concerning Banks of Deposit, espe- 
 cially that of Amsterdam, on which the author tell us, 
 in the last edition, that he received his information 
 from Mr. Hope; and it was the first time that any 
 intelligible account of that celebrated establishment 
 had ever been given to the world. Mr. Hope esti- 
 mated the amount of the deposits in 1750, at about 
 three and a quarter millions sterling ; and Dr. Smith, 
 like the rest of mankind, believed that the oath annu- 
 ally taken by the burgomasters was sacred " among 
 that sober and religious people," and that not a florin 
 was ever issued except to the depositors, the whole 
 profit of the bank being the commission of a quarter 
 per cent, on deposits of silver, and a half per cent, on 
 those of gold. But about the very time that Mr. Hope 
 spoke or, or immediately after, the faith which had 
 remained inviolate from 1609, the date of the Bank's 
 foundation, was broken by that body, large loans 
 were secretly made to the Government and the East 
 India Company ; the annual oath continued to be taken 
 by that " sober and religious people," and to be annu- 
 ally broken ; in 1790, the bank announced that no 
 deposits under 250 would be returned, and that ten 
 per cent, would be returned on all others ; and all this 
 was submitted to without impairing the bank's credit 
 so sturdy a plant is confidence, grounded on long 
 habit and long-sustained good faith! At length, in 
 1796, it was discovered that above a million sterling, 
 lent covertly, could not now be recovered from the 
 State by the Company, whose claims on the public 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 231 
 
 were assigned over to its creditors. The bank paper, 
 before bearing a premium of 5 per cent., now fell to 
 16 discount. 
 
 2. Hitherto we have tried the merits of the Mercan- 
 tile System for increasing the precious metals, on the 
 principles of the system itself. But more rational 
 views condemn the attempt altogether. The supposi- 
 tion that two nations can only gain by trade when 
 each imports an equal value of commodities from the 
 other, and that if one imports more, it loses, is per- 
 fectly absurd, and betokens a complete inattention to 
 the nature of trade as well as of money. If both 
 import from each other an equal value of goods, so far 
 from neither gaining, both gain, and nearly in an equal 
 degree. The benefit of England in receiving the wines 
 of France, which it cannot grow, is equal to the benefit 
 of France in receiving from England the coal, which it 
 cannot raise, or the steam-engines, which it cannot 
 make. If there were no balance at all on the year's 
 account, not only all the coal and machinery, but all 
 the marketable goods in England would be the more 
 valuable in amount, because all could be exchanged 
 for wines, and not only all the wines, but all the silks 
 and other goods of France would be more valuable, 
 because they could be exchanged for our coals or our 
 engines. The interest of each nation is to obtain a 
 vent for the produce which it has no occasion for, and 
 a supply of the things which it wants. Its labour and 
 its capital is thus most profitably employed ; its com- 
 forts are provided for, and its wealth is increased. If 
 it can buy cheaper than it can raise or make, it is more 
 profitably employed in importing than in producing, 
 for the very same reason that it is more profitable for 
 the farmer to buy his ploughs and his clothes than to 
 make them. Where it can buy cheapest and sell 
 dearest, there ought it to resort for the very same 
 reason that it is more profitable for a farmer to buy 
 of the workman in the next parish who makes ploughs 
 
232 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 or clothes better and cheaper than the workman in his 
 own parish. The only balance to be considered by 
 rational men as affecting the progress of any nation's 
 riches, is that of production and consumption : when 
 it consumes more goods than it produces, it will be 
 impoverished ; when it consumes less, it will be en- 
 riched by accumulation. But this accumulation will 
 be going on, and the national wealth be increasing, 
 while the exportation of specie by the balance of trade 
 is going on during the whole time. For half a century 
 together this appears to have gone on in the North 
 American States before the Revolution ; and yet, 
 though the currency was almost entirely paper, no 
 part of the world had made greater or more rapid 
 strides towards wealth and prosperity. 
 
 iii. It does not appear that drawbacks are exposed 
 to serious objections upon any principle. If any com- 
 modity is taxed at home, and cannot be re-exported 
 with the weight of the duty upon it, there seems no 
 reason why the whole or the greater part of the tax or 
 duty should not be repaid upon the exportation. 
 Care must, of course, be taken to prevent clandestinely 
 retaining or re-landing the goods for home consump- 
 tion ; and Dr. Smith considers the exportation to our 
 colonies, which can only receive goods through us, as 
 not a case for drawback, because the impost must be 
 paid by the colonists, if they want the goods. 
 
 iv. Bounties stand in a very different predicament, 
 if we take care to distinguish between real and only 
 apparent bounties. A real bounty is the payment of 
 something to encourage the exportation of goods not 
 subject to any such impost at home. An apparent 
 bounty is the payment of something to encourage the 
 exportation of goods which are either directly subject 
 to a tax, or made of, or with, articles subject to a tax 
 as refined sugar made of taxed raw sugar, or gun- 
 powder made of saltpetre that has paid duty. These 
 apparent bounties are, in reality, drawbacks, and fall 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 233 
 
 within the exception of the last subdivison. But real 
 bounties are, in every case, objectionable ; they are 
 liable to the general objection urged against encourag- 
 ing one branch of industry, or one employment of 
 capital, by restricting importation ; they force labour 
 and capital into employments they would not naturally 
 seek, and therefore would not advantageously have. 
 But they are liable to the still greater objection, that 
 the giving them always assumes the employment of 
 capital to be prejudicial, the trade to be a losing one, 
 else there could be no reason whatever for giving them ; 
 and thus we pay more for driving a losing trade, and 
 wisely make a present to foreigners at the expense of 
 our own people, for the purpose of increasing the 
 amount of the specie which we are to gain from those 
 foreigners. Dr. Smith examines particularly the two 
 most celebrated cases of bounty ; first, that on exported 
 corn, which he shows to have both raised its price to 
 the public at the public expense to have prevented 
 the plenty of one year from providing for the want 
 of another to have had no effect in encouraging 
 tillage, because it only gave the grower a nominal 
 benefit to have raised the money price of our goods 
 in the home market, and lowered their price abroad 
 to have enabled foreigners to eat of corn somewhat 
 cheaper than we do ourselves. The other bounty dis- 
 cussed is that in the herring and whale fisheries ; in 
 which he clearly shows the Government to have been 
 grievously imposed upon by the great authors of all 
 such measures the members of the commercial in- 
 terest, whom he never spares in his sharp and severe 
 censures. 
 
 To this subdivision is naturally enough added a 
 dissertation called, somewhat inaccurately, a ' Digres- 
 sion on the Corn Trade and Corn Laws,' the bounty 
 having been already touched upon. There are four 
 trades engaged in this line of business those of the 
 inland dealer, the importer, the exporter, and the 
 
234 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 carrier or importer for re-exportation. These trades 
 may be carried on separately or together. 
 
 1. The interest of the consumer, as well as of the 
 producer, is clearly served by the first class of traders ; 
 nor can anything be more clear than that, where they 
 raise the price, which they have no power of doing 
 unless there is a scarcity either begun or impending, 
 they benefit the people by putting them on short 
 allowance, and preventing dearth from being exchanged 
 for famine. The gross injustice, and revolting absur- 
 dity, of all the laws now happily abrogated, against 
 forestalling and regrating, intended to keep down prices 
 but in reality keeping them up, by discouraging trade, 
 by discouraging agriculture, and by discouraging thrift, 
 it is needless to illustrate either by reason or example. 
 
 2. The trade of the importer is likewise beneficial to 
 the community by somewhat lowering the price of 
 corn ; and though this may lower the nominal revenue 
 of the home producer, it likewise lessens his expenses, 
 and so leaves his net income the same, not to mention 
 that in common years there is never much more than 
 the six hundreth part of our consumption imported 
 from abroad. One thing, however, requires to be 
 observed as to the admission of foreign corn. The 
 producers have for a long course of years received a 
 money income higher than a free trade in grain might 
 leave it Hence the difficulty of reducing that income, 
 when all their settlements, and all their mortgages, and 
 all their other time bargains, as well as the rents paid 
 by their tenants on existing leases, have been calcu- 
 lated and augmented upon the foot of higher prices. 
 The importance of the landed interest to any country 
 is not easily overrated. Dr. Smith himself, on every 
 occasion, puts it much higher than that of any other 
 of the great classes of the community. In a form of 
 government, and frame of society, such as ours, it is 
 to be carefully considered. The burthens peculiar to 
 the owners and cultivators of the soil are likewise to 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 235 
 
 be taken into the account. Not only do they pay a 
 heavy land tax, but still heavier county and parish 
 rates, amounting in all to between six and seven 
 millions. Supposing that the malt tax falls wholly on 
 the consumer, yet it certainly tends to discourage the 
 cultivation of barley very materially by diminishing 
 its natural consumption. Barley too, is the grain to 
 which soils are more universally adapted than to wheat; 
 and, independent of the direct operation of the tax in 
 discouraging its growth for the sake of revenue, the 
 regulations necessary to prevent illicit distillation press 
 severely on the grower by preventing him from using 
 grain to feed his cattle. All these considerations 
 made the late Mr. Bicardo, a strong and unsparing 
 advocate of free trade, propose a permanent fixed 
 duty on corn imported, as a compensation to the 
 farmer, in respect of his being pressed by burthens 
 from which the foreign grower is free.* Hence, too, 
 some reasoners extend several of Dr. Smith's argu- 
 ments in favour of countervailing duties, and his view 
 of further exceptions being allowed to the rule of free 
 importation by the consideration that other things may 
 be more important than wealth, and, possibly, that the 
 support of the internal institutions may be as much a 
 fair object of care as its external defence of a country. 
 On this inquiry I do not enter. The subject of steadi- 
 ness of price is not considered by Dr. Smith, though 
 
 * The argument often so thoughtlessly employed by the wild adver- 
 saries of the landed interest, that the poor rates fall on houses, and thus 
 on the merchant and manufacturer as well as on the landowner and far- 
 mer, seems quite inconceivable. Suppose them right in stating that half 
 the poor rates fall on house-rent, still, as the landowner and farmer pay 
 this also, there would remain above three millions exclusively laid on 
 them. No man of common reflection can be ignorant that the manufac- 
 turer is rated at the rent of a building worth to him, perhaps, 20,000 
 a-year, that rent being 1,000 or 1,200, while the landowner whose 
 income is the same pays in the proportion ten or twelve tunes more. It 
 is equally inaccurate to reckon the excise, customs, stamps, as burthens 
 falling on the rest of the community and not on the land. The landowner 
 pays his share of these largely, and the stamps are peculiarly burthensome 
 to him. 
 
236 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 it forms, at least in our times, the main topic of those 
 who defend the corn laws. The tendency of the 
 importation, by opening our market to the growers of 
 Poland and the Ukraine, though not in terms referred 
 to, must have been in his eye, because in no other 
 way could the free importation of corn permanently 
 reduce its price, the opening of our markets having 
 the inevitable effect of raising its price abroad. But 
 as Poland and the Ukraine can only increase their 
 production of grain gradually in the gradual advance 
 of their population, it seems evident that the perma- 
 nent fall in prices must be the work of time, and could 
 not easily occasion any great or sudden shock to our 
 internal system. 
 
 3. The free export of corn, whether home-grown or 
 imported, is essential both to the interests of the pro- 
 ducer and the consumer, because, unless it is certain 
 that the quantity grown, if superabundant, can be 
 easily taken off, the growth will be pared down to so 
 low an amount as must prevent cheapness, and, unless 
 it is certain that any surplus imported can be re-ex- 
 ported, there will be the same slowness to lower prices 
 by importation. As for the arguments against im- 
 porting or exporting for fear foreign States should shut 
 their ports and we should thus lose our needful sup- 
 
 Elies, the experience even of Dr. Smith's age showed 
 ow little ground there was for such alarms ; but in 
 our day, who have seen one vast system of continental 
 despotism established upon a monstrous military power, 
 wielded by a single man, and wielded in direct hos- 
 tility to our commerce, yet fail to prevent a much 
 greater importation than usual of all kinds of grain, 
 anything more chimerical than such fears cannot well 
 be imagined. 
 
 4. The carrying trade is not perhaps of so much 
 importance to the home market as the three other 
 branches of the corn trade : yet it does contribute to 
 its supply ; for the carrier will always be ready to keep 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 237 
 
 part of his capital under his eye and controul, and thus 
 to sell at home, just as Holland became a great em- 
 porium of all articles, while she was the carrier of the 
 world. 
 
 The general soundness of Dr. Smith's views upon 
 this important subject has never been questioned by 
 persons of good authority, unless upon the questions 
 connected with the bounty. Some writers, who are in 
 general the advocates of free trade, have considered 
 the benefits conferred by the bounty upon agriculture, 
 and through agriculture upon the whole industry of 
 the community, to be sufficiently important to counter- 
 balance the arguments against so great a deviation 
 from all sound principle as the payment of a portion 
 out of the national capital, for the purpose of drawing 
 more of this capital into one line of employment than 
 would otherwise seek that line. They have also con- 
 sidered that a reduction in the price of agricultural 
 produce is the ultimate effect of this system. Dr. 
 Anderson, the author of the true Theory of Kent, (as 
 far back as 1777,) and Mr. Malthus hold these opinions. 
 Others, again, who entirely agree in Dr. Smith's opinion, 
 dispute the reasons by which he supports it. Thus 
 Professor Maculloch has shown that there is a fallacy 
 in the assumption of the real value of corn being un- 
 alterable as Dr. Smith supposes, (Corn Laws, ' Encyclo- 
 paedia Brit.' VII. 347.) And Mr. Homer, in a most 
 able paper in the 'Edinburgh Review' (V. 199), shows 
 that Dr. Smith arrives at the conclusion of the enhance- 
 ment of price in the home market by a wrong route, 
 the enhancement being by him regarded as the direct 
 and inevitable effect of the bounty, and kept separate, 
 from its effect in extending the foreign demand, whereas 
 Mr. Homer shows, I think very clearly, that the exten- 
 sion is the direct and main cause of the enhancement, 
 and that the bounty only operates incidentally in this 
 way. It is also to be observed that no reference is 
 made to the operation of the bounty upon the foreign 
 
238 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 demand in the two first editions of the 'Wealth of 
 Nations.' It may be further mentioned that, some 
 time before the 'Wealth of Nations' was published, an 
 act had passed materially relaxing the bounty law of 
 King William. Of this alteration Dr. Smith remarks, 
 that like the laws of Solon, if not the best it was as 
 good as the temper of the times would admit ; and it 
 is well known that Mr. Burke, its author, told him, 
 when objecting to it, that although philosophers had 
 the privilege of conceiving their diagrams in geometric 
 accuracy, the engineer must often impair the symmetry 
 as well as simplicity of his machine, to overcome the 
 irregularities of friction and resistance. The corn 
 bounty was entirely abrogated in 1815 ; and in 1830 
 all bounties whatever were repealed. 
 
 v. The subject of commercial treaties is next to be 
 considered. They are liable and always to this objec- 
 tion, that as they grant advantages to the growers or 
 manufacturers of one nation over the growers and 
 manufacturers of all others, so those advantages are at 
 the expense of the people living under the Government 
 which has granted them. They buy dearer and sell 
 cheaper than they would do if their trade was left free 
 with all nations. No loss will be incurred either by 
 the nation or by individuals as in the case of bounties, 
 but a smaller gain will be made than might otherwise 
 have been made. Unless some gain were made, the 
 monopoly given to the foreigner would extinguish the 
 home trade. But some commercial treaties have been 
 made, with the view of turning the balance in one 
 country's favour with the other country to which it 
 gave a monopoly of its markets. An instance of this is 
 given in the Methuen Treaty, in 1703, with Portugal, 
 examined in detail by Dr. Smith ; who shows that the 
 obligation incurred by Great Britain to admit Portugal 
 wines at a third part less duty than French, in return 
 for Portugal only agreeing not to raise the duties on 
 British woollens, though receiving them on the same 
 
WEALTH OP NATIONS. 239 
 
 terms as those of Holland and France, is an unfair and 
 improvident bargain, even upon the principles of the 
 mercantile system, of which this treaty is vaunted as 
 the especial triumph and glory. The great aim of that 
 system, to increase the amount by importation of the 
 precious metals, undoubtedly gave rise to this treaty 
 with Portugal, whose share in the mines of gold is so 
 large. Dr. Smith takes occasion to show, that there 
 needs no care whatever of the Government in any 
 country to obtain these metals, whether for trade, or 
 for revenue, or for subsidy, or for any other head of 
 expenditure, foreign or domestic, as its ordinary com- 
 merce must always insure a sufficient supply of them ; 
 that is, as much of them as it can afford to pay for, 
 and this is as much as it ever can have. He takes 
 occasion likewise in closing this subject to introduce a 
 discussion on the coinage and in favour of a moderate 
 seignorage, a discussion out of place in this part of his 
 work, and which rather belonged, as he himself admits, 
 to the subdivision of the first book which treated of 
 money. Perhaps it more properly should have formed 
 another head of the expedients of the mercantile sys- 
 tem. In its present place it seems much more entitled 
 to the name of a digression than any one of the three 
 which have been so termed, with this difference, that 
 it has no kind of connexion with the subject to which 
 it is annexed, and can hardly, like those others, have 
 been suggested by it, excepting that it follows the re- 
 marks on Portuguese gold. 
 
 vi. The great subject of Colonial establishments con- 
 cludes this discussion of the expedients of the com- 
 mercial system. Dr. Smith first explains the motives 
 for planting new colonies ; secondly, the causes of their 
 prosperity ; thirdly, the advantages which Europe has 
 derived from the discovery of America, and the easier 
 communication by sea with India. 
 
 1. The ancient colonies of Greece an,d Rome were 
 suggested by different circumstances, and founded on 
 
240 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 different principles. Their names sufficiently show this 
 diversity. The Greek settlement was called, ajroiKia, a 
 
 toing from home ; the Latin, colonia, a plantation ; the 
 )rmer kinds of colony lost all connexion with the 
 parent state ; the latter were its advanced posts or gar- 
 risons in a conquered country ; both originated or at 
 least had some connexion with the narrowness of the 
 home territory, and the necessity of obtaining settle- 
 ments elsewhere. With the Greeks, no other purpose 
 was served but to get rid of their surplus population ; 
 with the Romans, beside this, the securing their con- 
 quests formed a motive for colonising. The modern 
 colonies had some concern with the convenience of 
 emigration, but far more with the promotion of com- 
 merce and the extension of dominion. After the Vene- 
 tians and Portuguese had enriched themselves by the 
 East Indian commerce, the Spaniards and Portuguese 
 turned themselves to exploring and settling the islands 
 and continent of South America, where the rich returns 
 of gold and silver gave them so great commercial re- 
 nown, that England, France, and Holland pursued a 
 like course, and planted colonies in the American islands 
 and continents. The jealousy with which Spain and 
 Portugal prevented all foreign intercourse with their 
 colonies made it necessary for other countries to obtain 
 similar possessions, if they would have any trade in 
 the valuable produce of those distant fertile countries ; 
 and each nation successively founded its colonial policy 
 upon the same jealous and exclusive spirit which had 
 shut them all out of the colonies first established. The 
 motive of all these colonizing projects was the thirst 
 of gold ; in all of them the traffic in other produce was 
 soon found to be the most valuable ; and the commerce 
 in commodities at first despised, gives rise now to the 
 bulk of the European intercourse with the new world. 
 2. The abundance of good land, and the knowledge 
 of agriculture and the arts which settlers take out with 
 them to a new or a conquered colony, are the causes 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 241 
 
 of its rapid increase in population and in wealth. The 
 American plantations greatly surpass the Greek in this 
 respect, and very greatly surpass the Roman, while their 
 distance from the mother country gives them far greater 
 freedom than the latter had in managing their own 
 concerns. Even under the tyrannical government and 
 bad management of Spain, Mexico had 100,000 inha- 
 bitants a century ago, five times as many as at the con- 
 quest. Brazil had above half a million of Portuguese, 
 or their descendants ; while in British North America, 
 the number of the people doubles in seventeen or 
 eighteen years, and now amounts to nearly 20,000,000. 
 The more rapid progress of our colonies is owing to 
 four leading circumstances : the law preventing land 
 from being engrossed in a few hands, and preventing 
 it being conveyed unless a certain portion is cultivated ; 
 the general law of equal division by succession, with- 
 out regard to primogeniture ; the low amount of the 
 taxes ; the more favourable trading system, which gives 
 no exclusive companies the monopoly of their com- 
 merce, and allows certain produce to be freely imported 
 into the mother country, throwing open for all produce 
 all her ports, and giving them all the inestimable ad- 
 vantages of a free and popular government. 
 
 3. The advantages derived from the colonies have 
 been either those obtained by Europe at large, or those 
 obtained by the several colonizing Powers. 
 
 (1.) The comforts and enjoyments of life have been 
 varied and increased to all nations in the old world. 
 The industry of all has been stimulated by the new 
 vent for their produce, and countries which even do 
 not directly trade with the colonies, have benefited by 
 their produce, and by the surplus produce of the coun- 
 tries that conduct the trade, which is occasioned by the 
 colonial demand. 
 
 (2.) The colonizing countries have derived not only 
 the benefit which all States receive from their own 
 dominions, but also the peculiar advantages of their 
 
 R 
 
242 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 exclusive traffic with the colonies. The former have 
 been very trifling, as means of defence and revenue 
 are all that a State can derive from its own territory, 
 and of these nothing has been afforded, except the 
 revenue derived from the Spanish and Portuguese 
 settlements. But the commercial monopoly has cer- 
 tainly been very lucrative. This advantage, however, 
 is, by Dr. Smith, considered to be rather relative than 
 absolute, an advantage over nations having no colo- 
 nies, and whose industry is to a certain degree op- 
 pressed by their exclusion from the colonial commerce. 
 The monopoly has kept down the agriculture and trade 
 of the colonies, and thus it has injured the mother 
 country by curtailing the natural supply and thereby 
 raising the natural price of colonial produce. But it 
 has also injured the natural trade and agriculture of 
 the mother country, by drawing much more capital 
 towards the colonial traffic and cultivation than would 
 naturally have gone thither, thus gradually lowering 
 the profits by increasing the competition in the colonial 
 trade, and proportionably decreasing the competition 
 and raising the profits in other branches of commerce. 
 The rate of profit in the mother country being thus 
 kept unnaturally high, has necessarily been hurtful to 
 its trade with all other countries. Dr. Smith likewise 
 contends, that the monopoly draws capital from a foreign 
 trade of consumption with foreign countries yielding 
 quick returns, to a similar trade with distant countries 
 yielding slow returns ; that it draws capital from a direct 
 to a round-about foreign trade of consumption ; and 
 that it draws some capital from all trade of consump- 
 tion to a carrying trade. In these respects he holds 
 the colonial monopoly to have been greatly prejudicial. 
 Lastly, he considers it a disadvantage that this great 
 branch of commerce occasions our manufactures not 
 to be adapted to a variety of small markets but to one 
 or two large ones, destroying the uniform and equal 
 balance that would naturally have taken place among 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 243 
 
 the different employments of capital, and thus dimin- 
 ishing the great security derived from a moderate 
 amount of capital being invested in a great number of 
 trades, of which if one should fail, another may be ex- 
 pected to succeed. 
 
 It is not to be denied, that a great portion of Dr. 
 Smith's objections to the colonial monopoly are well 
 founded. The object of that monopoly is to overcome 
 the natural effects of distance and severance, and to 
 render the remote territory, situated at the other ex- 
 tremity of the globe, a portion of the mother country's 
 European dominions. But even if such be its object, 
 it is treating the colony unlike any other part of the 
 parent State's dominions, to forbid all trade between its 
 people and foreign States, and to confine its commercial 
 existence to its relations with the rest of the empire. 
 No one ever thought of compelling Lancashire or De- 
 vonshire to trade with the other parts of England alone. 
 But we have even gone further and prohibited certain 
 of our colonies from trading with some of our other 
 colonies, as if Lancashire and Devonshire should be 
 obliged to trade with Middlesex alone. However, it 
 must be allowed, that Dr. Smith is wholly in error 
 when he regards the colonial trade and agriculture as 
 foreign, and the capital invested in them as invested 
 in remote foreign trade, round-about foreign trade, and 
 carrying trade. The colonies are part of the empire ; 
 their people are its citizens and subjects ; the trade 
 with the colonies is as much a home trade, as much 
 replaces British capital, and puts in motion two classes 
 of British labourers, as the trade between two provinces 
 of the mother country. Indeed it resembles most nearly 
 the commerce between the country and the towns in 
 any given state, the traffic of the producers with the 
 consumers, of the farmers with the manufacturers, of 
 all commerce the most gainful. It is also certain, that 
 he has overlooked another and a most material con- 
 sideration. The capital invested in foreign agriculture 
 
244 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 where the capitalist and his family reside on their pro- 
 perty or their farms, remains abroad, both stock and 
 profits. The capital invested in colonial agriculture 
 returns its profits almost immediately to support fami- 
 lies residing in the mother country. These profits, 
 moreover, can be subjected to the taxation of the State 
 with a view to support its revenue. 
 
 The benefits of the colonial trade, and even its 
 monopoly, in contributing to the naval resources of the 
 State, have been freely admitted by Dr. Smith, as has 
 already been seen. But one important consideration 
 he has wholly left out of view, or only vaguely hinted 
 at it. When comparing the effects of the colonial trade 
 as monopolized with its effects if left free, he assumes 
 that all nations have their colonial trade unfettered, 
 and omits to remark that any one doing so would not 
 gain at all as he supposes, if the others continued the 
 exclusive system. Akin to this is his overlooking the 
 dilemma in which England, France, and Holland were 
 severally placed by the Spanish and Portuguese mono- 
 polies. In order to share the advantages of the colonial 
 trade they were compelled to have colonies of their own. 
 It is one thing to ask, Whether there be any benefit 
 from this or that given country planting colonies ? and 
 another to ask. Whether the colonial trade is ever 
 otherwise than in some degree beneficial ? Possibly it 
 would be better if two or three nations should plant 
 colonies, especially if they let others profit by their 
 traffic, that these others should have none of their own. 
 But who is so wild as to expect that ever this could 
 happen, that any nation should be at all the expense, 
 trouble, risk of founding and rearing a settlement, and 
 afterwards of governing and protecting it, and then let 
 all other nations benefit equally by its commerce ? 
 Lastly, Dr. Smith has omitted to consider the great 
 advantage which a nation derives from having once 
 had colonial possessions, even after they have thrown 
 off the yoke and ceased to be under the government 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 245 
 
 of the mother country. The market for her produce 
 is thus continued ; the intercourse of emigration and of 
 trade is maintained between the nations now become 
 independent ; common origin, common language, com- 
 mon laws and customs, making the firm bond which 
 naturally exists between the parent state and the colony, 
 survive their political severance ; and if no untoward 
 circumstances have attended that event, there must 
 always remain a natural amity and alliance between the 
 two branches of the same people. All these things 
 have been fully explained in the work upon Colonial 
 Policy which I published two-and-forty years ago, and 
 they are there illustrated by the history of all the 
 European settlements in America and elsewhere. It 
 is also there shown how little the charge of colonial 
 government has been, and how rarely colonial interests 
 have involved the mother country in war. 
 
 vii. The subject of the mercantile system, the first 
 part of the fourth book, is closed with a general chap- 
 ter, containing not a summary of the insuperable objec- 
 tions to that theory, as might have been expected from 
 the title ' Conclusion of the Mercantile System' but 
 a number of remarks on bounties and prohibitions, 
 specifying those actually given or imposed. These it 
 is unnecessary to abstract. 
 
 In concluding the analysis of this, the most impor- 
 tant part of Dr. Smith's work, we may be permitted to 
 consider, with some regret, that he should have so con- 
 stantly expressed himself with harshness respecting the 
 mercantile and manufacturing classes of the community, 
 or rather the merchants and the master manufacturers. 
 He, on all occasions, regards them as inferior in cha- 
 racter to the land-owners and farmers, inferior in 
 patriotism and disinterestedness, inferior in good feel- 
 ing in short only to be praised for their greater acute- 
 ness, and better knowledge of their own interests. 
 This spirit, which he derives from a view of the many 
 restrictive laws which may no doubt be traced to them. 
 
246 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 breaks forth constantly in the course of the book, but 
 it is especially to be observed in such passages as that 
 of Book iv., chap, ii., (Vol. II., p. 307) ; Book iv., 
 chap, vii., (II., 441) ; Book iv., chap, viii., (IL, 489*). 
 He carries his prejudice even further ; he regards manu- 
 facturing industry as wholly unfavourable to both the 
 acquisition of knowledge, the enlargement of the mind, 
 and even the enjoyment of health. 
 
 Part II. The remaining part of this fourth book is 
 devoted to a full explanation of the agricultural system, 
 that is, the theory of the French Economists, and to 
 remarks tending to show how erroneously it deals with 
 the classification of labour and profits, when it repre- 
 sents employment of labour or of capital in agriculture 
 as alone productive. The subject has already been so 
 fully discussed, both in the foregoing analysis and in 
 the Appendix, that nothing remains to be added in 
 this place. 
 
 V. We are thus brought to the fifth and last book 
 of Dr. Smith's work, in which he examines the impor- 
 tant subject of the Public Revenue, or that portion of 
 the revenue of individuals which is allotted to the Ex- 
 penses of the State. This subject is treated in three 
 subdivisions : the expenses of the commonwealth ; the 
 sources of the public revenue ; public debts. 
 
 * " The member of parliament who supports even' proposal for streng- 
 thening their monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of under- 
 standing trade but great popularity. If he opposes them, on the contrary, 
 and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, nei- 
 ther the most acknowledged probity or the highest rank, nor the greatest 
 public sendees, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detrac- 
 tion, from personal insults, nay, sometimes from real danger from the in- 
 solent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists." (II. 206.) " Our 
 great master-manufacturers are as intent to keep down the wages of their 
 own weavers, or the earnings of the poor spinners, and it is by no means 
 for the benefit of the workman that they endeavour either to raise the price 
 of the complete work, or to lower that of the ruder material. It is the 
 industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful thai 
 is principally encouraged by our mercantile system, that which is carried 
 on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent is too often either neglected 
 or oppressed." (II. 489.) 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 247 
 
 i. The expenses of the commonwealth aie -first, 
 those of defence ; secondly, those of justice ; thirdly, 
 those of public works and institutions ; fourthly, those 
 for supporting the sovereign's dignity. 
 
 1. In treating of defence, we are led to consider 
 the progress of the military art. At first, all the clan 
 are warriors, and the chief is the first warrior. In the 
 hunting state, very small bodies can be collected ; in 
 the pastoral state only, large bodies may be gathered 
 together ; in the infancy of the agricultural state, also, 
 large forces may be raised. But as society advances, 
 manufactures are introduced, and the ruder art of war 
 is improved. It thus becomes doubly necessary to 
 have a certain class of the community trained to arms, 
 and alone called out to serve ; for without this, manu- 
 facturing industry could not go on, and the military 
 art could not be learnt. If this plan be pursued, 
 a regular army is raised ; if the whole citizens in rota- 
 tion are called upon to serve, it is a militia. The 
 superior efficiency of standing armies has been felt in 
 all ages. Philip of Macedon by their help conquered 
 Greece, and his son conquered Persia. The victories 
 of Hannibal, and, after the second Punic War, those 
 of Rome, were owing to the same superiority. The 
 history of modern wars reads the same lesson. The 
 expense, however, of this mode of defence, now be- 
 come necessary, is very great in all countries. 
 
 2. In early times, the administration of justice in 
 the hands^pf the sovereign, or of his delegate, was not 
 an expense, but a source of revenue ; and hence the 
 greatest abuses, the most sordid corruption, the most 
 cruel injustice, disfigured the administration. After- 
 wards, justice was said to be administered gratis, that 
 is, by persons whom the sovereign paid; but in all 
 countries fees were exacted from the suitors. Dr. 
 Smith is very far from perceiving the evils of taxing 
 law proceedings ; and, indeed, this is one of the parts 
 of his work in which he seems to have taken the least 
 
248 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 pains, either to inform himself, or to acquire sound 
 notions of principle. Mr. Bentham has, in his admir- 
 able tract on the subject (' Protest against Law Taxes'), 
 demonstrated unanswerably that these imposts are the 
 very worst that have ever, to any considerable extent, 
 been adopted by any civilized nation. Dr. Smith, 
 however, had very sound ideas on the necessity of 
 separating the judicial from the executive office in 
 every State. 
 
 3. Institutions or works are of three classes those 
 for aiding the commerce of the country, those for the 
 education of youth, and those for instructing its adult 
 citizens. 
 
 (1.) Those for aiding commerce may either be directed 
 to help the general commerce of a country, or to help 
 particular branches. To the former class belong canals, 
 roads, bridges of which the cost, either as to making 
 or repairing, may be well and justly defrayed by a toll 
 on those who use them. In some countries, as in 
 France, this expense is defrayed by the State on all 
 the common roads; in others, as in England, the 
 property of tolls is in private hands, and the burthen 
 of repairing the roads lies on them. The repair of the 
 Languedoc Canal was intrusted, with its tolls, to the 
 Engineer Riqueti's family. A local administration 
 in such cases is always better than a central less 
 costly, and less liable to abuse. To the class of works 
 required for particular branches of commerce belong 
 factories, established in countries either wholly barbar- 
 ous, or varying widely in their customs and laws from 
 our own ; establishments of Consuls and Ministers ; 
 regulated companies, and joint stock companies. 
 Those joint stock companies the members of which 
 have the privilege of transferring their shares, and of 
 being only liable each to the extent of his subscription, 
 have a tendency to draw more capital into the trade 
 than could be invested by the members of private 
 partnerships. Hence they are only to be approved in 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 249 
 
 cases where there is great public benefit to be derived 
 from the trade they undertake, and where private 
 adventure would be insufficient to conduct it. There 
 seem to be only four kinds of business which justify 
 their formation banking, insurances, canals, water- 
 works. Had Dr. Smith lived to our day, he would 
 have included railways. The numbers of such com- 
 panies for purposes of foreign trade which have failed, 
 when not supported by the grant of exclusive privi- 
 leges, is so great, that, a century ago, the Abbe 
 Morellet enumerated no less than fifty-five such in- 
 stances in one hundred and fifty years. 
 
 (2.) Institutions for the education of children or 
 youth do not necessarily fall on the State to maintain 
 them; they may defray their own expenses. The 
 general rule of such establishments is, that they are 
 founded or endowed by private munificence, sometimes 
 by the bounty of former sovereigns. Dr. Smith con- 
 tends that their instruction is always worse than that of 
 schools and colleges which subsist by the exertions of 
 teachers paid by school fees. He also objects to such 
 endowments, as drawing to literary pursuits a greater 
 number of persons than would naturally devote them- 
 selves to a literary life, or than its gains can support. 
 He seems to admit, however, that there is an advantage 
 even in the small amount of education bestowed in 
 endowed schools and colleges, so very much underrated 
 by him ; for he suggests that without them there might 
 have been nothing taught at all. He has even carried 
 his view further, and allowed that the public should 
 establish parish schools ; apparently on the ground that 
 the very ignorance which such establishments are calcu- 
 lated to remove, if left to operate, would prevent the 
 bulk of mankind from making any exertion to obtain 
 schools and teachers, by preventing men from being 
 aware of their own deficiencies. 
 
 (3.) The institutions for adult education are chiefly 
 those for teaching religion. Dr. Smith does not give a 
 
250 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 very decided opinion against an establishment supported 
 by law and by the State, but all, or nearly all his 
 reasoning tends towards that negative ; and he gets the 
 better of Mr. Hume's argument, (which he cites as that 
 of " by far the greatest philosopher and historian of the 
 present age,") that there is no better way of preventing 
 the dangers of fanaticism than paying a clergy to be 
 quiet,* by stating that this mischief may be counter- 
 acted in two ways : encouraging the study of science 
 not by foundations, but by requiring certain qualifica- 
 tions in philosophical knowledge as the title to offices ; 
 and encouraging the arts and amusements, including 
 dramatic exhibitions by which he sets great store. In 
 discussing establishments he touches but slightly on 
 tithes, which he regards as a tax upon the landlord, 
 overlooking the consideration that they are a property 
 which never belonged to him, and are by many rea- 
 soners held to be, I think on very doubtful grounds, 
 no more a tax than a rent-charge on his land is. He 
 afterwards recurs to the subject, but no where enters 
 fully into it. 
 
 (4.) The expense of maintaining the sovereign's 
 dignity necessarily increases with the progress of 
 luxury and refinement : when all ranks live expen- 
 sively, the sovereign must be maintained in greater 
 and more expensive luxury than any. 
 
 ii. Having considered the expenses which fall upon 
 the government in performing its functions and dis- 
 charging its duties, we come next to examine the 
 sources from which the funds are derived, to meet 
 those expenses. These funds are of two descriptions; 
 funds belonging to the Sovereign or the State, the 
 revenue of which forms a public income or income 
 levied from the subjects of the State in the form of 
 taxes. This division of the subject, therefore, is sub- 
 divided into two parts. 
 
 * '' Qui otium reipublicae perturbant, reddam otiosos." (Cic.) 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 251 
 
 Part 1. The Sovereign or the State may be possessed 
 of property, and frequently has been, of various kinds. 
 It may even have labourers, and employ them at a 
 profit; or it may carry on profitable business on its 
 own account and as a source of revenue. In rude 
 States the Prince profits by the herds which belong to 
 him, and support his expenditure and his power. Where 
 slavery is allowed, the Prince may make a profit by 
 the labour of his slaves. Small republics have driven 
 traffic by their own mercantile profit in various ways. 
 Hamburgh used to have the profit of selling wines in 
 a public wine-cellar, and drugs in an apothecary's shop. 
 Banking was always a source of revenue to the smaller 
 Italian republics, and to Venice, Hamburgh, and Am- 
 sterdam. Many Princes have traded like private indi- 
 viduals. The Egyptian Pacha does so at this day ; 
 nor is there anything more unfair than such dignitaries 
 entering into competition with their subjects, over 
 whose dealings they exercise a controul. The post- 
 office has always been to the Government of England 
 and other countries a considerable source of revenue. 
 Some Italian and German States have profited by 
 insurance against fire and sea risk. Many of these 
 small States have gained profit by lending at interest 
 their savings or treasure, and thus dealing like other 
 money-lenders. Most States have driven the gainful 
 and dishonest trade of gambling, by way of lottery. 
 But land has in all instances been held by the State. 
 In former times it formed the bulk of the revenue in 
 all feudal countries, the Sovereign being the greatest 
 feudal lord, and defraying all, or nearly all the expenses 
 of his government by his rents as a landowner, while 
 for his military establishment he had to depend upon 
 the precarious and temporary services of the inferior 
 landowners, the crown vassals. It was when the pro- 
 gress of civilization made such military service incon- 
 venient and even impossible, that regular armies became 
 necessary ; these required a greater expenditure than 
 
252 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 the crown lands could supply ; and other sources of 
 revenue became necessary. The other expenses of 
 the Government were increased in proportion, and 
 hence the total inadequacy of the rents compelled the 
 State to provide for the government in all its branches 
 by the levying of money from the people. This gave 
 rise to the modern System of Taxation. 
 
 Part 2. Taxes imposed upon the people of any 
 country, must necessarily fall, either upon the rent of 
 land, the profits of stock, or the wages of labour ; and 
 a tax may fall on one or more of these three great 
 branches of the income of the community. Hence the 
 subject divides itself into four heads, as taxes are 
 intended to fall upon rents, profits, wages, or on all 
 indiscriminately, I say, are intended so to fall, because 
 we shall presently see that the incidence of an impost 
 may be very different from that which its authors 
 intended it should be. But there are four leading 
 principles which apply to all taxes whatever, and which 
 must in considering the merits of any given tax be 
 kept always in view. First. All the subjects of a State 
 should be called upon to contribute as nearly as pos- 
 sible in proportion to their several means or incomes. 
 Secondly. Each individual should be taxed according 
 to a known and certain, and not an arbitrary rule. 
 TJiirdly. Every tax should be levied in the time and 
 manner most likely to suit the convenience of the con- 
 tributors. Fourthly. Every tax should be so contrived 
 as to take and to keep out of the people's pockets as 
 little as possible beyond what goes into the coffers of 
 the State. A tax may depart from this last principle 
 in four ways : by requiring too large a number to col- 
 lect and manage it; or by obstructing the people's 
 industry and so injuring the fund of payment; or 
 by encouraging smuggling and thus increasing the 
 price of commodities, while it ruins by prosecutions ; 
 or by subjecting the people to vexatious search and 
 other annoyances, which though not directly money 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 253 
 
 payments, may yet be reckoned as costing what every 
 one would readily give to avoid the evil. This fourth 
 maxim thus appears to be the most important of the 
 whole. According as any tax does or does not con- 
 form itself to these several maxims, it is good or bad. 
 1. A tax on rent may be imposed either by valuing 
 each district at so much yearly, and taking thence a 
 sum, which shall never afterwards be altered; or by 
 taking so much in proportion to the actual rent in 
 every year, or at stated periods of adjustment, and so 
 making the tax rise or fall with the actual value of 
 landed income. In this country the land-tax, settled 
 in the 4th William and Mary, comes under the first of 
 these classes, and therefore sins against the first of the 
 four maxims, but conforms itself to the other three. 
 The second kind of tax is the Impot Fonciere of the 
 French Economists. They contend, that all taxes fall 
 ultimately upon rent, and therefore they argue that 
 they ought to be at once and directly imposed upon 
 it. But though Dr. Smith declines a discussion of the 
 metaphysical reasoning by which they maintain such 
 to be the ultimate incidence of all taxes, he yet under* 
 takes to show by a review of the facts and arguments 
 that the just conclusion is otherwise. He gives, how- 
 ever, no such proof; he contents himself with a state- 
 ment taken from the Memoires sur les Droits, published 
 by the French Government, in what manner the tax 
 upon rent and tithes is secured in many of the prin- 
 cipal countries of the Continent. He next considers 
 land-taxes, when taken in proportion to the produce 
 and not to the rent; and he shows clearly enough, 
 that these, though advanced by the farmer, are paid by 
 the landlord. Tithe and other such burthens, falling 
 under this description, are unequal because in different 
 lands and different situations, the produce, and conse- 
 quently the tax, bears a different proportion to the 
 rent. Taxes on the rent of houses, he clearly shows, 
 must fall indifferently on' all the sources of revenue, 
 
254 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 rent, profit, and wages, the house itself yielding no 
 revenue, and by its use and wear resembling a con- 
 sumable commodity. As nothing is a better test of a 
 person's whole expenses than the house he lives in, a 
 house tax is recommended by the first maxim, and it 
 suits well enough with the other three. The ground- 
 rent and not the rent payable for profits of building 
 should be the subject of this tax, because that would 
 not raise house-rent, and it would fall heaviest on the 
 capital and larger houses, which can best afford to pay 
 it. As revenue from houses is received without exert- 
 ing any labour, and with little care either of superin- 
 tendence or collection, it is a better subject of taxation 
 than land-rents 
 
 2. A tax upon the profits of stock must either fall 
 upon the part of the profits which goes to pay the 
 interest of the stock, or the price paid for the stock, or 
 it must fall on the surplus profit over what the interest 
 amounts to. The former revenue belongs to the owner 
 of the stock, the latter being a compensation, generally 
 a very moderate compensation, for the trouble and risk 
 of employing the stock. He cannot pay this himself, 
 for if he did he must run the risk and take the trouble 
 for inadequate reward. Therefore he lays it upon the 
 price of his goods if a trader, or deducts it from the 
 rent if a farmer, or he must take it from the interest, 
 if he does not either raise his prices or lower his rent. 
 Now the interest, though it seems to be, like rent, a 
 fit subject of taxation, is really not so, for two reasons: 
 it is impossible to get at profits of trade as you do at 
 rent, and it is easy to remove stock in trade, while land 
 is not removable. The result has been, that where 
 attempts have been made to tax profits, the State has 
 had recourse to some vague and inaccurate estimate, 
 and has been always content with a very moderate 
 proportion, answering to a very low valuation. Thus 
 our land-tax, though intended to tax all profits, falls 
 mainly on the country and on houses in the towns. 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 255 
 
 In Holland and in Hamburgh, where stock was taxed, 
 the inhabitants were allowed to assess themselves that 
 an inquisition might be avoided. Had Dr. Smith lived 
 to our days, he would have found some reason to be 
 confirmed in his opinion of the land paying far more 
 than its share, owing to its being irremovable and un- 
 concealable ; but he would also have seen how con- 
 siderable an approximation to equal payment could be 
 made by inquisitorial proceedings, and well-constructed 
 machinery. Taxes laid on particular trades must fall 
 on the consumer, as the dealer will not remain in a 
 business which does not yield the average rate of pro- 
 fit. A tax on all profits of one trade, but proportioned 
 to each dealer's trade, finally falls on the consumer; 
 if not so proportioned it falls on the consumer, but 
 favours great and oppresses small dealers. The shop- 
 tax once proposed had this disadvantage in a great 
 degree; for all shops must have paid. The personal 
 tattle in France was a tax upon farmers' profits, and as 
 a farmer paying rent never can withhold his crop from 
 the market in order to raise his prices, he can only 
 throw the taille on the landlord by lowering his rent. 
 The tax being levied according to the farmer's stock, 
 made every one stock his farm as badly as possible, 
 and endeavour to conceal the stock he had. Poll-taxes 
 in countries having slaves, are taxes on profits. Poll- 
 taxes on free men are of a wholly different nature, and 
 are the most unequal of all. Taxes on household ser- 
 vants are taxes on consumption, and they are objec- 
 tionable because servants are not employed in propor- 
 tion to the income of their masters; then these taxes 
 fall heavier on the middle classes, and not at all on the 
 lower orders, unless so far as they may prevent some 
 from finding employment. 
 
 An Appendix on this head discusses Taxes on 
 Capital, which have not generally been intended to 
 be levied by any State ; all the imposts of this kind 
 being meant to affect income only. But when property 
 
256 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 changes hands by death, then both the Komans in 
 Augustus' time, the Dutch, the English, and all feudal 
 countries, in taxing the casualties, intentionally levied 
 imposts upon capital. The feudal perquisites on alien- 
 ation operated when property was sold. Stamp duties 
 on purchases have with us the same operation. Taxes 
 on succession fall on the owner ; taxes on sale fall on 
 the seller, because he is the needy person and must 
 pay. The Spanish Alcavala seems to be of this class, 
 though Dr. Smith does not here consider it. All taxes 
 on capital are unthrifty, because they diminish the fund 
 for employing labour and machinery, or increasing pro- 
 duction. Living upon the principal, is accordingly a 
 common expression to denote the usual spendthrift 
 course. 
 
 It must be observed that Dr. Smith in this, as in 
 other parts of his work, leaves out of view one impor- 
 tant circumstance when speaking of capitalists, and also 
 of labourers, shifting their stock or their labour to new 
 channels of employment when a burthen is laid on 
 them, or any other demand is made which tends to 
 lower their gains. They very often linger on a long 
 time, perhaps all their lives, in order to avoid the dis- 
 agreeable consequences of the change ; and because 
 they have become expert in one employment and could 
 not soon be equally so in another. What they would 
 pay to avoid a risk or a disagreeable change of em- 
 ployment or business, may fairly be reckoned the dif- 
 ference of the two in value to them, according to an 
 argument often used by Dr. Smith, and this price they 
 pay for continuing in their former business or occupa- 
 tion. It is also to be observed that Dr. Smith, when 
 he speaks of the tax often being thrown on the con- 
 sumer, forgets the important consideration that the 
 power of so throwing it depends on the condition of 
 the market. When the demand is rising, or even sta- 
 tionary if steady, the tax may be thrown on the con- 
 sumer ; when the market is falling, or is fluctuating, 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 257 
 
 the trader is unable so to throw it, and he must either 
 pay it himself or quit the trade. 
 
 3. Taxes on wages must be paid by the rise of wages 
 a good deal higher than the tax ; the tax is not even ad- 
 vanced in the first instance by the labourer, but by his 
 employer, who must lay it on goods, or deduct it, if a 
 farmer, from rent. Hence the consumer or the land- 
 lord must always pay such taxes. The French taille 
 was charged on labourers as well as farmers, and pro- 
 duced great evils. In Bohemia artificers paid a tax of 
 ten pounds a year in the highest class, and so down to 
 two pounds ten shillings in the lowest. The emoluments 
 of office-bearers if so taxed do not fall under the same 
 rule, as the competition is not open. The tax on these 
 falls on the officer. 
 
 4. The taxes intended to fall on all the three, funds, 
 rent, profits and wages, indiscriminately, are capita- 
 tion taxes, and those on consumable commodities. 
 
 (1.) Poll-taxes are utterly unjust if they be not ap- 
 portioned to fortune ; even then a great injustice must 
 take place, and a yearly inquisition is necessary, as a 
 man's fortune is constantly varying. If they are, as 
 our poll-tax of William III.'s time, laid on rank, they 
 are manifestly unequal. In France the poll-tax was 
 laid on the higher orders by a tariff according to rank ; 
 on the lower and middle classes it was levied according 
 to property, and subjected the people to a severe in- 
 quisition. In so far as the taxes fall on the lower 
 orders they are levied on wages, and liable to the ob- 
 jections stated to those imposts. The difficulties of a 
 poll-tax being applied to expenditure or income gave 
 rise to the taxes on consumable commodities. 
 
 (2.) These commodities are either necessaries or 
 luxuries. Taxes on the former would be perfectly un- 
 equal if their incidence was ultimately what it is in- 
 tended to be in the first instance ; but they are really 
 taxes on labour, and must fall on the employer, not on 
 the workman, the employer laying them on the land- 
 
258 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 lord or the consumer. Those on luxuries are not so 
 transferred, even those on the luxuries of the poor. 
 Thus the duties on beer and tobacco do not raise wages, 
 nor materially diminish the power of bringing up a 
 family ; nor do they necessarily raise the price of any 
 except the taxed commodities. The taxes on the four 
 necessaries, salt, leather, soap and candles, affect in 
 some small degree the wages of labour ; however, the 
 salt-tax, now repealed (somewhat hastily, by the efforts 
 of party,) pressed so very lightly that its loss has been 
 pretty generally lamented, and it certainly yielded to 
 the clamour against its disproportion to the price of 
 the article, and its requiring so many persons to collect 
 it. Dr. Smith, however, condemns much more strongly 
 two other measures which operate as taxes on the mere 
 necessaries of life, and yield no revenue ; the bounty 
 on exportation of corn, and the protecting duties on 
 the importation of that and meat. But he considers 
 these as clearly tending to raise the price of labour, 
 and consequently regards their repeal as sure to lower 
 wages ; so that the advocates of that repeal are pre- 
 vented from quoting his authority because they always 
 deny this tendency of the measure, or at least have 
 always denied it since the working-classes hearing the 
 arguments originally advanced for the repeal, from its 
 being expected to lower wages, plainly indicated their 
 aversion to the change. Dr. Smith shows that in other 
 countries a high direct tax is imposed on flour, and even 
 on bread, instancing Holland, where it was supposed 
 to make the money price of bread double in the towns ; 
 the country inhabitants paying a poll-tax in lieu of it. 
 The taxes on luxuries fall pretty equally on the whole 
 people, according to their consumption. The great 
 bulk of them is paid by the inferior and most numer- 
 ous classes, but no rise of wages being caused by this 
 payment, the burthen remains where it first falls. Dr. 
 Smith strongly recommends the repeal of beer-taxes, 
 and substituting malt-taxes instead ; this has since been 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 259 
 
 so far effected that beer is no longer directly taxed. 
 But these taxes especially, on the upper classes, do not 
 fall in proportion to income, for they are proportioned 
 to expenditure only, which varies much more in the 
 higher classes than in the middle and lower ranks. 
 Absentees, too, pay no such taxes, and accordingly Dr. 
 Smith is an advocate for absentee taxes, giving Ireland 
 as an example of the effects of persons being non- 
 resident on their estates, and wholly forgetting that an 
 Irish family residing in England contributes to the re- 
 venue by which Ireland is governed and defended, as 
 much as a Scotch family living in London does to the 
 government and defence of Scotland ; or a Yorkshire 
 family to that of Yorkshire. He shows, however, very 
 clearly that all taxes upon consumable commodities sin 
 against the fourth maxim ; they keep and take more 
 from the people than almost any others, creating a 
 number of excise and customs officers, by raising prices 
 and discouraging consumption, by vexatious prosecu- 
 tions for smuggling, and by vexatious visits of officers. 
 He here discusses the alcavala, or tax on sales of all 
 kinds, in Spain, at first of ten and even fourteen per 
 cent., and afterwards of six per cent., and a similar tax 
 of three per cent, on all contracts in the Spanish king- 
 dom of Naples. He institutes an interesting compari- 
 son between the old system of taxation in France, and 
 that of England, giving the clear advantage to the 
 latter. 
 
 Upon the whole it must be admitted, that the long 
 chapter on taxation, (one of the longest, having 153 
 pages), though from the variety of the facts brought 
 together, it is exceedingly entertaining, is less instruc- 
 tive than any other part of the ' Wealth of Nations ;' 
 because the principles are not very fully and carefully 
 discussed, because the whole operation of the different 
 taxes described is not accurately traced, and because, 
 therefore, the important point of their ultimate inci- 
 dence is not accurately and satisfactorily pursued and 
 
260 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 explained. Some of the most important taxes are 
 very slightly touched upon, and the subject of an 
 income-tax is very imperfectly handled. The doctrine 
 of the Economists of a single tax, impot fonciere, being 
 substituted for all others, is rather indirectly treated 
 than fully and authoritatively exposed, while so great 
 an error claimed ample refutation ; and the manifest 
 fairness as well as advantage of so distributing taxes, 
 as to give every variety to them, and thus to make 
 their ultimate incidence as universal as possible, and 
 yet as far as possible proportionate to the means of 
 payment, is not at all dwelt upon, hardly touched. 
 
 iii. In the early stages of society and of government, 
 the Sovereign always making provision for extraor- 
 dinary occurrences, used to amass out of his annual 
 income, either accruing from property or obtained by 
 taxes, savings which formed a treasure in course of 
 time. Even as far down as the early part of the 
 eighteenth century, the Prussian treasure enabled 
 Frederic II. to carry on successful wars almost as 
 much as the disciplined army, to which he succeeded 
 from his father. But in our times extraordinary emer- 
 gencies are met by borrowing ; and all Governments 
 are more or less in debt, many of them heavily in- 
 debted. It is much easier for the Government of a 
 commercial country to raise loans than for any other, 
 because capitalists are ever to be found able and 
 willing to advance money on the public security. For 
 the most part these loans have at first been personal, 
 that is, on the general credit of the Government; 
 afterwards when that was exhausted, the lenders re- 
 quired security, and branches of the public revenue 
 were mortgaged for repayment of the loans. The 
 unfunded debt of this country belongs to the former 
 class, the funded to the latter. The convenience of 
 raising supplies by loan is obvious ; but its mischievous 
 consequences are as manifest, and they very far coun- 
 terbalance its advantages. Were all supplies required 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 20)1 
 
 for a war to be raised by taxes within the year, or 
 were this the general rule, then would the reluctance 
 to engage in war, and the readiness to make peace 
 after the war had been begun, be incalculably increased 
 and universally diffused ; and a loan might always be 
 resorted to as an exception to the rule when public 
 feelings were directed against continuing a war abso- 
 lutely necessary for the honour, that is, for the ex- 
 istence of the State. These I place as synonymous 
 ideas, because no war, however short, can ever be 
 beneficial on a calculation of profit and loss ; and thus 
 only those wars are justifiable on sound policy which 
 are required by the necessity of averting national 
 disgrace, and are entered into for the national inde- 
 pendence, placed in imminent peril by submitting to 
 insult, as a man's whole fortune is by consenting to 
 pay money under a threat, or submitting to any other 
 extortion. But for this consideration no one would 
 defend an action, or sue a debtor for a small sum of 
 money, even if his adversary admitted himself to be 
 in the wrong. 
 
 The payment, or the escape from the payment of 
 debts, forms an important subject of consideration in 
 this discussion. Generally speaking, the latter course 
 has been taken when the burthen became heavy. The 
 most common expedient, the most hurtful, and the 
 most disgraceful, has been tampering with the coin. 
 This has been done in two ways, one by raising its 
 denomination, making, for instance, every pound be 
 called two pounds ; the other, by debasing it with alloy: 
 and these two expedients differ only in the form, 
 the one being an act of open violence, the other an act 
 of secret fraud ; but both have the effect of cheating 
 all creditors, not only those of the State, but those of 
 private debtors, to the amount of the difference between 
 the two nominal values in the one case, and the two 
 real values in the other. Most countries have had 
 recourse to one or both of these expedients, and it is 
 
262 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 of ancient origin ; for the Romans had first by one 
 and then by the other expedient, before the end of the 
 second Punic war, made the coin worth nominally 
 two-and-twenty times more than it originally was. 
 
 Incited by a view of the dangers of taxation, perpe- 
 tuated by public debts, Dr. Smith strongly recommends 
 the increase of such taxes as are most according to prin- 
 ciple, and fall in with the four general maxims already 
 stated; but above all, he recommends in what he admits 
 to be a kind of " New Utopia," but not more useless and 
 chimerical than the " old one," a general union of the 
 whole empire, by giving both Ireland and all the colo- 
 nies representatives, and thus making all parts of our 
 dominion contribute to a fund for paying off the debt 
 which was contracted for the government, and the de- 
 fence of them all. This plan with its details, closes the 
 work. The recommendation as regards Ireland has 
 been successfully adopted and carried into execution. 
 It was soon made clear by the events of the American 
 war that no such incorporation of the distant provinces 
 could be effected. Mr. Burke, in a speech on conci- 
 liation with America, adverted to such a plan and said, 
 "A great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit 
 natura. I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the 
 creation."* No representative Government ever can 
 be maintained, when the delegate and his constituents 
 live on the opposite shores of the Atlantic. 
 
 Having now finished the analytical view of this great 
 work, the opinion may, in conclusion, be expressed, 
 which all men are now agreed in entertaining of its 
 prodigious merits. It may truly be said to have 
 founded the science of Political Economy, as it exists 
 in its new and greatly improved form. Many preced- 
 ing authors had treated different branches of the sub- 
 
 * Works, iiL 91. 
 
WEALTH OF NATIONS. 263 
 
 ject; some, as we have seen in the introduction to 
 this Life, had, before Dr. Smith's time, treated several 
 of those branches upon the sound and rational prin- 
 ciples which he applied to economical questions. 
 Systematic treatises were not wanting which professed 
 to embrace the whole as a science ; and of these the 
 most extensive and most valuable was Sir James 
 Stewart's. But the ' Wealth of Nations' combines both 
 the sound and enlightened views which had distin- 
 guished the detached pieces of the French and Italian 
 Economists, and above all, of Mr. Hume, with the 
 great merit of embracing the whole subject, thus bring- 
 ing the general scope of the principles into view, illus- 
 trating all the parts of the inquiry by their combined 
 relations, and confirming their soundness in each in- 
 stance by their application to the others. The copi- 
 ousness of the illustrations keeps pace with the close- 
 ness of the reasoning; and wherever the received 
 prejudices of lawgivers are to be overcome, or popular 
 errors to be encountered, the arguments, and the facts, 
 and the explanations are judiciously given with extra- 
 ordinary fulness, the author wisely disregarding all 
 imputations of prolixity or repetition, in pursuit of the 
 gre^ end of making himself understood, and gaining 
 the victory over error. The chapter on the Mercantile 
 System is an example of this ; but the errors of that 
 widely prevailing theory and its deeply-rooted preju- 
 dices are also encountered occasionally in almost every 
 other part of the work. 
 
 It is a lesser, but a very important merit, that the 
 style of the writing is truly admirable. There is not 
 a book of better English to be any where found. The 
 language is simple, clear, often homely like the illus- 
 trations, not seldom idiomatic, always perfectly adapted 
 to the subject handled. Beside its other, perfections, 
 it is one of the most entertaining of books. There is no 
 laying it down after you begin to read. You are 
 drawn on from page to page by the strong current of 
 
2iI4 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 the arguments, the manly sense of the remarks, the 
 fulness and force of the illustrations, the thickly strewed 
 and happily selected facts. Nor can it ever escape 
 observation, that the facts, far from being a mere bede- 
 roll of details unconnected with principle and with 
 each other, derive all their interest from forming parts 
 of a whole, and reflecting the general views which they 
 are intended to exemplify or to support. 
 
 This admirable work has received the aid of several 
 learned and able commentators, of whom Professor 
 Macculloch is, beyond all question, the first in this 
 country, and M. de Gamier abroad. The edition of 
 the former is a book of great value, and like his excel- 
 lent treatise on Political Economy in the 'Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica,' ought to be in the hands of every 
 one who would study this science with success.* 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. ECONOMISTS AND DE. SMITH. 
 
 THE two leading opinions which divide political inquirers 
 upon the sources of national wealth, are those of the Econo- 
 mists and of Dr. Smith. We purpose here to exhibit a 
 concise view of the objections to which both of these doc- 
 trines are eminently liable. As the general principle of a 
 distinction between productive and unproductive labour is 
 recognized by Dr. Smith, as we conceive his theory to be 
 extremely inconsistent with itself, and consider it to be an 
 imperfect approximation to that of the Economists, we shall 
 begin with a short examination of the principle on which it 
 depends. That eminent writer divides labourers into two 
 classes: those who, by adding to the value of some raw 
 material, or by assisting in the increase of their quantity, 
 realize or fix in a vendible commodity the effects of their 
 
 * The editions of Dr. Smith's works referred to in this Life are, ' Moral 
 Sentiments,' London, 1792, and 'Wealth of Nations,' London, 18U2; 
 being the seventh of the former, and the tenth of the latter. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 265 
 
 exertions ; and those whose labour leaves nothing in exis- 
 tence after the moment of exertion, but perishes in the act 
 of performance. The former he denominates productive, the 
 latter unproductive labourers ; not meaning thereby to un- 
 dervalue the exertions of many useful kinds of work per- 
 formed by the unproductive order, but merely asserting 
 that they do not augment the wealth of the community. 
 Thus, the work of the farm-servant, or manufacturing 
 labourer, is fixed in a useful commodity ; the work of a 
 menial servant perishes with the motion of his hands, and 
 adds to the value of nothing. A man grows rich by em- 
 ploying a number of the former ; he ruins himself by keep- 
 ing a multitude of the latter. 
 
 To begin with this illustration. The case of the menial 
 servant must not be compared with that of the labourer em- 
 ployed in farming or manufactures. The menial is em- 
 ployed by the consumer, and for his own use exclusively; 
 the farm-servant and journeyman are employed by another 
 party, by whom the consumer is supplied. The former is, 
 properly speaking, in the predicament of a commodity 
 bought or hired for consumption or use ; the latter rather 
 resembles a tool bought or hired for working withal. But, 
 at any rate, there is no such difference as Dr. Smith sup- 
 poses between the effects of maintaining a multitude of 
 these several kinds of workmen. It is the extravagant 
 quantity, not the peculiar quality of the labour thus paid 
 for, that brings on ruin. A man is ruined if he keeps more 
 servants than he can afford or employ, and does not let 
 them out for hire, exactly as he is ruined by purchasing 
 more food than he can consume, or by employing more 
 workmen in any branch of manufactures than his business 
 requires, or his profits will pay. 
 
 But it may be observed, in general, that there is no solid 
 distinction between the effective powers of the two classes 
 whom Dr. Smith denominates productive and unproductive 
 labourers. The end of all labour is to augment the wealth 
 of the community ; that is to say, the fund from which the 
 members of that community derive their subsistence, their 
 comforts and enjoyments. To confine the definition of 
 wealth to mere subsistence is absurd. Those who argue 
 thus admit butcher's meat and manufactured liquors to be 
 
266 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 subsistence ; yet neither of them are necessary ; for if all 
 comfort and enjoyment be kept out of view, vegetables and 
 water would suffice for the support of life ; and by this 
 mode of reasoning the epithet of productive would be limited 
 to the sort of employment that raises the species of food 
 which each climate and soil is fitted to yield in greatest 
 abundance, with the least labour ; to the culture of maize 
 in some countries ; of rice in others ; of potatoes, or yams, 
 or the bread-fruit tree in others . and in no country would 
 any variation of employment whatever be consistent with 
 the definition. According to this view of the question, 
 therefore, the menial servant, the judge, the soldier and the 
 buffoon, are to be ranked in the same class with the hus- 
 bandman and manfacturers of every civilised community. 
 The produce of the labour is, in all these cases, calculated 
 to supply either the necessities, the comforts, or the luxur- 
 ies of society ; and that nation has more real wealth than 
 another, which possesses more of all those commodities. If 
 this is not admitted, then we can compare the two countries 
 only in respect of their relative shares of articles indispen- 
 sably requisite, and produced in greatest abundance, con- 
 sidering the soil and climate of each : and, as nothing which 
 is not necessary is to be reckoned valuable, a nation wal- 
 lowing in all manner of comforts and enjoyments is to be 
 deemed no richer than a horde fed upon the smallest portion 
 of the cheapest grain, or roots and water, which is sufficient 
 to support human life. 
 
 But it is maintained that, admitting the wealth of a com- 
 munity to be augmented by the labour of those whom Dr. 
 Smith denominates unproductive, still they are in a different 
 predicament from the productive class, inasmuch as they do 
 not augment the exchangeable value of any separate por- 
 tions of the society's stock neither increasing the quantity 
 of that stock, nor adding to the value of what formerlv 
 existed. To this, however, it may be replied that it ap- 
 pears of very little consequence whether the wants of the 
 community are supplied directly by men, or mediately by 
 men with the intervention of matter whether we receive 
 certain benefits and conveniences from those men at once, 
 or only in the form of inanimate and disposable substances. 
 Dr. Smith would admit that labour to be productive which 
 
ADAM SMITH. 267 
 
 realized itself in a stock, though that stock were destined to 
 perish the next instant. If a player or musician, instead 
 of charming our ears, were to produce something which, 
 when applied to our senses, would give us pleasure for a 
 single moment of time, then* labour would be called produc- 
 tive, although the produce were to perish in the very act of 
 employment. Wherein, then, lies the difference ? Merely 
 in this that we must consume the one produce at a cer- 
 tain time and place, and may use the other in a latitude 
 somewhat, though but little, more extensive. This differ- 
 ence, however, disappears altogether, when we reflect that 
 the labour would still be reckoned productive which should 
 give us a tangible equivalent, though it could not be car- 
 ried from the spot of its production, and could last only a 
 second in our hands upon that spot. The musician, in 
 reality, affects our senses by modulating the air ; i. e., he 
 works upon the air, and renders a certain portion of it worth 
 more than it was before he manufactured it. He com- 
 municates this value to it only for a moment, and in one 
 place ; there and then we are obliged to consume it. A 
 glassblower, again, prepares some metal for our amusement 
 or instruction, and blows it up to a great volume. He has 
 now fixed his labour to a tangible commodity. He then ex- 
 changes it, or gives it to us, that we may immediately use 
 it ; i. e., blow it until it flies to shivers. He has fixed his 
 labour, however, we say, in a vendible commodity. But we 
 may desire his farther assistance we may require him to 
 use it for our benefit ; and, without any pause in his pro- 
 cess of blowing, he bursts it. This case approaches as nearly 
 as possible to that of the musician ; yet Dr. Smith main- 
 tains that the latter is a different kind of labour from the 
 former. Nay, according to him, the labour of the glass- 
 blower is productive, if he spoils the process, and defeats 
 the end of the experiment, by pausing, and giving into un- 
 skilful hands the bubble before it bursts. But if he per- 
 forms the whole of that instructive operation, by contem- 
 plating which Sir Isaac Newton was taught the nature of 
 colour, his labour must be denominated unproductive ! 
 
 But it is not fair to deny that the class called unproduc- 
 tive fixes its labour in some existing commodity. First, 
 we may observe that no labour, not even that of the far- 
 
268 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 mer, can lay claim to the quality of actually adding to the 
 stock already in existence: man never creates; he only 
 modifies the mass of matter previously in his possession. 
 But, next, the class alluded to does actually, like the class 
 termed unproductive, realize its labour in an additional value 
 conferred upon the stock formerly existing. The only 
 difference is, that instead of working upon detached por- 
 tions, this class operates upon the stock of the community 
 in general. Thus, the soldier renders every portion of the 
 stock more valuable by securing the whole from plunder ; 
 and the judge, by securing the whole from injury. Dr. 
 Smith would allow that man to be a productive labourer 
 who should manufacture bolts and bars for the defence of 
 property. Is not he also, then, a productive labourer, who 
 protects property in the mass, and adds to every portion of 
 it the quality of being secure ? In like manner, those who 
 increase the enjoyments of society, add a value to the stock 
 previously existing ; they furnish new equivalents for which 
 it may be exchanged ; they render the stock worth more, i.e., 
 exchangeable for more capable of commanding more enjoy- 
 ments than it formerly could command. The stock of the 
 community is either that part which is consumed by the 
 producer, or that part which he exchanges for some object 
 of desire. Were there nothing for which to exchange the 
 latter portion, it would soon cease to be produced. Hence 
 the labour that augments the sum of the enjoyments and 
 objects of desire for which this portion may be exchanged, 
 is indirectly beneficial to production. But if this portion 
 destined to be exchanged, is already in existence, the labour 
 which is supported by it, and which returns an equivalent 
 to the former owner by the new enjoyments that it yields 
 him, must be allowed to add a value directly to the ex- 
 changeable part of the stock. 
 
 It appears peculiarly inconsistent in Dr. Smith to deny 
 that labour can add to value by its general operation on the 
 stock of the community, and on the fund of equivalents, 
 when we find him frequently reckoning things by other 
 than physical means, measuring them by other standards 
 than actual bulk and quantity nay, counting their price 
 in money when no money can be exchanged for them. He 
 approaches often nearer than any assignable distance to the 
 
ADAM SMITH. 269 
 
 doctrines which I have been explaining. Thus he more 
 than once, but particularly in the inquiry concerning taxa- 
 tion (Book vi. chap. 2), when mentioning the trouble or 
 annoyance which certain things occasion, says they may be 
 estimated at the sum any one would willingly give to be 
 rid of them, and he considers the impost which is levied by 
 means so vexatious as increased in its amount by that sum. 
 Why not consider the sum also which any one would give 
 to secure his property from the risk of an invasion, or of 
 pillage in a riot, as increasing the value of that property ? 
 Now the obtaining this security is the service which Go- 
 vernment renders to the owner of the property by defence 
 and police ; it is the service for which their wages are paid 
 to soldiers, and magistrates, and police officers. Can we 
 then, on Dr. Smith's own view, deny the additions made to 
 the stock of the community by these labourers, or refuse to 
 their labour the name of productive ? 
 
 In every point of view, therefore, it appears that the 
 opinion of Dr. Smith is untenable. He has drawn his line 
 of distinction between productive and unproductive labour 
 in too low a part of the scale. The labour which he deno- 
 minates unproductive has the very same qualities with a 
 great part of the labour which he allows to be productive. 
 According to his own principles, the line should have been 
 drawn so as to cut off, on the one hand, the labour which 
 apparently increases the quantity of stock, and to leave, on 
 the other hand, all that labour which only modifies, or in 
 some manner induces a beneficial change upon stock already 
 in existence. In a word, his principles clearly carry him to 
 the theory of the Economists ; and, in order to be consistent, 
 he ought unquestionably to have reckoned agriculture the 
 only productive employment of capital or labour. That 
 there is only this one doctrine tenable, in consistency with 
 itself, has been, we conceive, sufficiently proved. We shall 
 now consider whether there is in reality any foundation 
 even for this distinction, which forms the basis of the theory 
 supported by the Economists. 
 
 Whoever has honoured the foregoing observations with 
 his attention, will speedily be satisfied that the reasonings 
 applied to Dr. Smith's classification of labour are applicable 
 also to the more precise and constituent doctrine of the 
 
270 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 followers of Quesnay. It is the opinion of these ingenious 
 metaphysicians that the labour bestowed upon the earth 
 can alone be considered as really productive ; that all other 
 labour only varies the position or the form of capital, 
 but that agriculture increases its net amount. That the 
 merchant who transports goods from the spot of their abun- 
 dance to the quarter where they are wanted adds nothing 
 to the whole stock or to the value of the portions which he 
 circulates, these reasoners deem almost a self-evident propo- 
 sition. That the manufacturer who fashions raw materials 
 into useful commodities increases their value, the Econo- 
 mists indeed admit, but they deny that any further addi- 
 tion is thus made to the value of the materials than the 
 value of the workman's maintenance while employed in the 
 manufacture. 
 
 It seems obvious, at first sight, to remark, that, according 
 to their own principles, these theorists have committed one 
 error. They have ranged all labour, except that of the 
 husbandman, in the same class ; while they have virtually 
 acknowledged that as great a difference subsists between the 
 two members of that division, as between either of them 
 and the other division. For surely, the merchant, who 
 adds, according to them, no value to any material, is as much 
 to be distinguished from the manufacturer who does add the 
 value of his maintenance to the raw produce, as the manu- 
 facturer is to be distinguished from the husbandman, whose 
 labour returns a net profit over and above the price of his 
 maintenance. This criticism is almost decisive, in a dis- 
 cussion which, it must be admitted on all hands, resolves 
 into a question of classification. But the error of the 
 Economists is still more fundamental. 
 
 There is no essential difference between the powers of 
 man over matter, in agriculture, and in other employments, 
 It is a vulgar error to suppose that, in the operations of 
 husbandry, any portion is added to the stock of matter for- 
 merly in existence. The farmer works up the raw material, 
 t. e., the manure, soil, and seed, into grain, by means of 
 heat, moisture, and the vegetative powers of nature, in 
 whatever these may consist. The manufacturer works up 
 his raw material by means of certain other powers of nature. 
 Dr. Smith, however, who states the doctrine of the Econo- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 271 
 
 mists in its greatest latitude, (Chap. V., Book II., Vol. II., 
 p. 52, Svo. edition), asserts, that, in agriculture, nature 
 works with man, and that the rent is the wages of her 
 labour; but that, in manufactures, man does everything. 
 But does not nature work with man in manufactures as 
 well as in agriculture ? If she works with him in forming 
 a handful of seed into a sheaf of flax, does she not also work 
 with him in fashioning this useless sheaf into a garment ? 
 Why draw a line between the two effects, when a person 
 can no more clothe himself with an utftorought sheaf of the 
 produce than with an unsown handful of the seed. Why 
 draw a line between the two operations, when the workman 
 can no more change the sheaf into a garment without the 
 aid of those powers which we denominate nature, cohesion, 
 divisibility, heat, and moisture, than the farmer can convert 
 the seed into a sheaf, without the vegetative powers of heat, 
 moisture, and cohesion ? If, instead of flax, we suppose the 
 sheaf to be of barley, the analogy will be still more apparent. 
 The brewer or distiller is certainly a productive labourer ; 
 yet the changes which he effects are as little the direct 
 work of his hands, as the multiplication of the seed in the 
 field. The conversion of that substance into an intoxicating 
 beverage, is the work of nature, as well as its growth in the 
 harvest ; and fermentation is as great a mystery as vege- 
 tation. If the rent of land, again, may be called the wages 
 of nature, in agricultural operations, the net profits of 
 manufacturing stock may be termed her wages in our 
 operations upon raw produce ; meaning, by net profits, that 
 part of the gross profit which remains after paying the 
 labourer who works, and him who superintends ; that is, 
 after deducting wages, and the profit received by a man 
 trading on borrowed capital ; for we must always keep in 
 view a consideration, the omission of which we will venture 
 to assert, has misled almost all political inquirers, that the 
 rent of land is, properly speaking, the net profit of stock 
 advanced by the landlord, and that everything which the 
 farmer receives, over and above the wages of his labour, is 
 the profit of another stock, which may be borrowed as well 
 as the land ; and in this case his whole profit resolves into 
 wages the case of a trader having no capital whatever. 
 In both cases there is a clear gain ; in both it is obtained 
 
272 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 in the same way ; in both distributed among the same 
 classes. 
 
 Let us, however, take an example or two, for the purpose 
 of comparing more closely the productive with the unpro- 
 ductive kinds of labour. The person who makes a plough 
 is, according to the Economists, an unproductive labourer, 
 but he who drives it is a productive labourer. In what pre- 
 dicament, then, is the labourer who makes a hedge round a 
 field for its protection, or a ditch for draining it ? This 
 operation, because it is called farm-work, is admitted by the 
 Economists to be productive. But wherein does it differ 
 from the plough manufacture ? Both are alike subservient 
 and necessary to the operations of ploughing and reaping ; 
 both are alike performed by persons who do not raise the 
 produce that feeds them ; and both are alike performed 
 upon some materials produced from the earth by other 
 labour. If the plough were made in a bungling manner by 
 farm-servants in the out-houses of the farm, we imagine the 
 manufacture would of necessity fall under the head of pro- 
 ductive labour, as well as the work of hedging and ditching. 
 Again Capital employed by the corn-merchant in collect- 
 ing and circulating grain, is most unproductively employed, 
 according to the Economists. But the capital employed in 
 collecting seed in a barn, carrying it from thence to the 
 field, and returning the crop at harvest, is employed in the 
 most productive manner possible. Can it be maintained 
 that there is any difference whatever between these two 
 cases, necessarily placed by the theory of the Economists 
 at the opposite extremes of their scale ? If the corn- 
 merchant lived on the ground of the farmer, and if the 
 farmer, from this convenient circumstance, were enabled to 
 sell all his grain without having any barns or granaries, 
 certain of supplying himself at his own door next seed-time, 
 the Economist would be forced to allow that the capital of 
 the corn merchant, in so far as it assisted the farmer, was 
 productively employed. Wherein lies the difference ? 
 And these observations are applicable to every case of every 
 manufacture, aud every species of commerce whatever. 
 They apply to those kinds of employment which are sub- 
 servient to the purposes of comfort and enjoyment, as well 
 as to those which administer to our necessary wants; for 
 
ADAM SMITH. 273 
 
 we showed above, that there is no possibility of drawing a 
 line between the cases, consistently with principles admitted 
 even by the Economists themselves. The foundation of all 
 these misapprehensions is evidently laid in a neglect of the 
 great principle of the division of labour. In whatever part 
 of a community the labour connected with agriculture, 
 immediately or remotely, is performed, the subdivision of 
 the task renders it more productive than if it were carried 
 on upon the farm itself; and, to deny the same properties 
 to this labour, on account of its subdivision and accumula- 
 tion in different quarters, is little less than a contradiction 
 in terms. 
 
 There is only one view of the Economical theory which 
 remains to be taken : it is that most ingenious argument by 
 which the followers of Quesnai attempt to prove, that manu- 
 facturing labour only adds a value equal to its own mainten- 
 ance. The above remarks may indeed suffice for the refuta- 
 tion of this doctrine, but its peculiar demonstration merits 
 separate attention.* The works of the artizaii, the Econo- 
 mists maintain, are in a very different predicament from the 
 produce of the agricultural labourer. Multiply the former 
 beyond a certain extent, and either a part will remain unsold, 
 or the whole will sell at a reduced price. Multiply the latter 
 to any extent, and still the same demand will exist, from the 
 increased number of consumers, whom it will maintain. The 
 labour of the artisan is therefore limited to a particular 
 quantity; this quantity it will always nearly equal, but 
 never exceed ; and the amount is determined by the com- 
 petition of different artists on the one hand, and the fixed 
 extent of the demand on the other. The labour of the 
 husbandman has no such limits. The extension of his pro- 
 ductions necessarily widens his market. The price of manu- 
 factures will therefore be reduced to the value of the raw 
 material, of the workman's maintenance, and of his master's 
 maintenance ; while that of agricultural produce, having no 
 such limit, leaves always a net profit over and above the 
 farmer's maintenance. 
 
 In answer to this very subtle argument, we may remark, 
 that it proceeds on a total misconception of the principle of 
 
 * See this reasoning stated repeatedly in Dialogue 2de, Physiocratie, 
 p. 571. 
 
 T 
 
274 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 population. It is absurd to suppose that the mere augmen- 
 tation of agricultural produce extends the demand for it, by 
 increasing the population of the community. If the lowest 
 means only of subsistence are considered, and if men will 
 be contented to possess only the simplest food, without any 
 raiment, then, no doubt, an increase of grain and roots may 
 increase the numbers of the consumers. But is it not evi- 
 dent that men require more than the mere necessaries of life, 
 and that even those necessaries are in part the production 
 of manufacturing labour ? Does not a person in forming 
 his estimate of a competency, take into the account articles 
 of manufacture as well as husbandry, furniture, clothes, and 
 even luxuries gratifications as well as meat and drink? 
 The mere augmentation of those simple necessaries will 
 never sensibly increase the number of the consumers, any 
 more than the mere augmentation of articles of comfort and 
 luxury. An increase in the production of the one class of 
 commodities will operate exactly as powerfully on popula- 
 tion, as an increase in the production of the other class. In 
 fact, an increase of either may somewhat affect the numbers 
 of the consumers ; but in order to produce any considerable 
 augmentation of those numbers, the increase of both species 
 of produce must go on together. This argument, then, only 
 leads us by a new, and certainly an unexpected road, to an 
 additional conclusion in favour of the theory that utterly 
 denies all distinction between any of the applications of 
 capital and industry, which are subservient to the wants 
 and enjoyments of man. 
 
 The reasoning in which we have been engaged, will pro- 
 bably be deemed sufficient to authorize several positive in- 
 ferences with respect to the nature and sources of national 
 wealth. We trust that enough has been said to expose the 
 inaccuracy of drawing any line between the different channels 
 in which capital and labour may be employed of separating, 
 with Dr. Smith and his followers, the operations of agricul- 
 ture, manufactures, and commerce, from those arts where 
 nothing tangible is produced or exchanged or of placing, 
 with the Economists, the division somewhat higher, and 
 limiting the denomination of productive to agricultural em- 
 ployment alone. It may safely be concluded, that all those 
 occupations which tend to. supply the necessary wants, or 
 
ADAM SMITH. 275 
 
 to multiply the comforts and pleasures of human life, are 
 equally productive in the strict sense of the word, and 
 tend to augment the mass of human riches, meaning, by 
 riches, all those things which are necessary, or convenient, 
 or delightful to man. The progress of society has heen at- 
 tended with a complete separation of employments originally 
 united. At first, every man provided for his necessities as 
 well as his pleasures, and for all his wants as well as all his 
 enjoyments. By degrees, a division of those cares was in- 
 troduced : the subsistence of the community became the 
 province of one class, its comforts of another, and its grati- 
 fications of a third. The different operations subservient 
 to the attainment of each of these objects, were then in- 
 trusted to different hands ; and the universal establishment 
 of barter connected the whole of the divisions and subdi- 
 visions together ; enabled one man to manufacture for all, 
 without danger of starving by not ploughing or hunting ; 
 and another to plough or hunt for all, without the risk of 
 wanting tools and clothes by not manufacturing. It has 
 thus become as impossible to say exactly who feeds, clothes, 
 and entertains the community, as it would be impossible to 
 say which of the many workmen employed in the manufac- 
 ture of a pin is the actual pin-maker, or which of the farm- 
 servants produces the crop. All the branches of useful in- 
 dustry work together to the common end, as all the parts 
 of each branch co-operate to its particular object. If you 
 say that the farmer feeds the community, and produces all 
 the raw materials which the other classes work upon ; we 
 answer, that unless those other classes worked upon the raw 
 materials, and supplied the farmer's necessities, he would be 
 forced to allot part of his labour to this employment, while 
 he forced others to assist in raising the rude produce. In 
 such a complicated system, it is clear that all labour has the 
 same effect, and equally increases the whole mass of wealth. 
 Nor can any attempt be more vain than theirs who would 
 define the particular parts of the machine that produce the 
 motion, which is necessarily the result of the whole powers 
 combined, and depends on each one of the mutually con- 
 nected members. Yet so wedded have those theorists been 
 to the notion, that certain necessary kinds of employment 
 are absolutely unproductive, that a writer of no less name 
 
276 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 than Dr. Smith has not scrupled to rank the capital sunk 
 in the public debt, or spent in warfare, in the same class 
 with the property consumed by fire, and the labour destroyed 
 by pestilence. He ought surely to have reflected, that the 
 debts of a country are always contracted, and its wars en- 
 tered into, for some purpose either of security or aggran- 
 dizement ; and that stock thus employed must have pro- 
 duced an equivalent, which cannot be asserted of property 
 or population absolutely destroyed. This equivalent ma;y 
 have been greater or less ; that is, the money spent for use- 
 ful purposes may have been applied with more or less 
 prudence and frugality. Those purposes, too, may have 
 been more or less useful ; and a certain degree of waste and 
 extravagance always attends the operations of funding and 
 of war. But this must only be looked upon as an addition to 
 the necessary price at which the benefits in view are to be 
 bought. The food of a country, in like manner, may be 
 used with different degrees of economy ; and the necessity 
 of eating may be supplied at more or less cost. So long 
 as the love of war is a necessary evil in human nature, it is 
 absurd to denominate the expenses unproductive that are 
 incurred by defending a country ; or, which is the same 
 thing, preventing an invasion, by a judicious attack of an 
 enemy; or, which is also the same thing, avoiding the ne- 
 cessity of war by a prudent system of foreign policy. And 
 he who holds the labour of soldiers and sailors and diplo- 
 matic agents to be unproductive, commits precisely the 
 same error as he who should maintain that the labour of 
 the hedger is unproductive, because he only protects, and 
 does not rear the crop. All those kinds of labour and em- 
 ployments of stock, are parts of the system, and all are 
 equally productive of wealth.* 
 
 * See Book II. chap. III. ' Wealth of Nations.' (Vol. II., page 25, 8vo 
 edition.) The terms productive and unproductive are, in the argument of 
 some of the Economists, and in parts of Dr. Smith's reasonings, so quali- 
 fied, as to render the question a dispute about words, or at most about 
 arrangement. But this is not the case with many branches of both these 
 theories, and especially with the position examined in the text The 
 author actually remarks how much richer England would now be, had she 
 not waged such and such wars. So might we estimate how many more 
 coats we should have, had we always gone naked. The remarks here 
 stated, may with equal justice be applied to a circumstance in the Theory 
 
ADAM SMITH. 277 
 
 II. CAPITAL. 
 
 By capital, when used generally, we understand the whole 
 of the material world which man can appropriate, as well as 
 those talents, natural or acquired, which are the springs of 
 his exertions. In this sense of the word, it signifies all 
 property material and mental, or every thing valuable to 
 man. Among other things, it clearly comprehends land. 
 But sometimes we speak of capital, in opposition to land ; 
 and, in this case, it comprehends every thing valuable, except 
 the ground ; for it certainly includes all the parts and pro- 
 ductions of the soil which are severed from it. In this 
 sense, the division nearly resembles the legal distribution of 
 property into real and personal. Both these definitions of 
 capital are used repeatedly, and with equal frequency, by 
 every writer on political economy. 
 
 If capital is contradistinguished from land, the separation 
 is made by a most indefinite and obscure boundary. Canals, 
 roads and bridges, are as much a part of capital, as any por- 
 table machines, fashioned out of the produce or parts of the 
 soil. The same may be said of fences, drains, footways, and 
 in general of all the ostensible monuments of labour in an 
 improved farm. But is not the soil itself, also, referable 
 to the very same class, after it has been worked up with 
 manure and composts, so as to be highly fertilized ? Is not 
 the whole surface of an improved farm, therefore, to be con- 
 sidered as capital, rather than as land ? And when a person 
 buys a hundred acres of improved land, how can he say what 
 part of the price is paid for land, and what part for capital ? 
 We speak indeed of capital vested in land, and use the 
 phrase, until we actually think there is such a thing as 
 
 of the Balance of Trade. In stating the proportion of exports to imports, 
 it has justly been observed, that no notice can ever be taken, in Custom- 
 house accounts, of money remitted for subsidies, or for the payment of our 
 troops and fleets abroad. But it has very inaccurately been added, that 
 these sums are so much actually sent out of the country without an equi- 
 valent. In fact, the equivalent is great and obvious, although of a nature 
 which cannot be stated in figures among the imports. The equivalent is 
 all the success gained by our foreign warfare and foreign policy the 
 aggrandisement and security of the State, and the power of carrying on 
 that commerce, without which there would be neither exports nor imports 
 to calculate and compare. 
 
278 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 adding the capital to land ; whereas the whole meaning of 
 the expression is, that capital of one kind or other is given 
 in exchange for land, or that our property has become land, 
 instead of some other valuable commodity or, according 
 to what has just now been defined, that one kind of capital 
 has been exchanged for another. If it is said, that capital 
 is that in which labour has been fixed and realized, either 
 by accumulation or by change of form ; then, it is very 
 obvious, that land, in the most extensive sense of the word, 
 must become capital in order to be useful ; and that many 
 things, usually reckoned capital, as the wild produce which 
 is raised by nature without human assistance, belongs to 
 the class of land, and not to that of stock. But a difference 
 is established by some, especially by Dr. Smith, between 
 capital and the other parts of stock ; capital being, accord- 
 ing to them, that part which brings in a revenue. This 
 idea clearly appears, by the whole of the illustrations given 
 of it, to have arisen from the fundamental error of consider- 
 ing nothing as productive which does not yield a tangible 
 return, and of confounding use with exchange. For, may 
 not a man live upon his stock, that is, enjoy his capital, 
 without either diminishing or exchanging any part of it ? 
 In what does the value, and the real nature of stock reserved 
 for immediate consumption, differ from stock that yields 
 what Dr. Smith calls a revenue or profit ? Merely in this 
 that the former is wanted and used itself by the owner ; 
 the latter is not wanted by him, and therefore is exchanged 
 for something which he does want. There is surely no 
 other meaning in the idea of profit or revenue, but this : 
 and as the profit of that part of stock which is exchanged, 
 and which the adherents of this opinion denominate capital, 
 consists merely in the use of those things obtained in return 
 so, the profit of the other part of stock, the portion 
 reserved for consumption, is the use to which it is immedi- 
 ately subservient. According to Dr. Smith, there is some 
 difference between revenue and enjoyment ; and that part 
 of a man's property yields him no profit, which is most 
 useful and necessary to him, by which he can support and 
 enjoy life without the necessity of any operation of barter. 
 Labour, on the other hand, is so far different in the mode 
 of its subserviency to our enjoyments, that it can in no 
 
ADAM SMITH. 279 
 
 way be ranked in the same class, either with capital or with 
 land. Labour is applicable to both land and capital. It 
 is the means of rendering them useful, or of increasing their 
 utility. It is truly the origin and source of wealth ; but is, 
 in no sense of the word, wealth itself unless, indeed, we 
 conceive the pleasure of some kinds of exertion to be a use 
 of labour analogous to the enjoyment of riches. Wealth 
 may be said to be every thing from which man immediately 
 derives the supply of his wants and desires. Its component 
 parts are as various as those wants and desires, though it is, 
 no doubt, susceptible of various general divisions, liable to 
 no just exceptions in point of accuracy. Thus, it may be 
 ranged in the two classes of matter and mind, or property 
 and talents ; and property may be divided into animate and 
 inanimate, or the lifeless and the living, things over which 
 man has dominion. By a combination of those component 
 parts of wealth by the operation of talents on property, 
 and by a combination of the component parts of property 
 by the operation of living powers upon inert matter, man is 
 enabled to increase the whole of his possessions, and to aug- 
 ment the sum of his enjoyments. In by far the greater 
 number of instances, some exertion of labour is necessary 
 to profit by his possessions ; but this is not universally the 
 case, unless we go so far as to term that exertion labour, 
 which consists in the very act of enjoyment, or of use ; for 
 it would scarcely be correct, to consider the eating of wild 
 fruits on the tree as the labour paid for the acquisition of 
 them ; it is rather the enjoyment of them and has nothing 
 in it analogous to the previous exertion required to procure 
 similar fruits by culture, and which must be followed by the 
 same exertion in using them. 
 
 III. 
 
 I have now before me a number of Dr. Smith's Letters, 
 written when at Oxford, between the years 1740 and 1746, 
 to his mother : they are almost all upon mere family and 
 personal matters ; most of them indeed upon his linen and 
 other such necessaries, but all show his strong affection for 
 his parent. Writing 2d July, 1744, he says : 
 
 " I am quite inexcusable for not writing to you oftener. 
 I think of you every day, but always defer writing till the 
 
280 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 post is just going, and then sometimes business or com- 
 pany, but oftener laziness, hinders me. Tar water is a 
 remedy very much in vogue here at present for almost all 
 diseases. It has perfectly cured me of an inveterate scurvy 
 and shaking in the head. I wish you'd try it. I fancy it 
 might be of service to you." In another letter he says he 
 had had the scurvy and shaking as long as he remembered 
 anything, and that the tar water had not removed those 
 complaints. 
 
 29th November, 1743. " I am just recovered of a violent 
 fit of laziness, which has confined me to my elbow-chair 
 these three months." 
 
 It should seem as if his habitual absence had assumed a 
 marked form at that time. The description resembles that 
 of a hypochondriacal malady. He was then only twenty 
 years old. 
 
 I have likewise had access to some letters which he wrote 
 afterwards to Lord Hailes, and, through the kindness of 
 the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, to such of his letters as 
 are in the papers of David Hume. 
 
 The following letter to Lord Hailes, dated 5th March, 
 1769, gives the germ of some of his speculations, but it is 
 also curious as giving his very strong and very rash opinion 
 against the decision of the great Douglas Cause. 
 
 " MY LOBD, KIRKALDY, March 5, 1769. 
 
 " I should now be extremely obliged to your Lordship 
 if you would send me the papers you mentioned upon the 
 prices of provisions in former times. In order that the con- 
 veyance may be perfectly secure, if your Lordship will give 
 me leave, I shall send my own servant sometime this week 
 to receive them at your Lordship's house at Edinburgh. I 
 have not been able to get the papers in the cause of Lord 
 Galloway and Lord Morton. If your Lordship is possessed 
 of them it would likewise be a great obligation if you could 
 send me them. I shall return both as soon as possible. If 
 your Lordship will give me leave I shall transcribe the 
 MSS. papers; this, however, entirely depends upon your 
 Lordship. 
 
 " Since the last time I had the honour of writing to your 
 Lordship, I have read over with more care than before the 
 
ADAM SMITH. 281 
 
 Acts of James 1st, and compared them with your Lordship's 
 remarks. From these last I have received both much plea- 
 sure and much instruction. Your Lordship's remarks will, 
 I plainly see, be of much more use to me than, I am afraid, 
 mine will be to you. I have read law entirely with a view 
 to form some general notion of the great outlines of the 
 plan according to which justice has been administered in 
 different ages and nations ; and I have entered very little 
 into the detail of particulars of which I see your Lordship 
 is very much master. Your Lordship's particular facts will 
 be of great use to correct my general views ; but the latter 
 I fear will always be too vague and superficial to be of much 
 use to your Lordship. 
 
 " I have nothing to add to what your Lordship has ob- 
 served upon the Acts of James 1st. They are penned in 
 general in a much ruder and more inaccurate manner than 
 either the English statutes or French ordinances of the same 
 period ; and Scotland seems to have been, even during this 
 vigorous reign, as our historians represent it, in greater dis- 
 order than either France or England had been from the 
 time of the Danish and Norwegian incursions. The 5, 24, 
 56, and 85 statutes, seem all to attempt a remedy to one 
 and the same abuse. Travelling, from the disorders of the 
 country, must have been extremely dangerous, and conse- 
 quently very rare. Few people, therefore, could propose to 
 live by entertaining travellers; and consequently there 
 would be few or no inns. Travellers would be obliged to 
 have recourse to the hospitality of private families in the 
 same manner as in all other barbarous countries ; and being 
 in this situation real objects of compassion, private families 
 would think themselves obliged to receive them, even though 
 this hospitality was extremely oppressive. Strangers, says 
 Homer, are sacred persons, and under the protection of 
 Jupiter ; but no wise man would ever choose to send for a 
 stranger unless he was either a bard or a soothsayer. The 
 danger, too, of travelling either alone or with few attendants 
 made all men of any consequence carry along with them a 
 numerous suite of retainers, which rendered this hospitality 
 still more oppressive. Hence the orders to build hostellaries 
 in 24 and 85. And as many people had chosen to follow 
 the old fashion and to live rather at the expense of other 
 
282 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 people than at their own, hence the complaint of the keepers 
 of the hostellaries, and the order thereupon in Act 56. 
 
 " I cannot conclude this letter, though already too long, 
 without expressing to your Lordship my concern, and, still 
 more, my indignation at what has lately passed both at 
 London and at Edinburgh. I have often thought that the 
 Supreme Court of the United Kingdom very much re- 
 sembled a jury. The law Lords generally take upon them 
 to sum up the evidence, and to explain the law to the other 
 peers, who generally follow their opinion implicitly. Of the 
 two law Lords who upon this occasion instructed them, the 
 one has always run after the applause of the mob ; the other, 
 by far the most intelligent, has always shown the greatest 
 dread of popular odium, which, however, he has not been 
 able to avoid. His inclinations also have always been sus- 
 pected to favour one of the parties. He has upon this 
 occasion, I suspect, followed rather his fears and his in- 
 clinations than his judgment. I could say a great deal 
 more upon this subject to your Lordship, but I am afraid I 
 have already said too much. I would rather, for my own 
 part, have the solid reputation of your most respectable 
 President, though exposed to the insults of a brutal mob, 
 than all the vain and flimsy applause that has ever yet been 
 bestowed upon either or both the other two. I have the 
 honour to be, with the highest esteem and regard, 
 
 "My Lord, 
 " Your Lordship's most obliged 
 
 and obedient servant, 
 (Signed) "ADAM SMITH." 
 
 Another letter, dated a week later, gives what is evidently 
 the beginning of his speculations on the price of silver, and 
 adds as to the Douglas Cause 
 
 " If the rejoicings which I read of in the public papers in 
 different places on account of the Douglas Cause had no 
 more foundation than those which were said to have been in 
 this place, there has been very little joy upon the occasion. 
 There was here no sort of rejoicing of any kind, unless four 
 schoolboys having set up three candles upon the trone, by 
 way of an illumination, is to be considered as such." 
 
ADAM SMITH. 283 
 
 In one of his letters to Mr. Hume, from Toulouse, he 
 complains much of the dull life he led from not having 
 brought introductions to society. " The life (he says) which 
 I led at Glasgow was a pleasurable dissipated life in com- 
 parison of that which I lead here. I have begun to write a 
 book in order to pass away the time : you may believe I 
 have very little to do." This letter is dated 5th July, 
 1764, and the work was plainly the ' Wealth of Nations.' 
 The mention of it is interesting, as being the first we have 
 of his great undertaking. I need hardly add, that from his 
 habitual aversion to write letters, very few remain of his 
 compared with the correspondence of most distinguished 
 men. Afterwards he lived in all the society of Toulouse. 
 Here is another letter of a later date on Mr. Hume's quarrel 
 with Rousseau: 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, PARIS, July 6th, 1766. 
 
 " I am thoroughly convinced that Kousseau is as 
 great a rascal as you and as every man here believes him to 
 be ; yet let me beg of you not to think of publishing any 
 thing to the world upon the very great impertinence which 
 he has been guilty of to you. By refusing the pension 
 which you had the goodness to solicit for him with his own 
 consent, he may have thrown, by the baseness of his pro- 
 ceedings, some little ridicule upon you in the eyes of the 
 Court and the Ministry. Stand this ridicule ; expose his 
 brutal letter, but without giving it out of your own hand, 
 so that it may never be printed, and if you can, laugh at 
 yourself, and I shall pawn my life that before three weeks 
 are at an end, this little affair, which at present gives you 
 so much uneasiness, shall be understood to do you as much 
 honour as any thing that has ever happened to you. By 
 endeavouring to unmask before the public this hypocritical 
 pedant, you run the risk of disturbing the tranquillity of 
 your whole life. By letting him alone he cannot give you 
 a fortnight's uneasiness. To write against him is, you may 
 depend upon it, the very thing he wishes you to do. He is 
 in danger of falling into obscurity in England, and he hopes 
 to make himself considerable by provoking an illustrious 
 adversary. He will have a great party, the Church, the 
 Whigs, the Jacobites, the whole wise English nation, who 
 
284 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 will love to mortify a Scotchman, and to applaud a man 
 that has refused a pension from the King. It is not un- 
 likely, too, that they may pay him very well for having 
 refused it, and that even he may have had in view this 
 compensation. Your old friends here wish you not to write 
 the Baron d'Alembert, Madame Eiccoboni, Mademoiselle 
 Eiancourt, M. Turgot, &c., &c. M. Turgot, a friend every 
 way worthy of you, desired me to recommend this advice 
 to you in a particular manner, as his most earnest entreaty 
 and opinion. He and I are both afraid that you are sur- 
 rounded with evil counsellors, and that the advice of your 
 English literati, who are themselves accustomed to publish 
 all their little gossiping stories in newspapers, may have too 
 much influence upon you. Kemember me to Mr. Walpole, 
 and believe me to be, with the most sincere affection, 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 "ADAM SMITH." 
 
 " P.S. Make my apology to Miller for not having yet 
 answered his last very kind letter. I am preparing the 
 answer to it, which he will certainly receive by next post. 
 Remember me to Mrs. Miller. Do you ever see Mr. 
 Townshend ?" 
 
 After his return to Kirkaldy, and when engaged in his 
 great work he thus writes 
 
 " MY DEABEST FBIEKD, KIRKALDY, June 7th, 1767. 
 
 " The principal design of this letter is to recommend 
 to your particular attention the Count de Sarsfield, the best 
 and the most agreeable friend I had in France. Introduce 
 him, if you find it proper, to all the friends of your absent 
 friend, to Oswald and to Elliot in particular. I cannot 
 express to you how anxious I am that his stay in London 
 should be rendered agreeable to him. You know him, and 
 must know what a plain, worthy, honourable man he is. I 
 have enclosed a letter for him, which you may either send 
 to him, or rather, if the weighty affairs of state will permit 
 it, deliver it to him yourself. The letter to Dr. Morton 
 you may send by the penny post. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 285 
 
 " My business here is study, in which I have been very 
 deeply engaged for about a month past. My amusements 
 are long solitary walks by the sea side. You may judge how 
 I spend my time. I feel myself, however, extremely happy, 
 comfortable, and contented. I never was perhaps more so 
 in all my life. You will give me great comfort by writing 
 to me now and then, and by letting me know what is passing 
 among my friends at London. Eemember me to them all, 
 particularly to Mr. Adams's family and to Mrs. Montague. 
 
 " What has become of Rousseau ? Has he gone abroad, 
 because he cannot contrive to get himself sufficiently per- 
 secuted in Great Britain ? 
 
 " What is the meaning of the bargain that your Ministry 
 have made with the India Company ? They have not I see 
 prolonged their Charter, which is a good circumstance. 
 What are you going to do ?"* 
 
 Thinking it probable that the Dalkeith repositories might 
 contain some letters, the present Duke of Buccleugh was 
 kind enough, at my request, to make search, but none were 
 found. 
 
 I have much satisfaction in adding the following letter, 
 because it gives Dr. Smith's first impressions, which in this 
 case proved most just ones, of a person whose virtues and 
 amiable qualities were the theme of universal respect and 
 esteem during her whole life, the late Duchess of Buccleugh, 
 grandmother of the present Duke. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, DALKEITH HOUSE, September 18, 1767, 
 
 " Be so good as to convey the enclosed letter to the 
 Count de Sarsfield ; I have been much in the wrong for 
 having delayed so long to write both to him and you. 
 
 " There is a very amiable, modest, brave, worthy young 
 gentleman, who lives in the same house with you ; his name 
 is David Skeene. He and I are sisters' sons, but my regard 
 for him is much more founded upon his personal qualities 
 than upon the relation in which he stands to me. He acted 
 lately in a very gallant manner in America, of which he 
 never acquainted me himself, and of which I came to the 
 
 * Remainder of the letter obliterated. 
 
286 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 knowledge only within these few days. If you can be of 
 any service to him, you could not possibly do a more obliging 
 thing to me. The Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh have 
 been here now for almost a fortnight ; they begin to open 
 their house on Monday next, and I flatter myself will both 
 be very agreeable to the people of this country. I am not 
 sure that I have ever seen a more agreeable woman than 
 the Duchess. I am sorry that you are not here, because 
 I am sure you would be perfectly in love with her. I shall 
 probably be here some weeks ; I would wish, however, that 
 both you and the Count de Sarsfield would direct for me as 
 usual at Kirkaldy. I should be glad to know the true 
 history of Eousseau before and since he left England. 
 You may perfectly depend upon my never quoting you to 
 any living soul upon that subject. 
 
 " I ever am, dear Sir, 
 
 " Most faithfully yours, 
 
 "ADAM SMITH." 
 
 The following letter relates to his unhappy determination 
 of having all his papers destroyed. 
 
 " MY DEAB FRIEND, EDINBURGH, April 16th, 1773. 
 
 " As I have left the care of all my literary papers to 
 you, I must tell you that, except those which I carry along 
 with me, there are none worth the publishing but a frag- 
 ment of a great work, which contains a history of the As- 
 tronomical Systems that were successively in fashion down 
 to the time of Des Cartes. Whether that might not be 
 published as a fragment of an intended juvenile work I leave 
 entirely to your judgment, though I begin to suspect myself, 
 that there is more refinement than solidity in some parts of 
 it. This little work you will find in a thin folio paper 
 book, in my writing-desk in my book-room ; all the other 
 loose papers, which you will find either in that desk or 
 within the glass folding doors of a bureau, which stands in 
 my bed-room, together with about eighteen thin paper folio 
 books, which you will likewise find within the same glass 
 folding doors, I desire may be destroyed without any exa- 
 mination. Unless I die very suddenly, I shall take care 
 
ADAM SMITH. 287 
 
 that the papers I carry with me shall be carefully sent to 
 you. 
 
 " I ever am, my dear friend, 
 
 " Most faithfully yours, 
 
 "ADAM SMITH." 
 
 " To DAVID HUME, Esq., 
 
 of St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh." 
 
 " MY DEABEST FRIEND, KIRKALDY, August 22nd, 1776. 
 
 " I have this moment received your letter of the 15th 
 instant. You had, in order to save me the sum of one 
 penny sterling, sent it by the carrier instead of the post ; 
 and (if you have not mistaken the date) it has lain at his 
 quarters these eight days, and was, I presume, very likely 
 to lie there for ever. 
 
 " I shall be very happy to receive a copy of your Dia- 
 logues ; and, if I should happen to die before they are pub- 
 lished, I shall take care that my copy shall be as carefully 
 preserved as if I was to live a hundred years. With regard 
 to leaving me the property in case they are not published 
 within five years after your decease, you may do as you think 
 proper. I think, however, you should not menace Strahan 
 with the loss of any thing in case he does not publish your 
 Work within a certain time.* There is no probability of 
 his delaying it, and if any thing could make him delay it, 
 it would be a clause of this kind ; which would give him an 
 honourable pretence for doing so. It would then be said 
 that I had published, for the sake of an Establishment, not 
 from respect to the memory of my friend, what even a 
 Printer for the sake of the same emolument had not pub- 
 lished. That Strahan is sufficiently zealous you will see 
 by the enclosed letter, which I will beg the favour of you 
 to return to me, but by the post and not by the carrier. If 
 you will give me leave I will add a few lines to your account 
 of your own Life ; giving some account in my own name, 
 of your behaviour in this illness, if, contrary to my own 
 hopes, it should prove your last. Some conversations we. 
 
 * This refers to the passage of Mr. Hume's will, imposing a penalty in 
 case of not printing one of his posthumous works. See ' Life of Hume,' 
 vol. i. 
 
288 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 had lately together, particularly that concerning your want 
 of an excuse to make to Charon, the excuse you at last 
 thought of, and the very bad reception which Charon was 
 likely to give it, would, I imagine, make no disagreeable 
 part of the history. You have in a declining state of health, 
 under an exhausting disease, for more than two years to- 
 gether, now looked at the approach, or what you at least 
 believed to be the approach of Death with a steady cheer- 
 fulness such as very few men have been able to maintain 
 for a few hours, though otherwise in the most perfect health. 
 I shall likewise, if you will give me leave, correct the sheets 
 of the new edition of your Works, and shall take care that 
 it shall be published exactly according to your late cor- 
 rections. As I shall be at London this winter it will cost 
 me very little trouble. All this I have written upon the 
 supposition that the event of your disease should prove dif- 
 ferent from what I 'still hope it may do. For your spirits 
 are so good, the spirit of life is still so very strong in you, 
 and the progress of your disorder is so slow and gradual, 
 that I still hope it may take a turn. Even the cool and 
 steady Dr. Black, by a letter I received from him last week, 
 seems not to be averse to the same hopes. 
 
 " I hope I need not repeat to you, that I am ready to wait 
 on you whenever you wish to see me. Whenever you do so, 
 I hope you will not scruple to call on me. I beg to be re- 
 membered in the kindest and most respectful manner to your 
 Brother, ycur Sister, your Nephew, and all other Friends. 
 " I ever am, 
 
 " My dearest friend, 
 
 " Most affectionately yours, 
 
 " ADAM SMITH." 
 
 To JOHN HOME, OF NINEWELLS. 
 
 " DEAR SIB, DALKEITH HOUSE, August 31st, 1776. 
 
 " As the Duke proposes to stay here till Thursday next, 
 I may not have an opportunity of seeing you before you 
 return to Ninewells ; I, therefore, take this opportunity of 
 discharging you, and all others concerned, of the legacy 
 which you was so good as to think might, upon a certain 
 event, become due to me by your brother's will, but which, 
 
ADAM SMITH. 289 
 
 I think, would upon no event become so, viz., the legacy of 
 two hundred pounds sterling. I hereby therefore discharge 
 it for ever ; and least this discharge should be lost, I shall 
 be careful to mention it in a note at the bottom of my will. 
 I shall be glad to hear that you have received this letter, 
 and hope you will believe me to be, both on your brother's 
 account and your own, with great truth, most "affectionately, 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " ADAM SMITH. 
 
 " P.S. I do not hereby mean to discharge the other 
 legacy, viz., that of a copy of his works." 
 
 SIR, EDINBURGH, September 2nd, 1776. 
 
 " I was favoured with your's of Saturday, and I assure 
 you that, on perusing the destinations, I was more of 
 opinion than when 1 saw you, that the pecuniary part of it 
 was not altered by the codicil, and that it was intended for 
 you at all events ; that my brother knowing your liberal 
 way of thinking, laid on you something as an equivalent, 
 not imagining you would refuse a small gratuity from the 
 funds it was to come from, as a testimony of his friendship ; 
 'and though I must highly esteem the motives and manner, 
 I cannot agree to accept of your renunciation, but leave 
 you full master to dispose of it which way is most agree- 
 able to you. 
 
 " The copys of the Dialogues are finished, and of the 
 Life, and will be sent to Mr. Strahan to-morrow ; and I 
 will mention to him your intention of adding to the last 
 something to finish so valuable a life, and will leave you at 
 Liberty to look into the correction of the first, as it either 
 answers your leisure or ideas with regard to the composition, 
 or what effects you think it may have with regard to j r our- 
 self. The two copys intended for you will be left with my 
 sister, when you please to require them ; and the copy of 
 the new edition of his works you shall be sure to receive, 
 though you have no better title to that part than the other, 
 though much you have to the friendship and esteem of, 
 Dear Sir, him. who is most sincerely, 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " JOHN HOME." 
 
(290) 
 
 LAVOISIER. 
 
 IN the Lives of Black, Priestley, Watt, and Cavendish, 
 it has been necessary to mention the claims of Lavoisier, 
 first as a competitor with the great philosophers of the 
 age for the honour of their discoveries, yet as an in- 
 truder among them by his attempts to show that he had 
 himself, though unknown to them and ignorant of their 
 inquiries, made the same steps nearly at the same. time. 
 The history of that great man, which we are now to 
 consider, will enable us to perceive clearly the evidence 
 upon which the charge rests, both the proof of his having 
 preferred those claims, and the proof that they were 
 groundless. But it will also enable us to perceive how 
 vast his real merits were, and how much remained his 
 own of the discoveries which have built up the science 
 of modern chemistry, even after all those plumes have 
 been stript away that belonged to others. 
 
 It is a very great error to suppose that the truths of 
 philosophy are alone important to be learnt by its stu- 
 dents; that provided these truths are taught, it signifies 
 little when or by whom or by what steps they were dis- 
 covered. The history of science, of the stages by which 
 its advances have been made, of the relative merits by 
 which each of our teachers was successively made 
 famous, is of an importance far beyond its being sub- 
 servient to the gratification even of an enlightened 
 and learned curiosity. It is eminently calculated to 
 further the progress which it records; it conveys pecu- 
 liarly clear and discriminating ideas upon the doctrines 
 taught, and the proofs they rest on; it suggests new 
 inquiries, and encourages the prosecuting of new re- 
 
LAVOISIEK. 291 
 
 searches. It is, moreover, both a debt of gratitude to 
 our benefactors which we should be anxious to pay by 
 testifying our gratitude, and commemorating their 
 fame ; and the discharge of this duty has a direct ten- 
 dency to excite emulation, prompting to further labours 
 that may enlarge the bounds of science. Besides, the 
 history of scientific achievements is the history of the 
 human mind in its noblest exertions, of the human 
 race in its most exalted pursuits. But it is equally 
 clear that the whole value of this, as of every other 
 branch of history, depends upon the diligence with 
 which the facts are examined, the care and even the 
 skill with which their evidence is sifted, the impar- 
 tiality with which judgment is pronounced, and the 
 accuracy with which the record is finally made up. 
 The mere panegyric of eminent men, how elegantly 
 soever it may be composed, must remain wholly worth- 
 less, at the best, and is capable of being mischievous, 
 if it aims at praise without due discrimination, still 
 more if it awards to one man the eulogy which of right 
 belongs to another. Nothing can be more indispensable 
 to the execution of the important task undertaken by 
 the historian of science, than that he should most 
 carefully examine the share which each of its cultiva- 
 tors had in the successive changes it has undergone. 
 The greatest of these have ever felt how valuable such 
 titles are, and have shown the most singular anxiety 
 to compare and to adjust their relative claims. Of these 
 illustrious men I have known two, Black and Watt, 
 and I can safely say that when the question was raised 
 of priority in discovery among either their predecessors 
 or their cotemporaries, they were wont to be particular 
 and minute, even to what seemed superfluous care- 
 fulness, in assigning to each his just share, very far 
 more anxious in making this distribution than they 
 ever showed themselves to secure the admission of 
 their titles in their own case. By a singular injustice 
 of fortune these two philosophers have themselves 
 
292 LAVOISIER. 
 
 been treated with a more scanty measure of the like 
 justice than perhaps any of their cotemporary disco- 
 verers.* It is proposed to examine with the same 
 minuteness the particulars in M. Lavoisier's history, 
 upon which some controversy has at different times 
 arisen. 
 
 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born at Paris, 13th of 
 August, 1743, the son of an opulent family, his father 
 having been a fermier-general. No expense was spared 
 upon his education; and in the college of Mazarin, 
 where he studied, he gained many prizes for proficiency 
 in classical acquirements. It was, however, to the 
 sciences that he soon devoted himself, and first to the 
 severer ones, having made considerable proficiency 
 in the mathematics and astronomy under La Caille, in 
 whose observatory he studied upon leaving the col- 
 lege. He studied botany under Jussieu, and che- 
 mistry under Rouelle. As from his earliest years 
 he appears to have been wholly consecrated to scien- 
 tific pursuits, so no one ever entered upon his course 
 with a more fervid courage. The earliest of his 
 inquiries of which we have any knowledge was an 
 analysis of gypsum, presented to the Academy of 
 Sciences in 1765, and published in the collection of 
 'Memoires de divers Savans,' 1768. In 1764 a 
 prize had been proposed by M. de Sartine, the cele- 
 brated chief of the police of Paris, for the best method 
 of lighting a great town, so as to combine illumination 
 with economy, and with facility of service. After the 
 lapse of twelve months no dissertation had been pre- 
 sented which satisfied the conditions of the programme, 
 and the prize was doubled, being raised to 2000 livres; 
 and next year, 1766, the conditions remaining still 
 unsatisfied by the candidates, the prize was divided 
 
 *^ When any reference is made to the Eloges of the French Academy, 
 jvistice requires me to add that those of M. Arago form a most striking 
 exception. They are strictly historical, as well as philosophical. That of 
 Watt is a model. 
 
LAVOISIER. 293 
 
 among the three best, while a Memoir of great merit, 
 by M. Lavoisier, was honourably mentioned and or- 
 dered to be printed. The King, too, on M. de Sartine's 
 recommendation, directed a gold medal to be bestowed 
 upon the author, who was presented with it at the 
 public sitting of the Academy in April, 1766. In 
 1769 he obtained the place of a fermier-general, by a 
 kind of hereditary title ; and in 1771 he married 
 Marie-Anne Paulze, whose father likewise belonged 
 to the same financial class. In 1768 he had been 
 admitted a member of the Academy, at the early age 
 of twenty-five. His paper on the lapis specularis, 
 related to the composition of the great strata forming 
 the basin of Paris. 
 
 He appears for some years to have occupied himself 
 
 Erincipally with geological inquiries; he made minera- 
 Dgical journeys in various parts of France in company 
 with M. Guettard ; and he had collected materials for 
 an extensive work on the revolutions of the globe, when 
 the recent progress of another science gave a new 
 direction to his pursuits. His paper on gypsum con- 
 tains a number of experiments, which show it to be 
 a neutral salt, soluble in a great proportion of water, 
 and composed of sulphuric acid united to a calcareous 
 base. This and almost every other position in his 
 paper was well known before. M. Montigny had, in 
 the 'Memoirs of the Academy,' 1762, shown its solu- 
 bility, and M. MargraafF, in the * Berlin Memoirs,' as 
 far back as 1750, had proved both this and its compo- 
 sition, M. Lavoisier refers to these long-published 
 works in a note appended to his paper, but states that 
 he had not seen MargraafF 's till after his own was read 
 before the Academy. He also states that M. Baume 
 had published researches similar to his in a journal, 
 but that he was not aware of this till he had made 
 considerable progress with his paper. It is unfortu- 
 nate that this eminent person should have begun his 
 works with this kind of doubt hanging over his origi- 
 
294 LAVOISIER. 
 
 nality. Yet we may observe that his paper contains 
 an ingenious theory, explaining the phenomenon of 
 the formation of gypsum on the principles of ordinary 
 crystallization ; and that he has also ascertained the 
 proportion of water required for its solution more 
 accurately than had before been done ; that he gave a 
 systematic view of the whole subject. Qualis ab in- 
 cepto processerat. It is remarkable that all the dis- 
 tinguishing characters of his inquiries in after-times 
 should be found to mark this his first production. 
 We observe the same disputed originality in his ex- 
 periments, the same anticipation of his discoveries 
 by former inquirers, the same superiority of his pro- 
 cesses in point of accurate admeasurement, the same 
 inferiority of his experiments to his reasoning?, the 
 same happy generalization of facts observed by others, 
 the same turn for throwing doctrines and discoveries 
 not his own into one combined system. 
 
 The discoveries of Black had, long before M. Lavoi- 
 sier entered upon his scientific pursuits, directed the 
 attention of philosophers to the important subject of 
 gaseous bodies, to their production by the absorption 
 of heat, and to the combinations into which they enter 
 with other substances, so as to alter the nature of 
 these. The great doctrines of causticity and of latent 
 heat, with the existence of fixed air, and its evolution 
 in respiration, fermentation, and combustion, had been 
 established, and had formed a new era in chemical 
 science. Fixed air was discovered in 1754; latent 
 heat before 1763. Mr. Cavendish had prosecuted 
 these inquiries with success ; he had examined some 
 of the properties both of fixed air and of hydrogen ; 
 had determined their specific gravities, and had shown 
 that they are always the same from whatever sub- 
 stances they may be obtained. His experiments were 
 published in 1766. Soon after this time Dr. Priestley 
 began his brilliant course of discovery. A new scene 
 had been opened to philosophers; they were like 
 
LAVOISIER. 295 
 
 infants gazing on the material world, every object of 
 which is new to them, and whose whole existence is one 
 continued gratification of curiosity. Aware from former 
 discoveries that various kinds of air, each having its pe- 
 culiar properties, exist in nature, he was of course ever 
 expecting to meet with them; and, accordingly, he 
 soon found that the air of the atmosphere yields one 
 of these, which on a false theory he termed phlogisti- 
 cated, but which others have termed azote, being 
 incapable of supporting either animal life or flame. 
 These experiments of his were published in 1772. 
 
 Before proceeding further with the history of chemi- 
 cal discovery, it is necessary I should mention a serious 
 inconvenience thrown in the way of the accurate in- 
 quirer by the very extraordinary manner in which the 
 * Memoirs of the French Academy' have always been 
 published. The ' Philosophical Transactions' appear 
 most regularly in two, sometimes, though very rarely, 
 in three parts every year, and all the papers published 
 each year have been read before the Society during the 
 course of that year; nay, all the papers which form each 
 part have been read during the half-year immediately 
 preceding the publication of that part. It is far other- 
 wise with the French Academy's ' Memoirs ;' these 
 never are published in less than three, sometimes even 
 four years after the year to which they nominally relate. 
 Thus the volume for 1772 consists of two parts, one 
 of which was published in 1775, and the other in 1776. 
 But this would occasion a small inconvenience to the 
 inquirer into dates and facts, if it only indicated that 
 the work was constantly in arrear, and that the papers 
 purporting to be those of any given year, as 1772, were 
 not published till three or four years later. That, how- 
 ever, is by no means the case. It continually happens 
 that the papers classed as those of one year were in 
 reality read a year or two later. In earlier periods the 
 dates are often not given at which papers were read, 
 but from internal evidence we find when they were 
 
296 LAVOISIER. 
 
 read ; for in the volume for 1772, p. 12, we have M. 
 Lavoisier quoting a book published in January, 1773, 
 and describing an experiment made in August of that 
 year, (p. 598). So in the volume for 1770, we have 
 an account of an eclipse in April, 1771, and of experi- 
 ments made in autumn, 1771, (p. 621). In later 
 volumes the dates are more accurately given, though 
 sometimes they tend to bewilder us. Thus the volume 
 for 1776 was not published till 1778, and it contains 
 a paper of M. Lavoisier, printed in Sept. 1778, and read 
 23rd Nov., 1779. So the volume for 1776 contains 
 another paper of his, stated to have been printed in 
 Dec., 1777. In like manner the volume for 1774 was 
 published in 1778, and it contains a paper read 1774, 
 but relu 1777. And the volume for 1775 has a paper 
 read Easter, 1775, relu Aug., 1778. It is needless to 
 remark how very difficult this kind of confusion and 
 inaccuracy, wholly unaccountable, renders it to ascer- 
 tain the precise date at which any experiment was made, 
 or theory formed. We are in most cases left to mere 
 conjecture, being uncertain of anything but the time 
 of publication, and not always sure of that. 
 
 In the year 1768 M. Lavoisier began to occupy him- 
 self almost exclusively with chemical inquiries. Well 
 educated in the kindred branches of natural philosophy, 
 and fully conversant with all that was then known of 
 chemistry, ardent in the pursuit of scientific truth, filled 
 with a noble ambition to distinguish himself among its 
 students, careless of the various pursuits which men in 
 his circumstances find all-engrossing, he was also in 
 possession of ample wealth, and could both command 
 the aid of some and obtain the fellowship of others in 
 his researches, while the most costly apparatus, and the 
 most expensive experiments, were at all times within 
 his reach. He soon filled his house with the finest in- 
 struments, and opened it freely to all men of letters and 
 of science. In their company, and with the inestimable 
 advantage of their constant society, in which every 
 
LAVOISIER. 297 
 
 point was discussed and all difficulties encountered by 
 their lights as well as his own, he devoted the rest of 
 his praiseworthy life to his favourite science, repeating 
 the experiments of others, varying them with the 
 suggestions of his own mind, and, in some instances, 
 devising new ones which he successfully conducted. 
 We are now to consider the fruits of these glorious 
 labours. 
 
 In 1768 and 1769 he made a number of very labori- 
 ous and very accurate experiments, with the view of 
 ascertaining the correctness of an opinion long enter- 
 tained, and among others by Bonde and Margraaff, that 
 water may, by repeated distillations, be converted into 
 earth; and also of determining whether or not there was 
 any foundation for the opinion that water can, by re- 
 peated distillations, become so elastic and aeriform as 
 to escape through the pores of vessels : an opinion 
 entertained by Stahl, the celebrated author of the 
 phlogistic theory. M. Lavoisier satisfactorily dis- 
 proved both these positions, and showed that the earth 
 which had misled others was a portion of the vessels 
 used in performing the distillation. The account of 
 these experiments was given to the Academy in 
 1770, and published in 1773. It may give us some 
 idea of the pains with which they w^ere performed, 
 to state that one of the processes lasted a hundred 
 and one days. 
 
 In the year after these inquiries were carried on, 
 his attention appears to have been turned aside from 
 chemical studies, by the reports which he made to the 
 Academy upon the means of supplying Paris with water, 
 at an economical rate. A question having arisen be- 
 tween the Government and M. Parcieux, a learned 
 mechanical projector, on the comparative expense of 
 bringing the water of the rivulet Yvette by canal and 
 wheel engines, or by steam engine, M. Lavoisier ex- 
 amined the subject, and showed that the latter mode 
 was the most expensive. His Memoir appeared in the 
 
298 LAVOISIEE. 
 
 volume for 1771. In that year, however, he resumed 
 his chemical pursuits, and applied himself to the atten- 
 tive consideration of the calcination of metals. The 
 recent discoveries on the nature of gases by Black, 
 Cavendish, and Priestley, appear to have chiefly con- 
 tributed to his doubts upon the foundation of Stahl's 
 theory, Avhich considers the union of phlogiston, or the 
 matter of heat and light, with the basis of the metals, 
 as the cause of their lustre and ductility, and the evo- 
 lution of that substance as the cause of their becoming 
 earthy, or calces. M. Lavoisier examined the process 
 by which minium, or red lead, is reduced, that is, re- 
 sumes its metallic state, and he found that there was 
 always evolved a great quantity of air, which he ex- 
 amined and found to be fixed air, being, he expressly 
 says, the same that escapes in the effervescence of 
 alkalis and calcareous earth, and in the fermentation 
 of liquors. He then examined the converse operation 
 of calcination, and found it accompanied with an ab- 
 sorption of air, and that the weight of the metal had 
 increased by the whole weight of the air absorbed. 
 The inference which he drew was, that calcination is 
 caused by the union of air with the metal, and not by 
 the loss of any body, as phlogiston, combined with it. 
 These experiments and this theory he published at 
 the end of the year 1773, in a small volume entitled 
 ' Opuscules Physiques,' which describes very fully the 
 previous discoveries on gases and on heat, and con- 
 tains many ingenious discussions on the processes of 
 calcination and combustion. He had in the course of 
 that year read several Memoirs, on the subject of his 
 own experiments, to the Academy, and had shown 
 these experiments to several of its members. Nothing, 
 therefore, can be more incontestable than his claim to 
 the important step now made the cause of so many 
 others, that the calcination of metals is their uniting 
 with a gas become fixed and solid in their substance; 
 and a mortal blow was thus given to the theory of 
 
LAVOISIER. 299 
 
 StaH.* But it must be added that he was wholly 
 ignorant of the nature of the air absorbed. He seems 
 to have been deceived by the quantity of fixed air 
 which minium contains, and to have hastily supposed 
 this air to be the cause of calcination, without exam- 
 ining the air in which he performed the more useful 
 and converse experiment. 
 
 It is singular how very near M. Lavoisier came in 
 these inquiries to two discoveries of first-rate import- 
 ance. He could not have examined with any care the 
 residue of the air in which his calcinations were per- 
 formed, without discovering the composition of the 
 atmosphere ; nor could he have fully examined the air 
 given out in the reduction of calces to their reguline, 
 or metallic state, without discovering oxygen. It was 
 reserved for Dr. Priestley, two years later, to make 
 both these capital discoveries. 
 
 A similar remark arises upon the next inquiry of 
 any importance in which M. Lavoisier was engaged. 
 For we may pass over his experiments on the use of 
 alcohol in the analysis of mineral waters, as he admits 
 that the subject was familiar to chemists, having been 
 treated at length by Macquer. It may, however, be 
 observed in passing, that he claims as a discovery the 
 proposition that alcohol attacks salts differently when 
 mixed with different proportions of water; and also, 
 that nothing can be more crude than his notions of the 
 connections between the salts and the mineral king- 
 dom for a large portion of his Memoir is devoted to 
 prove that there can only be three mineral alkalis, 
 soda, calcareous earth, and what he calls the base of 
 Epsom salts, which is magnesia, and two mineral acids, 
 the vitriolic and muriatic. These propositions were as 
 wide of the truth as possible, and, apparently, were 
 
 * It is truly painful to find the determination of 'French writers never 
 to take the trouble of giving the names of foreigners with any accuracy. 
 Lavoisier always calls Stahl either Stalh or Sthal, and never once gives 
 his right name. 
 
300 LAVOISIER. 
 
 chiefly recommended to him by their showing that the 
 experiments with alcohol, which he had made with those 
 substances, exhausted the subject of mineral waters. 
 
 But the next important inquiry of this eminent 
 chemist related to the action of heat on the diamond, 
 or, as he very inaccurately termed it, the destruction 
 of the diamond by fire. These experiments were per- 
 formed with great care, and without any regard to 
 expense; to which purpose a public-spirited jeweller 
 also contributed largely. They were performed partly 
 by fire, partly by the great lens of Tschirnausen be- 
 longing to the Academy. The Memoir is in the volume 
 for 1772, Part II., published in 1776; but the experi- 
 ments were not all performed till late in 1773, and the 
 Memoir was probably read in 1774. It was found that 
 some carbonaceous effervescence (as he describes it) 
 could be observed when the heat applied was not very 
 strong, though a stronger heat dissipated the diamond 
 altogether if it was exposed to the air. Hence M. 
 Lavoisier inferred, that beside being a combustible 
 substance, as Newton had sagaciously imagined from 
 its optical qualities, and as Macquer had proved by 
 direct experiment, it is capable of conversion into 
 charcoal. But a more important fact was also ascer- 
 tained. M. Lavoisier examined the air in which the 
 evaporation, as he terms it, of the diamond was per- 
 formed, and he found that it precipitated lime from 
 lime water. Examining the lime thus thrown down 
 he found it to be chalk, and thence concluded most 
 justly that the air produced during the combustion of 
 the diamond was fixed air. This, however, is not his 
 enunciation of the proposition; he only says, that the 
 air in which the diamond had been evaporated had 
 acquired in part the properties of fixed air, or the air 
 which, he correctly says, comes from the effervescence 
 of alkalis and from fermentation, and which, he very 
 erroneously says, (following the mistake into which he 
 had fallen in his experiments on calcination) is the air 
 
LAVOISIER. 301 
 
 given out by metallic calces on their reduction to the 
 regnline state. Pie rests in doubt between the two 
 inferences from his experiments the one, that the 
 diamond evaporates into fixed air ; the other, that its 
 vapour changes atmospheric into fixed air. 
 
 Observing the analogy between the diamond and 
 combustible bodies, he exposed it to heat when sur- 
 rounded with fixed air, and atmospheric air was ex- 
 cluded. The evaporation went on, but much more 
 difficultly and slowly. The probability is that the air 
 was not entirely fixed air, else the diamond could not 
 have evaporated at all. 
 
 The production of fixed air by burning charcoal, 
 alcohol, ether, in close vessels had been long known ; 
 but M. Lavoisier carefully subjected charcoal to the 
 same process which he had made the diamond undergo, 
 and the result was nearly the same. 
 
 The conclusion at which he arrived from these ex- 
 periments, is marked by a caution truly philosophic, and 
 as well deserving our admiration, as the sagacity which 
 distinguished the conduct of the inquiry. "We should 
 never have expected," he says, " to find any relation 
 between charcoal and diamond, and it would be un- 
 reasonable to push this analogy too far ; it only exists 
 because both substances seem to be properly ranged 
 in the class of combustible bodies, and because they 
 are of all these bodies the most fixed when kept from 
 the contact of air." He adds, " It is far from being- 
 impossible that the blackish matter should come from 
 surrounding bodies, and not from the diamond itself." 
 
 It is needless to remark how very near he was, in 
 this inquiry, to making the discovery that diamond and 
 the pure carbonaceous matter are identical, and that 
 both form alike fixed air by their union with another 
 and a gaseous substance. Dr. Black had shown, nearly 
 twenty years before, that fixed air was the product of 
 the combustion of charcoal. Had M. Lavoisier per- 
 formed his experiments on that combustion with a little 
 
302 LAVOISIER. 
 
 more care, he would have made the discovery in 1773, 
 which he did a few years later ; and as he then was 
 occupied in considering the nature of the diamond, its 
 identity with carbon would not have escaped him as it 
 afterwards did when he first ascertained the composi- 
 tion of fixed air. 
 
 In 1773, M. Lavoisier made some very accurate 
 experiments upon the calcination of tin in close ves- 
 sels ; and he proved clearly that the whole air and metal 
 after calcination weighed exactly the same as before, 
 and that the metal had gained in weight exactly what 
 the air had lost. But he adds an inference which is 
 very remarkable on more accounts than one. It is that 
 the atmosphere is composed of two gases, one capable 
 of supporting life and flame, and of combining with 
 metals in their calcination, the other incapable of sup- 
 porting either life or flame, or of combining with metals. 
 Now here begins the blame imputable to this great 
 philosopher. His paper is said in his Memoir (p. 351,) 
 to have been read at Martinmas, 1774 ; and to have 
 been " relit" 10 May, 1777; he says, p. 366, that he 
 had received a letter from P. Beccaria, dated 12 Nov. 
 1774, but that his own Memoir was then drawn up, 
 and that an " Extract" of it had been read at the public 
 sitting in November. He does not state whether or 
 not the important doctrine above-mentioned, on the con- 
 stituent parts of the atmosphere, was contained in that 
 extract; nor how long before 10 May, 1777, it was 
 added to the paper. Moreover, he says nothing what- 
 ever of the communication made to him by Dr. Priest- 
 ley, in October, 1774, of his grand discovery of oxy- 
 gen. Nor does he mention that the same philosopher 
 had, in 1772, discovered the existence of azote in the 
 atmosphere, and received, from our Koyal Society, the 
 Copley medal the following year, on account of his 
 paper printed in the ' Philosophical Transactions for 
 1772.' It is wholly impossible to believe that the ex- 
 periments on tin could have given M. Lavoisier any 
 
LAVOISIER. 303 
 
 light on the constitution of the atmosphere, which he 
 had not derived from his similar experiments in 1770, 
 and 1771, upon the reduction of minium, and the cal- 
 cination of other metals. But the discoveries of Dr. 
 Priestley must have been known to him in 1774; and 
 what he gives as his conjectures derived from his own 
 experiments, were the discoveries of Dr. Priestley in 
 1772 and 1774. The knowledge of these discoveries 
 formed the only difference between the state of M. 
 Lavoisier's information, when he experimented upon 
 tin in 1773 and 1774, and when he experimented on 
 lead three years before. It is perfectly clear that until 
 the discoveries of Dr. Priestley, the chief of which, 
 we have positive evidence, was communicated to him 
 by the Doctor himself, he never had the least idea of 
 the air absorbed in calcination possessing any qualities 
 like those of oxygen gas, or had supposed that the air 
 evolved in the reduction of calcined metals, was of that 
 nature ; indeed, he distinctly stated it to be fixed air, 
 misled by the quantity of fixed air found in minium as 
 an impurity. He had made many experiments on calces 
 of metals, and he had never found any air to be con- 
 tained in them resembling oxygen. Until he heard of 
 Dr. Priestley's great experiment he never had thought 
 of obtaining oxygen gas from those bodies, nor ever 
 knew of the existence of that gas. 
 
 This is the plain inference from the history of his 
 inquiries, as far as we have now followed it. But as he 
 has himself, beside wrapping up the date of his theory 
 in the general terms already observed when he presented 
 his paper on tin, also laid positive claim to the disco- 
 very of oxygen in a subsequent Memoir, it becomes 
 necessary to examine the grounds of this pretension 
 more closely, and we shall find that this examination 
 entirely confirms the position already stated, namely, 
 his ignorance of oxygen, until the true discoverer made 
 him acquainted with it. 
 
 We shall first give the words in which he couches 
 
304 LAVOISIEK. 
 
 his claim. I quote from his l Elemens de Chimie.' 
 " Get air" (oxygen gas,) " nous avons decouvert pres- 
 qu'en meme terns, Dr. Priestley, M. Scheele et moi." 
 
 Now I begin this statement by observing, that as to 
 the precise time of Dr. Priestley's discovery there is no 
 doubt ; no " presqu'en meme terns ;" it was the first day 
 of August, 1774. Scheele, without knowing of his 
 discovery, made the same the year after, 1775. So far 
 then the statement of Lavoisier is incorrect; Priestley 
 and Scheele did not discover oxygen, " presqu'en 
 meme terns." But we must proceed, and shall first of 
 all examine in what way M. Lavoisier preferred his 
 claim. For that would have rested upon a foundation 
 somewhat more plausible had he brought it forward 
 early, and always adhered to the same statement. But 
 the reverse is the fact. 
 
 We must first remark that not a hint is dropped of 
 this claim, in the paper upon calcination originally 
 presented in 1774, and afterwards with additions in 
 1777. In 1775, at Easter, he read a paper on the nature 
 of calcination, which was " relu 8 August, 1778 ;" 
 with what additions is not stated. But the experiments 
 which it contains are of two classes ; the one set he 
 says were made above a year before, or in spring 1774, 
 and these throw no new light at all on the subject; 
 the others were made, he says, first in November, 
 1774, and more fully before other persons, in the fol- 
 lowing spring. These experiments show that the 
 oxygen of the atmosphere is absorbed in calcination ; 
 and this conclusion is stated ; but no claim whatever 
 is made to the discovery of oxygen gas, although if 
 discovered by him at all, it must have been in those 
 experiments. He only calls it " the most respirable 
 portion of the atmosphere." A most important admis- 
 sion is, however, made in a subsequent paper, 1782, 
 that the experiments in which he made this step, were 
 not those performed in 1774, but those performed in 
 February, 1775, (Vol. for 1782, p. 458). In 1776 he 
 
LAVOISIEK. 305 
 
 printed a Memoir on Nitrous Acid, in which ample 
 justice is done to Dr. Priestley's discoveries, and the 
 experiments recounted as made by M. Lavoisier, are 
 admitted to have all been Dr. Priestley's suggestions ; 
 he himself only claiming to have drawn more correct 
 inferences from them. Among these inferences, there 
 is only the one that nitrous acid consists of oxygen and 
 nitrous gas ; but no suspicion of its real composition, 
 afterwards discovered by Mr. Cavendish to be the 
 union of azote and oxygen, is even hinted at. It is 
 also material to note, that in this paper not a word is 
 said of the claim to having discovered oxygen. In 
 1777 a paper was printed by him on the combustion 
 of phosphorus with " air eminemment respirable," to 
 form phosphoric acid ; that air is said to be " by Dr. 
 Priestley termed dephlogisticated air," and still nothing 
 is said of the claim to its joint discovery ; but in p. 187 
 he speaks of the " experiences de Dr. Priestley et les 
 miennes," on precipitate per se. These experiments, 
 Ave are told by him, in the volume for 1775, (p. 520,) 
 were made in November, 1774. In 1778, he printed, 
 it is said, his Memoir on Acids. The date of pre- 
 sentation is given as September, 1778, but the reading- 
 is said to have been 23 November, 1779. In this 
 paper, (p. 536,) he speaks of " the pure air to which 
 Priestley gave the name of dephlogisticated, but which 
 he himself calls oxygen, as being the acidifying prin- 
 ciple." No mention is made of the base of nitrous 
 acid, or of his claim to the discovery of oxygen. In 
 1780, in another paper, he speaks of " vital air, which 
 Priestley improperly called dephlogisticated," (p. 336.) 
 In the volume for 1781 is a paper on Scheele's work; 
 and though Scheele's discovery of oxygen is mentioned, 
 no claim to a partnership is advanced. In the same 
 volume is the admirable paper on the constitution of 
 fixed air, to which he gives the name of carbonic acid, 
 but still no mention of having discovered oxygen. 
 Thus we find that, in at least eight several papers 
 x 
 
306 LAVOISIER. 
 
 which discuss the effects produced by the absorption 
 and the evolution of oxygen gas, printed between the 
 years 1772 and 1780, not the least hint is given of his 
 own claim, though in five of those papers he mentions 
 Priestley as having given it a nam'e ; and one would 
 therefore believe acknowledges him as the discoverer, 
 without claiming any partnership for himself. This 
 must be confessed to be a very strong circumstance, 
 according to all the rules of evidence and principles of 
 decision which men apply to the discussion and deter- 
 mination of claims in ordinary cases. 
 
 It was not till late in the year 1782, that this claim 
 for the first time appeared. In a paper read November 
 of that year, upon the means of increasing heat by the 
 use of oxygen, he says, (p. 458,) " Get air que M. 
 Priestley a decouvert a peu-pres en meme terns que 
 moi, et je crois meme avant moi ;" and reminds the 
 Academy that he had announced this inquiry at Easter, 
 1775, as having been conducted with M. Trudaine in 
 Montigny's laboratory some months before. Now, in 
 the Memoir already cited, he distinctly informs us that 
 these experiments were not made till February, 1775; 
 therefore, it is to this period that he refers his supposed 
 discovery, and not to any part, however late, of 1774. 
 It must a^so be borne in mind, that, for the reason 
 formerly stated respecting the irregular publication of 
 the Memoirs, and the inserting in one year the papers 
 read long after, in many cases, without noting the date 
 of their presentation, it becomes impossible to be cer- 
 tain of the time at which many of them were actually 
 read. But I have always assumed that M. Lavoisier's 
 were read at the times stated by him ; and where no 
 date is given I have supposed this paper to have been 
 read in the year to which the volume refers a suppo- 
 sition manifestly favourable, and often gratuitously 
 favourable to his case. 
 
 We have thus seen the suspicious manner in which, 
 after suffering to pass over at least eight occasions on 
 
LAVOISIER. 307 
 
 which he might naturally have brought forward the 
 claim, he at length makes it at an interval of ten years ; 
 but he makes it with an important admission, that 
 Priestley's discovery had been before his own. Yet 
 strange to tell, when he repeats the assertion of 
 "presguen meme terns" in his 'Elemens de Chimie,' 
 he entirely omits this statement of " et meme je crois 
 avant moi." Let us now observe what Dr. Priestley 
 himself states, first remarking that he comes before us 
 without the least unfavourable impression attached to 
 his testimony, while M. Lavoisier's is subject to the 
 weight of the observation already made, and arising 
 entirely from his own conduct. Dr. Priestley, more- 
 over, was a person of the most scrupulous veracity, 
 and wholly incapable of giving any false colouring to 
 the facts which he related respecting his discoveries. 
 Indeed, no man ever showed less vanity respecting his 
 extraordinary services to science. He even frankly 
 and honestly, in the prefaces to his Essays, disclaims 
 much merit that all men would allow him ; and fairly 
 tells how many of the great things which he had done 
 were the suggestions of hazard, and not found out by 
 any preconceived plan for making the discovery. No 
 one, therefore, can possibly be cited whose authority 
 is more unimpeachable in weighing the facts of such a 
 case. The following are his own words in a work 
 published by him, in 1800, upon phlogiston. " The 
 case was this. Having made the discovery (of oxygen) 
 some time before I was in Paris, in the year 1774, I 
 mentioned it at the table of M. Lavoisier, when most 
 of the philosophical people of the city were present, 
 saying, that it was a kind of air in which a candle 
 burnt much better than in common air, but I had not 
 then given it any name. At this all the company, and 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lavoisier as much as any, expressed 
 great surprise. I told them I had gotten it from 
 precipitate per se, and also from red lead. Speaking 
 French very imperfectly, and being little acquainted 
 
308 LAVOISIER. 
 
 with the terms of chemistry, I said plombe rouge, which 
 was not understood till Mr. Macquer said I must mean 
 minium. M. Scheele's discovery was certainly inde- 
 pendent of mine, though, I believe, not made quite so 
 early." 
 
 It is very important here to remark that M. Lavoisier's 
 surprise was expressed at finding that minium had 
 yielded this new air by reduction. He himself had 
 made the experiment with minium, as we have seen, 
 and only could detect fixed air as the produce ; whence 
 his erroneous inference that a metallic calx is composed 
 of the metal united with fixed air. It was not till six 
 months after this discovery of Dr. Priestley, and full 
 four months after his expression of surprise, that he 
 made the experiments which he many years afterwards 
 thought it not unbecoming to affirm, had led him to the 
 discovery about the same time with Priestley. I will 
 venture to assert that no one, however little conversant 
 with the rules of probability, or accustomed to weigh 
 testimony, can hesitate a moment in drawing the con- 
 clusion, that M. Lavoisier never at any time made this 
 discovery ; that he intruded himself into the history of 
 it, knowing that Priestley was its sole author ; and that, 
 in all likelihood, he covered over to himself this un- 
 worthy proceeding, so lamentable in the conduct of a 
 truly great man, by the notion that he differed with 
 Priestley in his theory of the gas the one conceiving 
 it to be a peculiar air deprived of phlogiston, and cap- 
 able of taking it from inflammable bodies ; the other 
 holding it to be air which unites to inflammable bodies, 
 and precipitates its heat and light in forming the union. 
 But all must admit that the air was a newly discovered 
 substance, a gas wholly different from all other gases 
 formerly known ; and that therefore, whatever might 
 be the theory, the question of fact regarded the bring- 
 ing this new substance to light. No self-deception, 
 therefore, can vindicate M. Lavoisier for either the 
 statement in his Memoir, suppressing all mention of 
 
LAVOISIEE. 309 
 
 Dr. Priestley's communication, or the still more repre- 
 hensible statement in his * Elements,' suppressing the 
 hesitating confession of Priestley's priority. With re- 
 spect to Scheele the case is wholly different. What 
 Priestley had discovered in 1774, he discovered the 
 year following, without being aware that he had been 
 anticipated. His process, too, was wholly different 
 from Priestley's, whereas Lavoisier's was the very same. 
 Of these great men, then, Priestley made the discovery 
 in 1774, Scheele in 1775, Lavoisier neither in 1774 nor 
 in 1775, nor ever except by receiving the information 
 from " the true and first discoverer thereof, which, at 
 the time, others did not use."* 
 
 There can be no doubt whatever that it was the dis- 
 covery of oxygen gas which suggested to M. Lavoisier 
 his theory of combustion. He had previously made 
 the important step of explaining the calcination of 
 metals, so far, at least, as showing that it was the 
 union of the metals with the air absorbed, though he 
 was wholly mistaken as to the air which they gave out 
 on reduction, and had a most imperfect notion of the 
 change which their calcination produced on the air in 
 which the process took place ; but now he was enabled, 
 by Dr. Priestley's discovery, to show that the air ab- 
 sorbed i& oxygen gas ; while Dr. Black's great doctrine 
 of heat, which he also called to his assistance, enabled 
 him to perceive that the gas, on becoming fixed, parted 
 with its latent heat, and assumed a solid form. A 
 felicitous idea of Macquer's, which M. Lavoisier cites. 
 ('Mem.,' 1777, p. 572,) that calcination is only a slow 
 combustion, may have given rise to his theory of this 
 operation; but he had also, in his experiments on 
 phosphorus and sulphur, shown the absorption of oxy- 
 gen by those bodies in burning ; and as the doctrine 
 of Dr. Black showed how much heat was evolved on 
 a gaseous body becoming fixed and solid, we may 
 
 * Words of our Patent Act, 21 James I. 
 
310 LAVOISIER. 
 
 suppose that these experiments, which he laid before 
 the Academy in the spring of 1777,* led him to his 
 general theory. This theory is well known. It con- 
 sists in supposing that all combustion, like all calcin- 
 ation, is produced by the union of oxygen with the 
 body burnt or calcined ; and that the gas which, in 
 calcination, only gives out its heat and light slowly 
 and imperceptibly, unless when this operation is per- 
 formed very rapidly, in combustion gives out that heat 
 quickly and sensibly. Thus the doctrine is, that, by 
 applying heat to a combustible body, we so far over- 
 come the attraction of cohesion as to make the particles 
 enter into a union with those of the gas, which gives 
 out its latent heat and light, thus causing the flame 
 that marks and distinguishes the process. Calcination, 
 too, may be produced so quickly, that the process is 
 attended with red heat, and even with flame. Iron 
 burns with a bright whitish and sometimes a bluish 
 flame, gold with a duller and more lambent flame of a 
 greenish colour. 
 
 The product of the combustion, slow or quick, was 
 next attentively considered by M. Lavoisier. In the 
 case of metals it was their calces, or as he denominated 
 them from the process of oxygenation, oxides. In the 
 case of sulphur he had found it to be vitriolic acid ; in 
 the case of phosphorus phosphoric ; nitrous gas, which 
 he erroneously supposed the base of nitrous acid, 
 formed that acid by its union with oxygen. The 
 nature of fixed air, too, was no longer a matter of 
 doubt. Dr. Black had shown, as early as 1757, 
 
 * In his Memoir on Phlogiston in the volume for 1783, he speaks of 
 his theory of combustion as having been "published in 1777." If by 
 " published" he means read at the Academy, this may be correct, for it 
 appears to have been read 5 Sept., 1777, but the volume was not published 
 till 1780. In the same volume we find internal evidence that the other 
 papers referred to in the text were read in the opening of that year ; thus, 
 one of them read in May refers to experiments about to be performed in 
 company with M. Trudaine and M. Montigny, the former of whom died 
 in August, 1777. 
 
LAVOISIER. 311 
 
 that the combustion of charcoal produced it. M. 
 Lavoisier, in 1777, satisfied himself by his experiments 
 on pyrophorus formed by heating alum and carbon- 
 aceous matter together, that the union of carbonaceous 
 matter with oxygen gas produces fixed air. It is true 
 he did not complete this important inference till 1781, 
 when he showed by decisive experiments that charcoal 
 contains, beside inflammable air, water, and other im- 
 purities, a matter purely carbonaceous, and which he 
 afterwards termed carbon, which, by its union with 
 oxygen, forms fixed air, thence called by him carbonic 
 acid. But the knowledge that the something contained 
 in charcoal uniting itself with oxygen gas forms fixed 
 air, and that this fixed air is an acid, had been obtained 
 by Dr. Black, M. Lavoisier, and M. Macquer before 
 1777. On these facts he now reasoned as well as on 
 the composition of the acid of sugar, which, with other 
 vegetable acids, he considered as containing oxygen. 
 He then made his famous generalization that oxygen 
 is the acidifying principle, and from thence he gave it 
 the name. Dr. Priestley had shown its absorption by 
 the lungs in respiration ; and thus we had the general 
 proposition established, as M. Lavoisier supposed, that 
 oxygen gas is necessary to combustion, calcination, 
 acidification, respiration, possibly to the animal heat 
 thence arising, and certainly to the red colour of arte- 
 rial blood; consequently he held that all those pro- 
 cesses, so different in themselves, are really one and 
 the same, the union of oxygen with different bodies in 
 different ways. I reserve for a subsequent stage of 
 the inquiry the consideration of this important and 
 beautiful theory. 
 
 While M. Lavoisier was employed in generalizing 
 the phenomena observed by others, in correcting former 
 opinions, and in adding materially to the store of facts 
 by his own experiments, but rather filling up blanks 
 left by his predecessors than producing any very 
 striking novelties himself, two most important disco- 
 
312 LAVOISIEK. 
 
 veries were made in England which call for our careful 
 observation, the composition of water and of the nit- 
 rous acid. Respecting the latter discovery there is no 
 question whatever. Mr. Cavendish alone is its author. 
 Dr. Priestley had shown that nitrous acid was resolvable 
 into nitrous gas, which he discovered, and oxygen. 
 M. Lavoisier had never gone further than to suppose 
 that gas the base of the acid. He had never suspected 
 it to be compounded of any other known materials, 
 except in so far as it plainly contained oxygen ; and 
 as for azote, the residue of atmospheric air after the 
 oxygen gas, or respirable part, is withdrawn from it r 
 we find him expressing strongly (' Mem.,' 1777,) that 
 this is a body of whose nature we are wholly ignorant. 
 I am not aware that he ever laid any claim whatever 
 to share in Mr. Cavendish's great discovery, to which 
 he was led by the most philosophical consideration of 
 the acid always found when oxygen gas, impure from 
 the presence of nitrogen or azote, is burnt with in- 
 flammable air. A careful course of experiments devised 
 and directed by him, performed by his colleagues of 
 the Royal Society, led to the knowledge of this im- 
 portant truth. 
 
 But the other great discovery with which his name 
 is inseparably connected stands in different circum- 
 stances. Nothing can interfere with his title to be 
 regarded as having first made the capital experiment 
 upon which it rests ; but it is equally undeniable, that 
 from less elaborate experiments Mr. Watt had before 
 him drawn the inference then so startling, that it 
 required all the boldness of the philosophic character to 
 venture upon it the inference that water was not a 
 simple element, but a combination of oxygen with in- 
 flammable air, thence called hydrogen gas. That Mr. 
 "Watt first generalized the facts so as to arrive at this 
 great truth, I think, has been proved as clearly as any 
 position in the history of physical science. (* Life of 
 Watt,' Historical note in Appendix. Eloge of Watt 
 
LAVOISIER. 313 
 
 by Arago.) It is equally certain from the examination 
 of Mr. Cavendish's papers, and from the publication 
 lately made of his journals, first, that he never so 
 clearly as Mr. Watt drew the inference from his expe- 
 riments ; and, secondly, that though those experiments 
 were made before Mr. Watt's inferences, yet Mr. 
 Cavendish's conclusion was not drawn even privately 
 by himself, till after Mr. Watt's inference had been 
 made known to many others.* 
 
 In 1783, after Mr. Cavendish's experiment had been 
 made, and after Mr. Watt's theory had been formed 
 upon the experiments of Warltire and Priestley, and 
 of Mr. Watt himself, Sir Charles Blagden went to Paris. 
 The experiments of Mr. Cavendish were made in 1781 ; 
 the theory of Mr. Watt was contained in a letter 
 which was communicated to the Royal Society in 
 April, 1783 : there is even reason to think from his 
 correspondence, that it was formed earlier. Mr. Ca- 
 vendish never gave the least intimation of having 
 drawn any such inference from his experiment before 
 April, 1783, when Mr. Watt's letter was in the hands 
 of the President of the Royal Society, and was acces- 
 sible to Sir Charles Blagden, one of the Council. Mr. 
 Cavendish's Diary of his experiments has been care- 
 fully examined, and fac-similes have been printed by 
 Mr. Harcourt of all that relates to the discovery ; not 
 a word is to be found of the inference or conclusion 
 from the experiment, of a date prior to April, 1783, 
 when Mr. Watt's letter was in the hands of the Society. 
 It is certain that, whether he took the theory from 
 
 * Mr. Harcourt's publication, contrary indeed to his design, has, in a 
 very remarkable manner, strengthened the evidence in Mr. Watt's favour. 
 (' Life of Watt,' in vol. i., p. 201.) Professor Robison's article in the 
 ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' gives an opinion coinciding with mine ; and it 
 was published thirteen years before Mr. Cavendish's death. I first stated 
 that opinion in a published form in 1803-4. (' Edinburgh Review,' vol. 
 iii., p. 11.) See the Appendix to this Life, in which some account is given 
 of the extraordinary errors and carelessness about facts, which distinguish 
 M. Cuvier's Eloge of Mr. Cavendish. 
 
314 LAVOISIER. 
 
 Mr. Watt or had formed it himself, he did, previous 
 to June, 1783, adopt and express the opinion that his 
 experiment showed " dephlogisticated air to be water 
 deprived of its phlogiston." Now this was, in the 
 language of the Stahl doctrine, holding that water was 
 formed by the union of phlogiston with dephlogisti- 
 cated air, was a calx, as it were of phlogiston. But 
 Mr. Watt's theory was, that phlogiston and inflam- 
 mable air are synonymous. Be this, however, as it 
 may, the conclusion contains the real doctrine of the 
 composition of water, how much disguised soever by 
 the language of the phlogistic theory ; and that con- 
 clusion was communicated, Sir C. Blagden says, " in 
 summer, 1783," to M. Lavoisier. His words are, 
 " that he gave last summer (1783) some account of 
 Mr. Cavendish's experiments to M. Lavoisier, as well 
 as of the conclusion drawn from them, that dephlogis- 
 ticated air is only water deprived of its phlogiston : 
 but at that time so far was M. Lavoisier from thinking 
 any such opinion warranted, that till he was prevailed 
 upon to repeat the experiment himself, he found some 
 difficulty in believing that nearly the whole of the two 
 airs could be converted into water."* 
 
 This passage is in Mr. Cavendish's paper ; but it is 
 not in his own hand-writing, nor is it in the paper as 
 at first printed ; it is added in the hand- writing of Sir 
 C. Blagden, and is therefore that .gentleman's assertion 
 of what had passed at Paris the summer before. M. 
 Lavoisier states that it was in June Sir C. Blagden saw 
 him ; and also states that he was present when the ex- 
 periment on which the French claim to the discovery 
 rests, was performed by Messrs. Lavoisier and Laplace 
 before several Academicians on the 24th of June. He 
 adds the material fact, that Sir Charles informed the 
 
 * In a letter of Blagden's, published in ' Crell's Annals,' in 1786, he 
 states having mentioned to Lavoisier also Mr. Watt's conclusions, which 
 he there admits had been drawn "about the same time" as Cavendish's. 
 Vol. I. for 1786. 
 
LAVOISIER. 315 
 
 company of Mr. Cavendish's having already performed 
 the experiment, and obtained a considerable quantity 
 of water from the combustion of the two gases. He 
 wholly omits the still more material fact, that Sir Charles 
 also stated the conclusion drawn from the experiment 
 in England ; and he omits to mention that he, M. La- 
 voisier, did not believe it possible that nearly the whole 
 of the two airs could be converted into water. This 
 omission of M. Lavoisier is quite unworthy of him. 
 Sir C. Blagden's statement was published in 1784 in the 
 ' Philosophical Transactions;' and though M. Lavoisier 
 constantly wrote papers which were published by the 
 Academy for several years after this statement of Sir 
 Charles in Mr. Cavendish's paper, and though his 
 Memoirs repeatedly touched upon the composition of 
 water, and in one of them he gave it as a truth estab- 
 lished by himself, ('Mem. sur la Decomposition de 
 1'Eau par la Vegetation des Plantes,' 1786,) yet he 
 never gave a word of contradiction to Sir C. Blagden's 
 statement. Indeed, that Sir Charles must, if he related 
 the experiment as M. Lavoisier says he did, have also 
 added the conclusion drawn from it, is quite evident ; 
 he never could have given the one without the other. 
 If the unbelief of M. Lavoisier was not a fact, it was 
 a pure invention of Sir Charles, which not only M. 
 Lavoisier, but M. Laplace, M. Leroy, and others, all 
 present at the time, could at once have contradicted. 
 And here the reader cannot fail to recollect, that a very 
 similar circumstance attended Dr. Priestley's communi- 
 cation of his discovery of oxygen to M. Lavoisier. 
 When the Doctor described the effect of this new gas 
 in enlarging the flame of bodies burnt in it, M. Lavoi- 
 sier expressed his great surprise ; yet he afterwards 
 suppressed all mention of his surprise, and of his hav- 
 ing received the account of the discovery from the 
 real author. In the case of Mr. Cavendish's experi- 
 ment, he admits having been told of it ; and suppresses 
 all mention of the theory having been at the same 
 
316 LAVOISIER. 
 
 time imparted to him, and of his own incredulity until 
 he repeated the experiment and convinced himself. 
 
 It seems, therefore, quite certain, that in this case, 
 as in that of oxygen, M. Lavoisier's intrusion is clearly 
 proved; that he performed an experiment which another 
 had before, to his knowledge, contrived and made ; that 
 he drew a conclusion from it, in substance the same 
 with the conclusion which others had drawn, and which 
 he had been apprized of, before he either produced the 
 experiment or reasoned upon its results ; that he related 
 the whole, both in his ' Memoirs,' and in his ' Elements,' 
 as if he had been the author of the discovery ; and 
 that he only told a part of the communication pre- 
 viously made to him, leaving out if he did not suppress, 
 the most important portion of the statement, the theory 
 of the process. 
 
 It is on the other hand certain, that from having 
 abandoned the phlogiston hypothesis, his theory of the 
 experiment was more distinctly and accurately given 
 than it had been by former reasoners who were ham- 
 pered with the errors of that doctrine : although in the 
 popular language at the time, the composition and de- 
 composition of water was always spoken of as the 
 discovery that had been made. We must further allow, 
 that M. Lavoisier added a valuable experiment to the 
 synthetical process of Priestley and Cavendish, the 
 analysis of water by passing its vapour or steam over 
 hot iron filings, and finding that the oxygen calcined 
 the metal, while the other constituent part escaped in 
 the form of inflammable air ; an experiment of excel- 
 lent use after the more crucial trial of the composition 
 had been made, but wholly inconclusive had it stood 
 by itself* 
 
 * An admirable experiment similar to Mr. Cavendish's was performed 
 in June, 1783, by M. Monge, at Mezieres. The account of it is given in 
 the volume for 1783 ; and the author mentions in a note both Lavoisier 
 and Cavendish's experiments, stating that they were performed on a 
 smaller scale. 
 
LAVOISIEK. 317 
 
 In the course of these inquiries, of the numerous 
 Memoirs to which they give rise, and of the various 
 discussions in which they involved him, M. Lavoisier, 
 who was so anxious, as we have seen, to obtain a share 
 as a kind of partner in the greatest discoveries of his 
 time, never showed any anxiety to distribute the praise 
 where it was really due, either among his contempo- 
 raries or their immediate predecessors. It might have 
 been thought difficult to write so often as he has done 
 upon the gases, and the new aera which their discovery 
 opened to chemistry, and not to have once mentioned 
 him, who, by the discovery of fixed air, was beyond 
 all doubt the founder of the system. Still more diffi- 
 cult was it to investigate the properties of that body, 
 ascertaining its composition with new accuracy, and 
 yet avoid all allusion to Black, who had long before 
 him proved it to be the product of charcoal when burnt. 
 The reader will search in vain, either the papers on 
 combustion, or those on acidification, or those on the 
 composition of fixed air, for the least reference to that 
 illustrious name. In the several Memoirs upon the 
 nature of heat, its absorption and evolution, its com- 
 bining in a quiescent state to form the permanently 
 elastic fluids, how difficult was it to avoid all mention 
 of him who made the great step of discovering latent 
 heat, and showed that to its absorption was owing- 
 fluidity, both liquid and aeriform ! I confess that when 
 I first read the title of one of those excellent papers, 
 " De la Combinaison de la Matiere du Feu avec les 
 Fluides evaporables, et de la Formation des Fluides 
 elastiques aeriformes," (Mem. de 1'Acad. 1777, p. 410,) 
 I expected to find mentioned, at every step of the dis- 
 cussion, the author of this whole theory, and who left 
 it absolutely perfect, who taught it from the year 1763 
 to crowded classes, and whose name was connected 
 with it wherever science was cultivated. My wonder 
 was not small when I found not the least allusion to 
 Black, and that the problem was completely solved. 
 
318 LAVOISIER. 
 
 how to frame an exact account of any given man's 
 discoveries and theory, never coming into contact with 
 his name. No reader of that paper could doubt that 
 the whole doctrine was that of M. Lavoisier himself; 
 and in a paper printed seven years after by himself 
 and M. de La Place, on the nature of heat, a reference 
 is distinctly made to this doctrine of aeriform fluidity, 
 as the theory of M. Lavoisier.* We find this in the 
 Memoirs for 1780,t published 1784, but the paper was 
 read June 18, 1783. The theory of latent heat had 
 been taught by Dr. Black to large classes for above 
 twenty years before that time, and had been universally 
 associated with his name in every part of the world. 
 
 But it maybe supposed, that by some singular chance, 
 M. Lavoisier was unacquainted with that illustrious 
 name. I must therefore produce evidence to the con- 
 trary under his own hand. In Oct., 1789, he writes 
 to Dr. Black, and professes himself to be "zele admir- 
 ateur de la profondeur de votre genie, et des import- 
 antes revolutions que vos decouvertes ont occasionnees 
 dans la chimie." In the following year, July 14, he 
 tells him ; " Accoutume a vous regarder comme mon 
 maitre, je ne serai content jusqu'a ce que les circon- 
 stances permettent de vous alter porter moi-meme le 
 temoignage de mon admiration, et de me ranger au 
 nombre de vos disciples." Now after writing these 
 letters, M. Lavoisier published his i Elements;' and 
 while writing them he published, in the Memoirs of 
 the Academy, a paper in which the doctrine of latent 
 heat, as the cause of fluidity, is described, and described 
 as his own, not as Black's, whose name is wholly 
 avoided." { 
 
 * Mem. 1780, p. 399. 
 
 f See, too, vol. for 1777, p. 595. In the paper 1777 first cited, the 
 only thing ascribed to preceding philosophers is the belief in the existence 
 of an igneous fluid, or matter of heat in our planet ; and the experiments 
 of Richman, Cullen, Mairan, and Baume on the production of cold by 
 evaporation. 
 
 t Me*n. 1789, p. 567. Black is mentioned with Boyle, Hales, and 
 
LAVOISIER. 319 
 
 It may easily be believed that Dr. Black's surprise 
 was great upon this occasion, and that he treated the 
 flattery contained in these letters with a very marked 
 contempt. This we learn from his friend and col- 
 league, Professor Robison, (Lectures, vol. II., note.) 
 But this no one could have learnt from that illustrious 
 philosopher's manner, when he had occasion to speak 
 of his correspondent in public. I well remember the 
 uniform respect with which he mentioned him in his 
 Lectures, the admiration which he always expressed of 
 his great powers of generalization, the satisfaction with 
 which he recounted his experiments, some of which 
 he himself performed before us ; nay, the willingness 
 with which he admitted him to a share of the grand 
 discovery of the composition of water ; and showed us 
 the analytical proof, or rather illustration of the doc- 
 trine, as a most happy confirmation of it, though not 
 certainly deserving to be regarded as an unequivocal 
 demonstration. No one could ever have suspected 
 either the existence of the letters which I have cited 
 or the blank in the Memoirs with which I have con- 
 trasted them.* 
 
 After the year 1784, though M. Lavoisier continued 
 his scientific labours, excepting his co-operation in 
 forming the new nomenclature, and his important re- 
 searches, in company with M. Seguin, upon the pro- 
 cesses of respiration and transpiration, there are no 
 results of his chemical inquiries that require to be men- 
 tioned. The paper on Respiration (Mem. 1789) con- 
 tains some very important experiments which throw 
 great light upon that process, and some upon the pro- 
 duction of animal heat. They not only clearly show 
 
 Priestley, only as having shown that the air of the atmosphere is altered 
 by the respiration of animals. (p. 568.) 
 
 * Other authors of eminent name have been more just, especially Four- 
 crov, who gives Dr. Black the entire credit of his great discoveries. 
 (' Elem. de Chym.' i., 36, 40 ; ' Syst, de Con. Chym.' ii., 28, 49.) In 
 one passage he distinctly states these discoveries as having led to the new 
 system. (' Elem/ L, 40.) 
 
320 LAVOISIER. 
 
 that the oxygenation of the blood, in passing through 
 the lungs, produces both carbonic acid gas by the slow 
 combustion of carbon, and water by that of hydrogen, 
 the carbon and the hydrogen being alike supplied by 
 the blood, which as early as 1785 M. Lavoisier had 
 suspected from many appearances ;* but they enable 
 us to ascertain the exact quantity of oxygen gas con- 
 sumed, and of carbon and hydrogen inhaled in the 
 process ; for they show 24 cubic feet of gas, or 2 Ibs. 
 
 1 oz. and 1 scruple to be consumed in 24 hours, and 
 
 2 Ibs. 5 oz. and 4 scruples of carbonic acid to be 
 formed with 5 scruples 51 gr. of water : answering to 
 10 oz. 4 scruples of carbon and 1 oz. 5 scruples and 
 51 gr. of hydrogen. A number of valuable physiolo- 
 gical and therapeutical conclusions are derived from 
 the same inquiry. In the paper on Transpiration 
 (Mem. 1790) the inquiry is continued, and a general 
 estimate is formed by approximation of the amount 
 lost in the 24 hours by this process ; it is 1 Ib. 14 oz. 
 and by respiration only 5 drachms : a calculation not 
 reconcileable with the former course of experiments, 
 which made the loss under 12 oz. 
 
 Beside these Memoirs, and one or two others of less 
 importance on chemical subjects, he gave a paper in 
 1789 upon the horizontal strata deposited by the sea ; 
 a subject to which he had, in the earliest period of his 
 scientific researches, devoted much of his attention, as 
 I have already related. From Lavoisier's numerous 
 observations, both on the coast and on the Paris basin, 
 M. Monge drew the conclusion that the earth was 
 originally covered with vegetables long before any 
 animals were upon its surface. The subsequent in- 
 quiries, we may say discoveries, of Cuvier and his 
 
 * The theory of the present day departs somewhat from Lavoisier's, par- 
 ticularly in holding that the carbonic acid is not produced at the surface 
 of the lungs, and that the oxygen enters into combination with the mass 
 of the blood, forming water and carbonic acid at the capillary terminations 
 of the'vessels. 
 
LAVO1SIEK. 321 
 
 successors, deprive these comparatively imperfect at- 
 tempts in geological science of nearly their whole 
 interest. 
 
 In the course of the illustrious career which we have 
 been surveying, its brightness occasionally dimmed 
 with the spots which a regard for the truth of history 
 overcoming our regard for his fame made it a duty to 
 mark, this great man occasionally gave his aid to the 
 administration of public affairs, not as a politician, for 
 from that craft he ever kept aloof, but when called in 
 by the government to its assistance. In 1776 M. 
 Turgot, then minister, requested him to superintend 
 the manufacture of gunpowder ; and the result of his 
 labours was both the increase by nearly a fourth in the 
 explosive force of the compound, and what the en- 
 lightened statesman who employed him valued still 
 more, the suppression of the vexatious regulations for 
 collecting saltpetre from private buildings : an opera- 
 tion of wise as well as humane legislation, by which 
 the produce of that necessary article was increased 
 fourfold. When the National Assembly, in 1791, ap- 
 pointed a committee to improve the system of taxation, 
 he was again consulted, and he drew up a treatise, en- 
 titled ' JKichesse Territoriale de la France' which con- 
 tained the fullest account yet given of the production 
 and consumption of the country, and was by far the 
 most valuable report ever presented to the legislature. 
 Being appointed one of the Commissioners of the 
 Treasury in the same year, he introduced into that 
 great department such system and such regularity, 
 that the income and expenditure under each head 
 could be perceived at a single glance each successive 
 day. To the new metrical system he contributed by 
 accurate experiments upon the expansion of metals, 
 never before fully investigated. He was likewise con- 
 sulted, with great advantage to the public service, 
 upon the best means of preventing forgery, when the 
 system of paper credit led to the issue of assignats. 
 
322 LAVOISIER. 
 
 The Academy, as well as the state at large, benefited 
 amply by his mature and practical genius, formed to 
 direct and further the affairs of life as well as the 
 speculations of the closet. All its plans, and all the 
 subjects referred to it by the government received the 
 inestimable advantage of his assistance and advice ; 
 he was a member of the Board of Consultation, and 
 he was the treasurer of the body, in which capacity he 
 introduced new order and exact economy into the 
 management of its concerns. 
 
 These public cares did not distract him from that 
 due to the administration of his private concerns. 
 Agriculture had early in life engaged his attention ; 
 and he set apart a considerable tract of land on his 
 estate, at Vendome, for experimental farming. Of the 
 peasantry upon his property he always took the most 
 kind and parental care ; and to the poor, in general, 
 his charities knew no bounds but those of his means. 
 His house in Paris is described as having been a vast 
 laboratory, in which experiments were always going 
 on : not merely those contrived by himself and sub- 
 servient to his own speculations, but whatever trials 
 any one connected with science desired to have made, 
 and which required the aid of his costly apparatus to 
 perform. Twice a-week his apartments were thrown 
 open to receive scientific men, foreigners as well as 
 natives ; all were received with the utmost courtesy ; 
 and to young men of merit in straitened circumstances 
 this enlightened and truly liberal person was a generous 
 auxiliary. 
 
 The lustre which his labours had shed over the 
 scientific renown of France, the valuable services 
 which he had rendered to her in so many important 
 departments of her affairs^ the virtues which adorned 
 his character and made his philosophy beloved as well 
 as revered, were all destined to meet the reward with 
 which the tyranny of vulgar faction is sure to recom- 
 pense the good and the wise, as often as the base un- 
 
LAVOISIER. 323 
 
 lettered multitude are permitted to bear sway and to 
 place in the seat of dominion their idols, who dupe to 
 betray and finally punish them. The execrable trium- 
 virate in 1794 seized him with twenty-seven others, 
 who had been fermiers-general before the Kevolution, 
 an employment he held as it were by inheritance; 
 they were all flung into prison upon a charge which 
 as against most of them, certainly as against Lavoisier, 
 was ridiculously groundless, that of having mixed water 
 and ingredients hurtful to the health of the citizens for 
 the adulteration of tobacco, one of the objects of the 
 ferme; but their real crimes were their possessions. 
 On hearing of the order for his arrest he fled, and re- 
 mained for some days in concealment ; but under- 
 standing that his escape might injure the others, and 
 that among them M. Paulze, his father-in-law, had been 
 arrested, he nobly, though to the sorrow of the sciences, 
 gave himself up and was confined with the rest. He 
 presently perceived that he must expect to be stripped 
 of his property; but he could lead the life of a philo- 
 sopher, and wealth had never ministered to any but 
 his philosophical pursuits. He had, indeed, when those 
 dismal times began, in conversation with Laborde, said 
 that he foresaw his fortune could not escape, and that 
 he was resolved, when ruined, to support himself by 
 his labour ; and the profession in which he designed 
 to engage was that of pharmacy. No such respite, 
 however, was now allowed him. By a retrospective 
 law, monstrous even in that season of violence, their 
 persons were declared punishable for the profits which 
 they had made from the old government, and punishable 
 not as for malversation but treason. This iniquitous 
 decree was passed on the 5th May ; under it he was 
 condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 before whom a courageous citizen, M. Halle, had the 
 noble firmness to read a detailed account of Lavoisier's 
 discoveries, and his services to his country. After his 
 sentence was pronounced, he himself asked to be 
 
.">:M i \VOISIER. 
 
 allowed a few days' respite, in order that In- mi'_>ht sco 
 tin result of some experiments which he had planned, 
 :nid whieh were "..iii" ..n .hiring his conl'menu'iit, ; the 
 emel imswer of the fribunal, through CoH'mhal their 
 brutal jester, was that " the Republic had no need of 
 philosophers," juul he \v;is hurried to the scaflbld on the. 
 following day, the 8th of May, 17SM, with a Inuulred 
 and twenty-three other victims, who suffered in the 
 course of a few hours. 
 
 Thus perished, in the fifty-first year of his age, one 
 of the most illustrious cultivators of science in modern 
 times. When the absolutely harmless life he had ever 
 led, remote from all political connections, is considered, 
 together with the utterly ridiculous nature of the charge 
 against him, we can hardly avoid asking ourselves 
 how it came to pass that no voice was raised, no h;md 
 stretched out for his rescue. One man of science, 
 among the most eminent of his time Carnot, was on 
 tin- Terrible Committee: had he no means of saving 
 this Kivat philosopher, licensed of something :is absurd 
 and fabulous as witchcraft? There was another, much 
 more nearly related to Lavoisier in his pursuits a 
 member possessed of no small influence in the Con- 
 vent ion, and who had in the Committee of Public 
 Instruction succeeded in carrying some most important 
 measures Fourcroy was that man ; and he had often 
 employed his extraordinary powers in explaining and 
 enforcing the great discoveries of his master, as well 
 as in sounding his praises to crowded audiences assem- 
 bled from every part of the world. Fourcroy could 
 never have feared to receive the answer of the savage, 
 Collinhal, that the Republic had philosophers enough; 
 and it is to be hoped that Fourcroy did not consiaer 
 there would be philosophers enough if his master were 
 to disappear from among their number. The courage 
 shown by the virtuous Halle* might have been expected 
 from Fourcroy, in whom its display would have been 
 incomparably safer. His interposition would also have 
 
LAVOISIER. 325 
 
 been much more powerful ; nay, we know that he did 
 interpose, with effect, for another member of the Aca- 
 demy, M. Darcet, whom he saved from the guillotine. 
 No explanation has ever been given of the neutral 
 position maintained by him in Lavoisier's apparent 
 murder. This only we know, that he remained in his 
 place, both as a member of the Convention and of the 
 Committee ; and we know, too, how impossible it would 
 have been to retain Halley or Maclaurin in their place, 
 had the sacred head of Newton been threatened by the 
 sacrilegious hands of their colleagues. The charge 
 against Fourcroy amounts to no more ; for there is 
 no evidence whatever to support the accusation often 
 brought against him, that he had instigated the atro- 
 cious crime which placed all the republic of letters in 
 mourning, and covered that of France with infamy 
 hardly to be effaced. M. Cuvier tells us that the 
 " most strict researches had left him unable to discover 
 the least proof in support of this horrid charge," and 
 he states that this imputation " had been the torment 
 of M. Fourcroy's life."* This is very credible ; the 
 charge is hardly credible at all. But men's admiration 
 of Halle will remain for ever ; and if their suspicions 
 of Fourcroy should ever be removed, they must at 
 least regard his want of courage with contempt rather 
 than pity. 
 
 The great man thus sacrificed, was as much to be 
 loved in private life as he was to be revered among 
 philosophers. His manners were simple and engaging, 
 his generosity unbounded, his conduct without re- 
 proach. His case formed no exception to the general 
 rule, which seems almost always to forbid genius from 
 descending in families, for he died childless. His 
 widow, a person of remarkable abilities and great in- 
 formation, shared in his pursuits, and even took upon 
 herself the task of engraving the plates that accom- 
 
 * Eloge de Fourcroy, Mem. de 1'Institut, An. 1810. (Tome XL, Phys. 
 et Math.) 
 
326 LAVOISIER. 
 
 panied his ' Elements.' She survived him many years, 
 and late in life was married to Count Kumford, whom 
 she also outlived. 
 
 From the accurate detail into which I have entered 
 of Lavoisier's history, no difficulty remains in forming 
 an estimate of his merits as a great teacher of science. 
 He possessed the happiest powers of generalizing, and 
 of applying them to the facts which others had dis- 
 covered, often making important additions to those 
 facts ; always, where any link was wanting to connect 
 them, either together or with his conclusions, supply- 
 ing that link by judiciously-contrived experiments of 
 his own. He may most justly be said to have made 
 some of the most important discoveries in modern 
 times, and to have left the science of chemistry with 
 its bounds extended very far beyond those within 
 which he had found it confined when his researches 
 began. 
 
 It is, however, fit that we make the important dis- 
 tinction between the two classes of his theories : those 
 which being founded upon a rigorous induction, and not 
 
 Eushed beyond the legitimate conclusions from certain 
 tcts, stand as truths to this day, and in all probability 
 will ever retain their place ; and those which, carried 
 incautiously or daringly beyond the proper bounds of 
 him who is only naturae minister et interpres* have 
 already been overthrown never, indeed, having re- 
 posed upon solid foundations. 
 
 1. Of the first class is his important doctrine of cal- 
 cination justly termed by him, oxidation, by which 
 he overthrew the leading doctrine of Stahl, and showed 
 that metals do not part with anything in passing from 
 the reguline state, but, on the contrary, absorb and fix 
 a gas proved by other philosophers to be oxygen 
 s.^ ^This^his capital discovery, stands, and in all pro- 
 bility will ever stand, the test of every inquiry. 
 
 * Bacon. 
 
LAVOISIER. 327 
 
 We know of no calcination without oxygen we know 
 of no metallic oxygenation without calcination.* 
 
 2. The importance of the blow thus given to the 
 theory of phlogiston induced him to follow it up by 
 denying that combustion is a process which evolves 
 any component part from bodies ; but, on the con- 
 trary, that, like calcination, it always consists of some 
 other substance being added to, or united with, the in- 
 ilammable body. 
 
 3. The ascertaining the nature of fixed air, that is, 
 the combination of oxygen gas with the carbonic prin- 
 ciple, and the ascertaining also the existence of that 
 principle, is another discovery of the same great master; 
 and we owe it to the well- contrived experiments by 
 which he proved it. 
 
 4. The analogy of the diamond to this carbonic prin- 
 ciple is another discovery of his, though he did not 
 make the final step of showing the identity of the two 
 bodies, nor did he even suspect it. 
 
 5. The composition of sulphuric and of phosphoric 
 acid, and perhaps of saccharic too, were first clearly 
 explained by his experiments, and by his judicious and 
 original reasoning upon the experiments of others. 
 
 6. There is more doubt of the composition of the 
 atmosphere having been first proved by him. Cer- 
 tainly its nature was by him first fully ascertained; 
 but it was plainly known to Priestley at an earlier date. 
 Lavoisier, however, added much to our accurate know- 
 ledge of the function of respiration ; and the discovery 
 of hydrogen being evolved by it as well as carbon, was 
 undeniably his. 
 
 7. We have seen that to the two great discoveries 
 of oxygen and the composition of water, he can lay no 
 claim. Yet let it be borne in mind that his statement 
 of both doctrines was more precise and clear than any 
 
 * If it should be said that metals absorb oxygen -when dissolved in 
 oxygenous acids, we answer, that still they are in the state of calx or 
 oxide, though united to an acid menstruum. 
 
328 LAVOISIER. 
 
 which the authors of the experiments and original 
 framers of the theory had given. As regards the latter 
 doctrine, the obscurity of Mr. Cavendish's language, 
 even of Mr. Watt's though in a much less degree, has 
 been observed upon already. But we need only con- 
 sider Dr. Priestley's view of the air he had discovered, 
 and the name he gave it, in order to be satisfied how 
 confused were the notions derived from the phlogistic 
 theory, and how they obscured his naturally acute 
 vision. When he called it dephlogisticated air, he in- 
 tended to say that air, the atmosphere, parts with 
 phlogiston, and the residue is oxygen gas. But then 
 if phlogiston be added, it should again become com- 
 mon air. Now he held the calcination of metals to be 
 the evolution of phlogiston, therefore this operation 
 should have restored the gas to the state of common 
 air. But, instead of that, the gas was absorbed alto- 
 gether. Again : the residue, when common air is de- 
 prived of the dephlogisticated portion, is another air 
 which he called phlogisticated, because it contained 
 more phlogiston than the common air. But how by 
 this theory could the union of such a phlogisticated 
 air with a dephlogisticated air make the common air ? 
 By the hypothesis, that air with phlogiston added is 
 azote, with phlogiston subtracted is oxygen gas. 
 Therefore mixing the two, you should have produced, 
 not the air that had been phlogisticated in making the 
 one, dephlogisticated in making the other, but double 
 the quantity operated upon.* Such was the load of 
 absurdity and contradiction under which the favourite 
 hypothesis of the day placed Priestley entirely, Caven- 
 dish to a great degree, Watt in some sort ; such was 
 the weight of prejudice against which Lavoisier had to 
 contend ; such was the maze of error from which he 
 boldly broke loose and extricated chemical science. 
 It is his glory that he first effected this emancipation ; 
 
 * If common air (a) Phlog. = ox. gas, and com. air (a) -f- Phlog. 
 = azote ; Ox. gas -\- azote = not a, as it ought to be, but 2 a. 
 
LAVOISIER. 329 
 
 and it is no small proof of his merit, that for many 
 years he remained almost alone among the philoso- 
 phers of his age, and even his own countrymen, how 
 prone soever to adopt French discoveries, in maintain- 
 ing opinions from which there is now, after the lapse 
 of little more than half a century, not a single dissent- 
 ing voice all over the scientific world. 
 
 We are now to mark wherein he was led astray by 
 the love of theorising carrying him too far. He was 
 not content with showing that combustion, contrary to 
 the phlogistic doctrine, proceeds from a union of the 
 burning body with other bodies ; but he regarded the 
 body uniting as always the same, to wit, oxygen. Ob- 
 serving the fact of many bodies burning in oxygen gas, 
 and of most other gases being unfit for supporting flame, 
 he generalized too much, and inferred that all combus- 
 tion consists in the union of that gas with the inflam- 
 mable body. Again : he regarded the heat and light 
 given out in the process as wholly proceeding from the 
 gas, as having kept the gas when latent in its aeriform 
 state, and as given out in a sensible form when the gas 
 becomes fixed in a liquid or a solid state. Lastly : ob- 
 serving that the union of many bodies with oxygen 
 produced acids, he generalized too much this fact, and 
 inferred that all acids contain oxygen, which he thence 
 called by that name, as denoting the acidifying princi- 
 ple. Now all these inferences are groundless, and there- 
 Fore this portion of his theory is to be rejected. He 
 is to be followed implicitly in rejecting Stahl's princi- 
 ple ; the doctrine of phlogiston he for ever overthrew. 
 His own theory, the doctrine which he substituted in 
 place of the one which he had destroyed, is liable to 
 insuperable objections; at least when carried to the 
 length which he went. 
 
 In the first place, not only may oxygenation take 
 place without any evolution of either heat or light, but 
 combustion also. The mixture of many substances 
 together evolves heat, and a great degree of heat, with- 
 
330 LAVOISIER. 
 
 out the presence of oxygen or if oxygen be present 
 in some of these cases, it is not operative in any way 
 it is not disengaged, and is not in the form of a gas 
 to be absorbed. Thus, much heat is caused by the 
 mixture of sulphuric acid and water ; some heat by the 
 mixture of alcohol and water. Lime when slaked by 
 water produces violent heat, sometimes accompanied 
 with light also, flame as well as redness appearing. The 
 union of iron with sulphur in vacuo causes great heat 
 and the emission of bright light. The exposure of 
 metals and other inflammable bodies to gases which 
 contain no oxygen, as chlorine, produces red heat and 
 flame. Therefore, although it is very true that we 
 know of no instance in which combustion takes place 
 without the union of the combustible body to some 
 other, and the formation of a new substance, yet it is 
 not true that oxygen alone causes combustion, and 
 that no body can burn but in oxygen gas. 
 
 Secondly. The facts are all against his doctrine, that 
 the heat and light comes from the fixation of the gas. 
 Experiments on the capacity of bodies for heat have 
 clearly shown this. But the simple fact of well-known 
 explosions, as of gunpowder, disproves his theory for 
 here, instead of the heat and light coming from the gas 
 being reduced to a solid state, a gaseous body is formed 
 two or three hundred times the bulk of the solid ex- 
 ploded. 
 
 Thirdly. There are many acids which have no 
 oxygen in their composition, and there are many 
 bodies containing oxygen which have none of the 
 qualities of acids. The first part of this proposition 
 was not certainly known to Lavoisier, and he assumed 
 that the acids which had not yet been decomposed 
 would be found to contain oxygen. The second part 
 of the proposition was known to him, and ought to have 
 checked his generalization. We now know many 
 acids which contain no oxygen at all. Muriatic acid, 
 a compound of chlorine and hydrogen ; prussic acid, a 
 
LAVOISIER. 331 
 
 compound of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon ; hydro- 
 bromic; fluoric-acid; ferro-cyanic acid; sulpho-cyanic ; 
 hydro-selenic; hydriodic: xanthic. Even if fluoric be 
 omitted, here are nine undeniable acids, and all without 
 a particle of oxygen in their composition. Again, the 
 mere fact of calcination should have prevented him 
 from so generalizing, for all calces contain oxygen, 
 and many of them have no acid qualities. Indeed, 
 his own conjecture, since fully confirmed by experi- 
 ment, that the fixed alkalis are oxides, is a still more 
 striking disproof of his theory ; for it appears that he 
 might just as well have called oxygen the alkalizing 
 principle as the acidifying, or rather much better, 
 since all the alkalis save one contain it and the alka- 
 line earths to boot. But he also should have recol- 
 lected that no acid of them all contains so much oxygen 
 as water, and yet nothing less like an acid can well be 
 imagined. We now have still further instances of the 
 same kind against this theory, and which might justify 
 us in calling hydrogen the acidifying principle as well 
 as oxygen. Upwards of two hundred acids contain 
 hydrogen either with or without oxygen present. 
 Hence he might really have reckoned hydrogen the 
 acidifying principle upon fully better grounds than 
 support his choice of oxygen ; and the truth appears 
 to be, that there is no one substance which deserves 
 the name. 
 
 It is, then, quite clear that M. Lavoisier committed 
 a great error in his induction, and that he framed a 
 theory which was in the extent to which he pressed it 
 wholly without foundation not merely without suffi- 
 cient proof from the facts, but contrary to the facts. 
 Newton gives it as a fundamental rule of philosophising, 
 that we are to state the inferences from phenomena 
 with the exceptions which occur, and if a first induc- 
 tion should be made from imperfect views of the phe- 
 nomena, then to correct it by the exceptions afterwards 
 found to exist. But from this rule Lavoisier has 
 
332 LAVOISIER. 
 
 departed entirely : because, though subsequent expe- 
 riments have greatly increased the number of the 
 exceptions, yet there were many striking ones at the 
 time he formed his system, and these were left out of 
 view in its formation. 
 
 After all the deductions, however, which can fairly 
 be made from his merits, these stand high indeed, and 
 leave his renown as brilliant as that of any one who 
 has ever cultivated physical science. The overthrow 
 of the Phlogiston Theory, and the happy generaliza- 
 tions upon the combinations of bodies,' which we owe 
 to his genius for philosophical research, are sufficient 
 to place him among the first, perhaps to^ make him be 
 regarded as the first reformer of chemical science, the 
 principal founder of that magnificent fabric which 
 now fills so ample a space in the eye of every student 
 of nature. 
 
LAVOISIER. 333 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Acids known to contain no Oxygen. 
 
 Muriatic acid, (Hydro-chloric ; Chlorine and Hydrogen.) 
 Prussic acid, (Hydro-cyanic; Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and 
 
 Carbon.) 
 Bromine. 
 
 Hydro-Bromic acid, (Bromine and Hydrogen.) 
 Fluoric acid, (Fluorine and Hydrogen.) 
 Ferro-cyanic acid, (Iron, Azote, Carbon and Hydrogen.) 
 Sulpho-cyanic, (Sulphur, Azote, Carbon and Hydrogen.) 
 Hydriodic, (Iodine and Hydrogen.) 
 Hydro-selenic, (Selenium and Hydrogen.) 
 
 Acids known to contain Hydrogen with or without 
 Oxygen. 
 
 Muriatic, (or Formic. Acetic. 
 
 Hydro-chloric.) Oleic. Tartaric. 
 
 Prussic, (Hydro- Stearic. Citric. 
 
 cyanic.) Capric. Malic. 
 
 Hydro-bromic. Butyric. Benzoic. 
 
 Hydro-fluoric. Crotonic. Gallic. 
 
 Hydriodic. B-acemic. Succinic. 
 
 Hydro-selenic. Cetic. Saccholactic. 
 
 Ferro-cyanic. Cholesteric. 
 
 Sulpho-cyanic. Ambreic. 
 
 And at least 150 more ; as oxalic is perhaps the only 
 vegetable acid which has no hydrogen. 
 
(334) 
 
 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 IT is rare to observe a name among the active and 
 successful promoters of science, and which yet cannot 
 easily find a place in its annals from the circumstance 
 of not being inscribed on any work, or connected with 
 any remarkable discovery. Almost all the philosophers 
 of both ancient and modern times have left us writings 
 in which their doctrines were delivered, and the steps 
 made by their labours were recorded. The illustrious 
 exception of Socrates almost ceases to be one, from 
 the memory of his opinions being preserved by two 
 of his disciples in their immortal works ; and the im- 
 portant discoveries of Archimedes and of Pythagoras 
 are known distinctly enough in the books of ancient 
 geometry, to leave no doubt resting upon their claims 
 to the admiration and the gratitude of all ages. The 
 lost works of the ancient geometers evidently afford 
 no exception to the general remark, since they once 
 existed, and contained the discoveries of their authors. 
 It must, however, be observed, that the circumstance 
 of a cultivator of science having left no works to after 
 ages is merely accidental. He may have enriched philo- 
 sophy with his achievements, and yet never have record- 
 ed them himself. Thus, had Black only made the great 
 discovery of latent heat and specific heat, he would have 
 been justly considered in all times as one of the greatest 
 benefactors of natural science, and yet the history of 
 that splendid discovery would only have been found 
 in the memory of those who had heard his lectures ; 
 his only work being confined to the other discovery of 
 fixed air, and the nature of the alkaline earths. To 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 335 
 
 take a yet more remarkable instance ; how little of 
 Watt's great and lasting fame depends on any written 
 work which he has left ! The like may be truly said of 
 Arkwright; nay, the most important of inventions, the 
 art of printing, is disputed by two names, Coster and 
 Guttcnbcrg, neither of which is connected with the 
 composition of any literary work whatever. 
 
 As men who have by their researches advanced the 
 bounds of science, " inventas aut qui vitam excoluere 
 per artes," may never have given any written works 
 to the world, and yet merit a high place among the 
 greatest philosophers, so may others who have filled 
 the less exalted but highly useful sphere of furthering 
 the progress of the sciences or the arts, deserve a 
 distinguished place among philosophers for the same 
 reason which entitles authors to such a station, although 
 they may never have contributed by any discoveries 
 to the advancement of the sciences which they culti- 
 vated. The excellent and eminent individual whose 
 life we are about to contemplate falls within this de- 
 scription ; for although his active exertions for upwards 
 of half a century left traces most deeply marked in the 
 history of the natural sciences, and though his whole 
 life was given up to their pursuit, it so happened, that 
 with the exception of one or two tracts upon agricul- 
 tural and horticultural questions, he never gave any 
 work of his own composition to the world, nor left be- 
 hind him anything, beyond his extensive correspon- 
 dence with other cultivators of science. It is from this 
 circumstance that not even an attempt has ever been 
 made to write the history of Sir Joseph Banks. And 
 yet, what so worthy of contemplation as the history of 
 one who loved science for its own sake, who delighted 
 in the survey of important facts connected with the 
 study of nature, or tracing interesting truths belonging 
 to tne same branch of knowledge ; whose pursuit of 
 knowledge was wholly disinterested, not even stimulated 
 by the hope of fame as the reward of his labours ? 
 
336 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 And who better deserved the name of a philosopher 
 than he whose life was devoted to the love of wisdom, 
 whose rich reward was the delight of the study, whose 
 more noble ambition left to others the gratification of 
 recording their progress in books, and filling the mouths 
 of men with their names ? Much of what is explained, 
 touching the real pleasures of science, in the life of 
 D'Alembert, is applicable to the career of Sir Joseph 
 Banks.* 
 
 He was of an ancient and wealthy family, established 
 since the reign of Edward III., first in the West Riding 
 of Yorkshire, and afterwards in the county of Lincoln, 
 where they possessed ample estates from the end of 
 the seventeenth century; and a considerable accession 
 of fortune came to them early in the eighteenth, by 
 marriage with an heiress in Derbyshire, named Hodg- 
 kinson, whose estates, by a shifting use in a settlement, 
 were severed from those in Lincolnshire till 1792, when 
 the whole fortune united in the person of Sir Joseph. 
 
 He was born at Argyle Buildings, in London, on 
 the 2d of February, 1743, 0. S., according to a note 
 in his own handwriting which lies before me, contrary 
 to several accounts which represent him as born in 
 Lincolnshire in December of that year.f After being 
 placed for some time under a private tutor, he was in 
 his ninth year sent to Harrow and four years after to 
 Eton, where his good disposition and cheerful temper 
 recommended him to his masters ; but they complained 
 of his extreme aversion to study, and inordinate love of 
 active sports. In about twelve months, however, when 
 in his fourteenth year, his tutor found him reading at 
 the hours of play, and the change which had been 
 effected in his habits was described by himself to Sir 
 Everard Home as arising from an accidental circum- 
 stance. One day he had been bathing with his fellow 
 Etonians ; and on coming out of the water to dress, 
 
 * See Life of D'Alembert, and Appendix to Life of Robertson, vol. ii. 
 f The parish register of St. James's makes his birth 4th January. 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 337 
 
 he found that all but himself had gone away. Having 
 put on his clothes, he walked slowly along a green 
 lane. It was a fine summer's evening ; flowers covered 
 the sides of the path. He felt delighted with the 
 natural beauties around him, and exclaimed, "How 
 beautiful! Would it not be far more reasonable to 
 make me learn the nature of these plants than the 
 Greek and Latin I am confined to?" His next reflec- 
 tion was that he must do his duty, obey his father's 
 commands, and reconcile himself to the learning of the 
 school. But this did not hinder him from immediately 
 applying to the study of botany ; and having no better 
 instructor, he paid some women who were employed 
 in gathering plants what is called culling simples 
 for the druggists, for such information as they could 
 give him, the price he gave being sixpence for each 
 thing they told him. Returning home for the holidays, 
 he was inexpressibly delighted to find in his mother's 
 dressing-room an old torn copy of Gerard's Herbal, 
 having the names and figures of those plants with 
 which he had formed an imperfect acquaintance, and 
 he carried it with him back to school. There he con- 
 tinued his collection of plants, and he also made one 
 of butterflies and other insects. I have often heard 
 my father say, that being of the same age, they used 
 to associate much together. Both were fond of walk- 
 ing and of swimming, and both were expert in the 
 latter exercise. Banks always distinguished him, and 
 in his old age he never ceased to show me every kind- 
 ness in his power, in consequence of this old connec- 
 tion. My father described him as a remarkably fine- 
 looking, strong, and active boy, whom no fatigue could 
 subdue, and no peril daunt ; and his whole time out of 
 school was given up to hunting after plants and insects, 
 making a hortus siccus of the one, and forming a 
 cabinet of the other. As often as Banks could induce 
 him to quit his task in reading or in verse-making, he 
 would take him on his long rambles ; and I suppose it 
 z 
 
338 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 was from this early taste that we had at Brougham so 
 many butterflies, beetles, and other insects, as well as 
 a cabinet of shells and fossils. The interesting anec- 
 dote related by Sir E. Home, I never heard my father 
 relate, but he always said that his friend Joe cared 
 mighty little for his book, and could not well under- 
 stand any one taking to Greek and Latin. The anec- 
 dote itself must be perfectly authentic if Sir E. Home 
 heard it from him ; for he was scrupulously exact in 
 relating facts, and anything like romance about natural 
 scenery was the thing in the world the most alien from 
 the cast of his mind. 
 
 In 1760 he was taken from Eton to be inoculated, 
 and the operation failed: it was repeated, and suc- 
 ceeded ; but so much time was thus lost, that it was 
 thought better he should not return to school ; and 
 immediately before he completed his eighteenth year, 
 he was sent to Oxford, and entered a gentleman com- 
 moner of Christ Church. His love of natural history 
 now increased with the increased means and greater 
 leisure for gratifying it. Botany, however, continued 
 to be his favourite branch of that science; and he 
 found that unfortunately no lectures were given by 
 Dr. Sibthorp, the botanical professor. In this difficulty 
 he applied to the learned doctor for leave to engage a 
 lecturer, whose remuneration should be wholly de- 
 frayed by his pupils ; and it is highly creditable to the 
 professor, and shows his love of the science, in which 
 some of his family afterwards so greatly excelled, that 
 he at once agreed to the proposal. Mr. Banks then 
 finding no one at Oxford capable of undertaking the 
 class, went over to Cambridge, whence he brought 
 back with him Mr. Israel Lyon, a learned botanist, 
 and good astronomer, who was then engaged in teach- 
 ing these two sciences to private pupils. The friend- 
 ship of Mr. Banks afterwards obtained for him the 
 appointment of astronomer to Captain Phipps on his 
 Polar voyage. Mr. Lyon gave lectures and lessons to 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 339 
 
 the young men who had joined in this very laudable 
 scheme, and Mr. Banks, as might be expected, profited 
 exceedingly by those instructions. Among true Ox- 
 onians, of course, he stood low. He used to tell in 
 after-life, that when he entered any of the rooms where 
 discussions on classical points were going briskly on, 
 they would say, " Here is Banks, but he knows 
 nothing of Greek." He made no reply, but he would 
 say to himself, " I shall very soon beat you all in a 
 kind of knowledge I think infinitely more important ; " 
 and it happened that, soon after he first heard these 
 jokes, as often as the classical men were puzzled on a 
 point of natural history, they said, " We must go to 
 Banks." 
 
 In 1761 his father died ; and in 1764, on coming of 
 age, he was put in possession of his valuable estates in 
 Lincolnshire, having quitted Oxford the year before. 
 And now it was that the great merit of this distin- 
 guished person shone forth. With all the incitements 
 which his age, his figure, and his station naturally pre- 
 sented to leading a life of idleness, varied only by the 
 more vulgar gratifications of sense or of ordinary am- 
 bition, and with a fortune which placed these gratifi- 
 cations in ample measure within his reach, he con- 
 tinued steadily devoted to scientific pursuits, and only 
 lived for the studies of the naturalist. He remained 
 out of Parliament ; he went little into any society but 
 that of learned men ; his relaxation was confined to 
 exercise, and to angling, of which he was so fond, that 
 he would devote days and even nights to it ; and as it 
 happened that Lord Sandwich had the same taste, and 
 that both possessed estates in Lincolnshire, they be- 
 came intimately acquainted, and saw much of one 
 another. So zealous were both these friends in the 
 prosecution of this sport, that Sir Joseph used to tell 
 of a project they had formed for suddenly draining the 
 Serpentine by letting off the water ; and he was wont 
 to lament their scheme being discovered the night 
 
340 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 before it was to have been executed : their hope was 
 to have thrown much light on the state and habits of 
 the fish. 
 
 In May, 1766, he was elected a member of the 
 Royal Society, and the same year he accompanied his 
 friend Sir Thomas Adams in the Niger, entrusted with 
 a voyage to Newfoundland. Mr. Banks's object was 
 the collection of plants : what the object of the parti- 
 cular voyage might be I am not informed. On his 
 return to England by way of Lisbon, early in 1767, 
 he resumed, or rather continued, his studies in botany 
 and natural history; and the intimacy which he formed 
 with Dr. Solan der, a favourite pupil of Linnaeus, now 
 settled at the British Museum as Assistant-Librarian, 
 greatly facilitated his application to these pursuits. 
 
 The commencement of George the Third's reign was 
 distinguished most honourably, both for the Sovereign 
 and for his favourite minister, Lord Bute, by an extra- 
 ordinary regard for the interests of science. That dis- 
 tinguished person, the victim of much popular prejudice 
 and misrepresentation, formed a rare exception to most 
 statesmen who have governed this country, for he was 
 fond of philosophical studies, and was a successful as 
 well as a diligent cultivator of some of the sciences. 
 Accordingly, the patronage of the Crown was extended 
 to others who had like tastes, and it was most judici- 
 ously employed in promoting the discovery of distant 
 regions not before explored by the adventurous spirit 
 of navigators. Captain Wallis had recently brought us 
 acquainted with some of the more remarkable groups 
 of islands which stud one portion of the Pacific Ocean ; 
 and it was resolved to promote these discoveries, for 
 the advancement of natural science, without any views 
 of conquest. In 1676 Halley, while residing at the 
 Island of St. Helena, had made an important observa- 
 tion on the transit of Mercury over the sun's disc. But 
 he had bequeathed to astronomers a far more important 
 recommendation, to mark the transit of Venus, an event 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 341 
 
 of much more rare occurrence, and which he could not 
 hope to see, as it was calculated to happen next in the 
 year 1761. He had shown how complete a measure 
 that phenomenon would afford of the sun's parallax, 
 or the angle subtended by the earth's radius at the 
 surface of the sun. This angle could be with great 
 accuracy best ascertained by different contemporaneous 
 observations at distant points of the arc which the 
 planet described in its passage, the planet affording, 
 as it were, an object between the sun and the earth, 
 a kind of signal-post, by means of which the angle 
 sought might be measured. 
 
 Accordingly, in 1761 the British Government sent 
 one observer, Mr. Mason, to the Cape, and another Dr. 
 Maskelyne, to St. Helena. The French Government 
 at the same time sent Le Gentil to Pondicherry, in the 
 East Indies, and La Chappe to Tobolsk, in Siberia, and 
 Pingre to Rodrigues, near the Mauritius. But the 
 weather proved so unfavourable that no certain con- 
 clusion could be derived from their observations ; for 
 though Pingre and Mason's observations proved after- 
 wards to be correct, they differed so widely from the 
 others that the whole subject remained in great un- 
 certainty. A second transit was expected in 1769, and 
 the British Government now sent an astronomer (Mr. 
 Green) again to make those important observations. 
 
 The great value of the object in view is manifest. 
 If we can ascertain the parallax, we have, by an easy 
 process, the exact distance of the sun from the earth ; 
 for, as in every triangle the sides are as the sines of the 
 opposite angles, the distance of the sun must be to the 
 earth's radius as the sine of an angle not sensibly dif- 
 fering from a right angle, that is, as unity to the sine 
 of the horizontal parallax. Henco the distance is equal 
 to the radius of the earth divided by the sine of that 
 very small angle. The distances from the sun of the 
 other planets are easily found, because we know their 
 relative distances ; and the real diameters of the sun 
 
342 SIE JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 and of these bodies are likewise deducible from the 
 same angles. The whole structure of the planetary or 
 solar system thus depended upon ascertaining the angle 
 of parallax ; and nothing, therefore, could be more 
 becoming the rulers of two such kingdoms as France 
 and England, than to promote by every means the suc- 
 cess of these observations. While one expedition was 
 sent to the Pacific, Otaheite being the place chosen for 
 the experiment, Messrs. Dymond and Wales repaired 
 to Hudson's Bay, Mr. Call to Madras, and the Abbe de 
 la Chappe was sent to California. The Danish Govern- 
 ment sent Father Hell to Wardhus, near the North 
 Cape : the King of Sweden dispatched Planmann to 
 Caianeborg in Finland ; and the Empress of Russia sent 
 several observers to different parts of Siberia, with the 
 same views. Four of the observers those at Otaheite, 
 California, Hudson's Bay, and Wardhus were com- 
 pletely successful. The expedition to the Pacific had 
 for its principal, but not its only object, the observation 
 by Mr. Green of the transit. Everything that regarded 
 the natural history of the island fell within its scope ; 
 and the accurate survey of the coasts already known, 
 as well as the exploring of new lands, was an impor- 
 tant part of the wise and enlightened scheme. 
 
 As soon as Mr. Banks found that the voyage to the 
 South Seas was resolved upon, be applied to his friend 
 Lord Sandwich, then at the head of the Admiralty, for 
 leave to join the expedition with a suite of scientific 
 men, and this was immediately granted. He made his 
 preparations on the most liberal and extensive scale, 
 worthy of his fortune and his zeal for the advancement 
 of natural knowledge. He took with him Dr. Solan- 
 der, the distinguished botanist already mentioned. He 
 likewise took two draftsmen and four servants ; and, as 
 the expedition was placed under the government of the 
 naval service, all who joined it became subject to its 
 rules and its discipline. 
 
 The choice of Captain Cook, as commander, was 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 343 
 
 singularly fortunate, or rather it was perfectly judicious. 
 He had risen gradually from the humble station of an 
 apprentice in a collier of Whitby, till he became mate 
 of a vessel engaged in that trade, fitted beyond all 
 others to make excellent navigators, because it is car- 
 ried on by sailing upon a coast almost without any 
 harbour of refuge, and consequently exposes the mari- 
 ner to constant risks and exercises his unremitting 
 vigilance. When the war of 1756 broke out, (the 
 Seven Years' War,) he had volunteered into the navy, 
 and showed such talents in his profession, that the 
 Admiralty appointed him mate of a sloop, the Mersey, 
 in which he was present at the siege of Quebec, under 
 Wolfe. His skill and gallantry in laying down the 
 river and its soundings, previous to the attack, led to 
 his being employed in making a chart of the St. Law- 
 rence as far as the sea. Though he had never been 
 taught either surveying or drawing, this chart was long 
 the only one in use. He was, in consequence, made 
 master of the Northumberland frigate, and served in 
 that capacity till 1762, employing, however, his spare 
 time in the study of the mathematics, in which he re- 
 ceived most valuable assistance from a person of great 
 science, a pupil of the Bernouillis, Mr. afterwards Major 
 Desbarres ; and in 1764, his patron, Sir Hugh Palliser, 
 whose name has been blackened by the assiduous efforts 
 of political faction, but who for many years was the 
 firm friend and only patron of Cook, being appointed 
 to the Government of Newfoundland, obtained for him 
 the place of marine surveyor of that island and Labra- 
 dor. He held this place for nearly four years, and en- 
 riched hydrographical science by the most valuable 
 charts of those regions. The talents which he had dis- 
 played as a navigator were united to every bodily 
 quality that can fit men for either action, or labour, or 
 suffering an eye sure in estimating directions and dis- 
 tances ; a frame of iron; an entire indifference to fatigue, 
 or privations, or the times of wakefulness or of rest. 
 
314 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 But these natural aptitudes for great actions were even 
 exceeded by his excellent demeanour in every station 
 whether of obedience or of command, by his fertility 
 of resources in all difficult situations, by his calmness 
 in danger, his firmness and presence of mind on every 
 emergency, " Plurimum audaciae ad pericula capes- 
 senda, plurimum consilii inter ipsa pericula erat; nullo 
 labore aut corpus fatigari aut animus vinci poterat. 
 Caloris ac frigoris patientia par ; cibi potionisque de- 
 siderio naturali, non voluptate, modus finitus. Vigili- 
 arum somnique nee die nee nocte discriminata tempora: 
 id quod gerendis rebus superesset quieti datum." 
 (Liv. xxi. c. 4.) 
 
 So accomplished a seaman, or one so admirably 
 fitted for exploring new and unknown regions, guided 
 only by science and relying only on his own resources 
 in all perils and all emergencies, has never perhaps 
 been offered to the choice of a Government desirous 
 of promoting this interesting and difficult branch of 
 the public service. He was accordingly promoted to 
 the rank of Lieutenant and placed at the head of this 
 expedition. Such was the chief under whom Mr. 
 Banks embarked in this important enterprise ; and in 
 admiration of his great qualities he yielded to none of 
 his followers. There was, indeed, something exceed- 
 ingly congenial in the two characters ; the same love 
 of discipline, the same firmness of purpose, the same 
 exclusive devotion to the one object in view, the same 
 strict and even punctilious regard to the performance 
 of his duty, the same active habits, and the same con- 
 tempt of everything but action, distinguished alike 
 these eminent individuals, and knit them together in 
 an indissoluble friendship notwithstanding the some- 
 what stern temper of the one and the occasionally 
 irascible disposition of the other, and notwithstanding 
 the wide difference of the favourite pursuits to which 
 their several lives had been devoted. There was, 
 moreover, a considerable difference of age ; for Banks 
 
SIK JOSEPH BANKS. 345 
 
 was only in his twenty-sixth year, while Cook was 
 upwards of forty. 
 
 On the 25th of August, 1768, the Endeavour sailed 
 from Plymouth Sound; but the jealousy of the Brazil 
 Government preventing them from landing at Rio de 
 Janeiro, the first land at which they touched, (except 
 a few days at Madeira,) was the Terra del Fuego, the 
 southernmost point of the great American continent. 
 Here Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander made extensive 
 botanical collections ; but though it was the height of 
 summer in that severe climate, their attempts to ascend 
 the mountains were attended with extreme danger from 
 the severity of the snow storms and the excessive cold. 
 Three of their attendants perished ; and Dr. Solander 
 could only be saved from that deep sleep which proves 
 the forerunner of death, by the greater activity and 
 more powerful constitution of his younger companion, 
 who succeeded himself in casting off the drowsiness by 
 a strong and painful effort, and was enabled also to 
 rescue his friend. I have more than once heard him 
 discourse on the subject: he described the desire of 
 sleep which then stole over his senses as altogether 
 irresistible, and ascribed its force to the effect of the 
 cold in making all other desires with all the faculties 
 torpid. Motion seemed to produce little effect, for the 
 irresistible tendency was at every step to sink down, as 
 if the greatest suffering was to continue alive and awake, 
 the most delightful state to fall asleep and expire ; nor, 
 so far as I recollect his account, did any of them, while 
 yielding to this propensity, doubt that it was indulged 
 at the cost of life itself. Dr. Solander's case was pecu- 
 liarly remarkable. Accustomed to excessive cold in 
 travelling among the Norwegian and Swedish Alps, he 
 had warned his companions of the fate that awaited 
 them should they yield to drowsiness. " Whoever," 
 said he, " sits down, will sleep ; whoever sleeps will 
 wake no more." Yet was he soonest overpowered. 
 He insisted on being suffered to lie down. One of the 
 
346 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 men said, " all he desired was to lay down and die." 
 The Doctor did not quite say so ; but he acted on this 
 feeling. He fell asleep before he could reach the fire 
 which Mr. Banks had kindled. When the latter roused 
 him, his feet were found to be so shrunk that his shoes 
 fell off. 
 
 On the 26th of January, 1769, they sailed from Cape 
 Horn, and arrived, after a prosperous voyage, at Ota- 
 heite, on the llth of April. The delightful climate, 
 pleasing landscape, and amiable people which here 
 met them, may well be supposed to have enchanted 
 men who for eight long months had seen only the sea 
 and the sky, unless when they touched on the arid and 
 inhospitable coast of Terra del Fuego. But amid their 
 repose and relaxation, business never was forgotten. 
 They spent the time that elapsed before the Transit in 
 astronomical observations, and in a minute examination 
 of the island. Mr. Banks and his friend became tho- 
 roughly acquainted with every branch of its natural 
 history, but he also acquired extraordinary favour and 
 influence with the natives, insomuch that he became 
 the frequent arbiter in their disputes. This ascendant 
 he owed to his frank and manly carriage, his perfect 
 good humour, and his unfailing firmness, to which we 
 must certainly add his noble presence, so well fitted 
 to make an impression upon rude minds. An im- 
 portant service was rendered by him, and he was 
 enabled to render it through the influence which he 
 had thus acquired. When the observatory was estab- 
 lished on the 1st of May, and the instruments had 
 been taken on shore the evening before, it was found 
 that the quadrant, contained in a large packing-case, 
 and deposited in a tent guarded by a sentinel, had 
 been carried off. The whole object of the expedition 
 was frustrated should it not be recovered. Every 
 search proved unavailing. At last Mr. Banks went 
 into the woods, and his judicious and spirited exertions 
 proved successful; the precious instrument was restored 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 347 
 
 in perfect safety. In his expedition he was sometimes 
 surrounded by the crowd of impatient and angry na- 
 tives, and had to show his pistols in order to control 
 them. He went among them with a single attendant 
 only. 
 
 The event so anxiously expected, of the Transit, 
 took place at the time prefixed by the calculations, 
 June 3. As the critical day approached, the general 
 anxiety increased, and it descended from the astro- 
 nomer himself to the humblest mariner of the expedi- 
 tion. On the night of the 2nd not an eye was closed. 
 One rose every half hour to report the state of the 
 weather to the rest, who were kept on the alert by the 
 hope which arose when the sky was reported clear, or 
 the fear which the mention of a cloud produced ; but 
 next morning, to their unspeakable delight, the sun 
 was seen to rise without a cloud, and the serene clear 
 sky continued during the day. The observations were 
 accordingly among the best of any which the different 
 astronomers made of the phenomenon. The precau- 
 tion had been taken, judiciously suggested by Lord 
 Moreton, of making the observation at more places 
 than one; and Mr. Banks accompanied the party 
 which was despatched for that purpose to the Island of 
 Eimeo. An officer was sent to another station on the 
 main island, while Captain Cook and Dr. Solander 
 remained at the fort erected at Otaheite, with Mr. 
 Green, who there found the first external contact to 
 be at 9, 25, 42, and the beginning of emersion, and 
 the total emersion 3, 32, 10 ; so that about six hours 
 of serene and clear weather were required for this 
 important observation. The latitude was 17 29' 15" 
 south, the longitude 149 32' 30" west. 
 
 In the same year the transit of Mercury was after- 
 wards observed with equal success in the island of 
 Major near Mowtohera on the 9th November. The 
 weather, though it had been very thick for several 
 days before, proved most propitious on the 9th. Mr. 
 
348 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 Green made the internal contact 12, 8, 58, the external 
 12, 9, 55. Captain Cook's observation differed one 
 second as to the former, seven as to the latter. The 
 latitude was 36 48' 28" south. 
 
 From the observations of the transit of Venus by 
 the expedition compared with the four others in 
 Siberia, Lapland, Hudson's Bay, and California, the 
 sun's parallax was determined at 8" 78, and his dis- 
 tance from the earth was thence deduced to be 
 93,726,900 miles, upon the supposition that the radius 
 of the earth is 3985. The relative distances of the 
 planets being known, those of them all from the sun 
 were then determined.* 
 
 About six weeks after this important transaction, 
 the Endeavour proceeded on her voyage ; and first the 
 navigators cruised for some time among the group, 
 then little known, of the Society Islands. They next 
 proceeded in search of the great Southern Continent, 
 the Terra Australis, so long supposed to exist as a ba- 
 lance to the lands of the Northern hemisphere. On 
 the 9th of October it was thought to be discovered, land 
 being on that morning seen, with mountains of a lofty 
 height ; but it proved to be New Zealand, discovered, 
 in 1620 by Tasinan, who called it Staaten Island, but 
 never landed upon it; nor had it ever been since visited. 
 Captain Cook during six months sailed round it, and 
 fully explored its coasts. He found it to consist of 
 two large islands. On the 31st March, 1770, he began 
 his homeward voyage, and directed his course along 
 the east coast of New Holland, never before explored, 
 and indeed then quite unknown. On this voyage 
 every opportunity was seized of extending our know- 
 ledge, both of the natural history and the geo- 
 graphy of that vast region. The navigation was most 
 perilous, because the coast is surrounded with sharp 
 
 * Mercury, 36,281,700; Venus, 67,795,500; Mars, 142,218,000; 
 Jupiter, 487,472,000, and Saturn, 894,162,000. See ' Phil. Trans.' voL 
 lx., 1574, Prof. Hawley's paper. 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 349 
 
 coral reefs, which rise suddenly like a wall from the 
 water. 
 
 In spite of all difficulties he had safely run along 
 about 1300 miles of this unknown and savage coast, 
 when on the night of the 10th of June, some hours 
 after an alarm of being on a coral reef had been felt, 
 but passed away, a loud crash, followed quickly by a 
 second, too plainly told them that the vessel had struck. 
 The commander was instantly upon deck. I have heard 
 Sir Joseph Banks describe his habit of nightly making 
 all the arrangements, and giving all the orders which 
 he deemed necessary when running along an unknown 
 coast, and having a lee-shore under his bow. After 
 the usual direction to call him if anything occurred, 
 he would then calmly undress and go to bed, satisfied 
 that all precautions had been taken for every event 
 which could be foreseen or conjectured, and he was 
 immediately asleep. Upon that trying occasion he was 
 upon deck in his drawers as the second blow was struck, 
 and he gave his orders with his wonted coolness and 
 precision. The ship had grounded on a coral reef, 
 which surrounded her almost to the surface of the 
 water, but in a calm sea made no breach, and could 
 not be seen. She had been carried by the waves clear 
 over the ledge of rock, and lay on a hollow within it, 
 in some parts of which the water was not more than 
 three or four feet deep. The light of the moon showed, 
 to complete their distress, the sheathing-boards of the 
 ship floating all around, and at last her false keel, so 
 that their fate appeared imminent. It was necessary 
 to lighten her by all means, though the probability 
 appeared slight of her holding together till another 
 tide should enable them to get her off. The morning 
 disclosed a full view of their dreadful and dismal con- 
 dition. The land was at eight leagues' distance, and 
 no islets lay in the intermediate sea, on which the crew 
 could be landed and saved were they to quit the wreck, 
 the boats being wholly insufficient to take all the crew 
 
350 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 at once. Nothing could possibly be more desperate 
 than this appearance of things. Nevertheless, the sense 
 of imminent danger produced the strictest discipline ; 
 no attempts at insubordination were perceivable ; nor 
 any discontent ; but rather an alacrity, approaching to 
 cheerfulness, was shown by all ; and it was observed 
 that their awful situation restrained any loose or pro- 
 fane expressions, so that not an oath was to be heard 
 any more than a murmur. To lighten the ship, was now 
 the first object. Every thing, therefore, was thrown 
 overboard which could be spared, guns, heavy lumber, 
 ballast, stores; and yet two tides elapsed before she 
 could be got afloat. The moment of her floating was 
 truly an anxious one ; for the water had gained so fast 
 that there was a great probability of her going down 
 when no longer supported by the rocks. Every one 
 saw in his neighbour's countenance a reflection of the 
 despair he felt himself; but none gave way to such 
 feelings, and the suspense continued in silent anxiety 
 and dread. To their exceeding relief, at ten in the 
 morning, when she rode in deep water, the leak was 
 found to gain no faster than before, though her bottom 
 was by that time considerably damaged. The water, 
 however, could only be stemmed by the unceasing- 
 labour of the crew at the pumps night and day. The 
 men were so exhausted, that finding the leak still gain 
 upon them, they were on the point of giving it up in 
 despair, when one of the midshipmen suggested the 
 having recourse to an expedient which he had seen 
 
 Practised on a voyage to America, called fathering. 
 b consists in drawing under the ship's bottom a sail in 
 which there are stitched down oakum, flax, dung, and 
 other thick and light substances. The motion of the 
 leak draws in the sail with its stuff, and thus stops or 
 lessens the leak. He represented this process as having 
 proved so successful when he saw it tried, that the 
 vessel was allowed to make her homeward voyage 
 without further repair. Happily, being now tried, it 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 351 
 
 succeeded to a wish, and enabled a single pump to keep 
 the leak under. 
 
 They proceeded on their voyage till a river was 
 discovered in which they could give the ship (whose 
 name it now bears), the necessary repairs. But upon 
 laying her down and examining her bottom, they found 
 to what a singular circumstance they owed their pro- 
 vidential escape. A large fragment of the coral had 
 forced its way through the timber, and was found 
 sticking in the leak so as in a great measure to stop 
 it, otherwise the size of the aperture was such that it 
 must have sent the vessel at once to the bottom. The 
 boats being wholly insufficient to save the crew, it may 
 easily be conceived with what feelings all regarded 
 this most extraordinary escape. Captain Cook, in his 
 account of the voyage, gives high praise to all, (he 
 mentions Mr. Banks and his party expressly), for their 
 cool and orderly conduct, and their firm and active 
 exertions during this perilous crisis. 
 
 A new calamity, however, now appeared to sadden 
 them, when the joy had scarcely subsided to which 
 their merciful escape gave rise. The scurvy began to 
 make its appearance ; and, among others, Mr. Green 
 the astronomer, and Tupia, a native who had accom- 
 panied them from the wish to visit England, were so 
 severely attacked that there seemed no means of stem- 
 ming the disease. The country was explored to find 
 fresh vegetables for the relief of the sick, and Mr. Banks, 
 with his wonted activity and skill, served to guide 
 these important expeditions. In the course of them 
 he discovered the strange quadruped since so familiarly 
 known both to naturalists and the vulgar, the kangaroo. 
 He also found a supply offish, turtle, and large cockles, 
 and some vegetables, which proved a most seasonable 
 relief. Nor were his researches concerning the man- 
 ners and habits of the natives less interesting to science; 
 indeed, it is principally to him that we owe the accu- 
 rate descriptions of the natives seen and conversed 
 
352 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 with in the course of the voyage, a description which 
 forms a new and important chapter in the general his- 
 tory of our species. In prosecuting these inquiries 
 his courage was as conspicuous as his activity and his 
 judgment. He would expose himself to their collected 
 multitudes when some inadvertent proceeding had 
 roused their anger, or would resist them when a thirst 
 of plunder incited them to threaten ; he would visit 
 their habitations unattended by any force whatever ; 
 he would sleep for nights together on the ground at 
 many leagues' distance from the crew of the vessel, 
 and accompanied only by two or three attendants, re- 
 gardless of the peril in which he must have been placed 
 had the natives, possibly living close by, discovered 
 the place of his repose. 
 
 After remaining on this coast above six weeks, they 
 set sail again on the 3rd of August, but it was a grievous 
 disappointment to find, on examining the pumps, that 
 they were all decayed and unfit for service, so that 
 their only trust was in the strength of the vessel's tim- 
 bers. Fortunately she made no more than an inch of 
 water in the hour. A gale, which soon assailed them, 
 and lasted for some days, did no material damage. 
 The navigation was, however, beset by reefs of rocks 
 and shoals, through the narrow openings of which they 
 escaped almost miraculously. At length, after three 
 months of constant peril, they burst as it were into a 
 wide and deep sea, the swell of which showed that no 
 land was near. The leak, however, had now increased 
 to nine inches an hour, and in two days more they 
 were surrounded by breakers, and in a more dangerous 
 position than ever : nor did they escape except by the 
 sudden springing up of a light breeze at the moment 
 when they were helplessly and hopelessly drifting on 
 the rocks. 
 
 Then, after repairing the vessel, Captain Cook pro- 
 ceeded on his cruise through the most intricate navi- 
 gation in the world ; then, too, first explored the tract 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 353 
 
 of reefs and islands on the northern part of the east 
 coast ; and having now examined and laid down above 
 two thousand miles of coast, he formally took posses- 
 sion of the country for the British crown, giving it the 
 name of New South Wales. From thence he pro- 
 ceeded to New Guinea, which he proved to be an 
 island separate from New Holland ; and, on the 9th of 
 October he arrived at Batavia, where it was necessary 
 to give the ship a thorough repair. Upon examining 
 her bottom it was found in many places worn to the 
 thinness of the sole of a shoe, and in other places it 
 appeared that there had, since the accident, been 
 nothing between them and the water but a lock of 
 wool jammed between the planks ; so small was the 
 distance, so feeble the barrier by which, in traversing 
 the Indian Ocean, they had been for weeks separated 
 and saved from the unfathomable deep ! The gravest 
 malady, however, that visited the expedition, the 
 fever, now broke out in that pestilential climate. 
 Seven of the crew died in a few days ; and so many 
 more were sick that not ten men remained fit for duty. 
 Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander were so ill that their lives 
 were despaired of, and they were only saved by going 
 into the country. The iron frame of Cook himself was 
 seen to yield ; he, too, fell seriously ill. When they 
 set sail, 26th December, Mr. Banks was carried on 
 board, and his life still despaired of. The ravages of 
 the fever continued throughout the voyage ; and the 
 nightly corse was frequently heard to plunge in the 
 water. Before they reached the Cape, 15th March, 
 three-and-twenty thus perished, including Mr. Green 
 the astronomer, and Mr. Munkhouse, the midshipman, 
 whose suggestion had saved the ship. After remain- 
 ing there a month, they sailed for England. Nothing 
 material occurred on the voyage, and on the 12th 
 July, 1771, the Endeavour cast anchor in the Downs, 
 giving over her gallant and prudent commander, with 
 2 A 
 
354 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 his adventurous company, to the admiration and grati- 
 tude of their country. 
 
 Before the vessel was allowed to have any com- 
 munication with the shore, Captain Cook required 
 every person on Board to deliver up all his jour- 
 nals, notes, drawings and other papers a requisition 
 which was immediately and cheerfully complied with. 
 No leave was given to make any disclosures or any 
 separate publication until the Government had deter- 
 mined on the person into whose hands the official ac- 
 counts should be placed for being communicated to 
 the public. Dr. Hawkesworth was pitched upon, and 
 he is allowed to have performed his task with reason- 
 able ability and with perfect fidelity. Mr. Parkinson, 
 brother of one of Sir Joseph Banks's attendants, indeed 
 his draughtsman, broke through the rule, and pub- 
 lished a tract with drawings ; but the book was speedily 
 bought up by his liberal and spirited employer, and 
 the irregular publication proceeded no further. 
 
 The results of the voyage were highly important. 
 The observations necessary for ascertaining the solar 
 parallax had been made with perfect success. The 
 manners of the natives in the Society Islands had been 
 examined, and the singular state of their society ascer- 
 tained. Their products, vegetable, mineral, and animal, 
 as well as those of New Holland, New Zealand, and 
 New Guinea, had been fully explored, chiefly by Mr. 
 Banks and his learned companion. The coast of New 
 Holland had been thoroughly surveyed as well as the 
 whole of New Zealand. These two islands had been 
 shown not to form a portion of any southern continent; 
 and the existence of such a continent as far as the 47th 
 degree of south latitude had been disproved. All now 
 joined in rendering due praise to the leaders of the 
 expedition ; and its illustrious commander was immedi- 
 ately raised a step in the naval profession. But it is 
 fit that we here pause to reflect on the large share which 
 Mr. Banks had in the conduct of the expedition, that 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 355 
 
 is, in the collection of the vast and important informa- 
 tion which was its result information not confined to 
 natural history, but extending to the manners, the habits, 
 and the condition of the natives. It was from the re- 
 cord duly and faithfully kept of his observations that 
 the history of the voyage was subsequently compiled ; 
 and Dr. Hawkesworth (Introduction) expressly states 
 that he felt concerned at delivering his account in the 
 person of the commander, when, as to all but the nau- 
 tical part, he would have preferred making Mr. Banks 
 speak. This was proposed to him, " but the proposal 
 was generously overruled !" 
 
 Important, however, as were the results of the voy- 
 age, it had not extended our knowledge of the southern 
 hemisphere beyond the 47th degree ; and as it was still 
 supposed possible that the Terra Australis might be in 
 a higher latitude, to which the instructions of Capt. 
 Cook had not before reached, a new expedition was 
 fitted out early in the following year, under the same 
 great navigator. It is impossible to reflect without 
 astonishment and admiration on that ardour for the 
 advancement of science, and that noble disregard of 
 both dangers and fatigues, and annoyance of every 
 kind, in the pursuit of his favourite object which could 
 induce Mr. Banks again, after a few months of repose, 
 to volunteer his services. These were gladly accepted, 
 and his preparations were made on so vast a scale as 
 required, even with his ample means, the raising of 
 money by way of loan. He engaged Zoffany, the 
 painter, and three draughtsmen ; he took two secretaries 
 and nine servants, well versed in the art of preserv- 
 ing plants and animals ; all the books, drawings, and 
 instruments required for his studies, and all the stores 
 which so numerous a suite could desire, were provided 
 with profusion. Everything seemed ready for his join- 
 ing the expedition, when the constant thwarting which 
 he received at each turn from the Navy Board, espe- 
 cially from its chief, the Comptroller, wore out his 
 
356 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 patience, and he reluctantly abandoned this enterprise 
 so near his heart. The name of the wrong-doer must 
 not be suffered to perish, and thus escape the scorn 
 which it so well deserves from each friend of science, 
 and of a liberal and enlightened national policy ; nor 
 must it be concealed even because of the great service 
 he had before rendered by his patronage of Capt. Cook. 
 The Comptroller who thus thwarted both the wishes of 
 the scientific world and the views of his own official 
 superiors, probably from being one that 
 
 Hated learning worse than toad or asp, 
 
 was Sir Hugh Palliser. The common report that Capt. 
 Cook had himself objected to and frustrated Sir Joseph's 
 plan of accompanying him, is against all probability, 
 and it rests on no evidence whatever. A letter of the 
 Captain's is given in the Appendix, and it betokens an 
 entire disposition to aid his friend and fellow-voyager 
 in his arrangements. 
 
 Mr. Banks, however, was determined not altogether 
 to lose the fruits of his extensive and costly prepara- 
 tions for an expedition which he was thus prevented 
 from joining. He fitted out a voyage to Iceland, which 
 he undertook with his trusty and tried friend, Dr. So- 
 lander, and with a Swedish clergyman, Dr. Von Troil, 
 of Iceland. Including draughtsmen, secretaries, sea- 
 men and attendants, there were forty persons in com- 
 pany ; and in August, 1772, they reached the island. 
 They remained there for a month, examining everything 
 that related to its natural history, and especially the 
 volcano, Hecla, and the boiling springs, Reykum and 
 Geyser, for which it is famous. A rich collection of 
 books and manuscripts was likewise purchased, and pre- 
 sented by Mr. Banks to the British Museum. Dr. Von 
 Troil, who afterwards became Archbishop of Upsal, 
 published a full and interesting account of the voyage. 
 Mr. Banks left the subject in his hands with his wonted 
 aversion to the pursuit of literary fame, and his habitual 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 357 
 
 undervaluing of all but the exertions required to per- 
 form great or useful actions. 
 
 After his return to England, he settled in London, 
 except the short period every summer which he passed 
 at Revesby, his seat in Lincolnshire. His hospitality 
 in the country was quite unbounded, and extended to 
 all parties and all classes. His house in Soho Square 
 was with its noble library, and precious collection of 
 maps, drawings, and engravings, connected with botany, 
 and the various branches of natural history, always open 
 to the student and the author. Foreigners as well as 
 natives were ever his welcome guests, and it was his 
 delight to be surrounded by the cultivators and the 
 promoters of science in all its branches. 
 
 In 1777, Sir John Pringle resigned his office as 
 President of the Royal Society, and in Nov. 1778, Mr. 
 Banks was chosen his successor. He lost no time in 
 devoting himself with his accustomed ardour to the 
 duties of his high station, and for some years his ad- 
 ministration was carried on with general approval. 
 But the person who undertakes to reform abuses in 
 any public department, must lay his account with 
 making enemies ; and though these may be at the first 
 few in number, and of little weight, they form a centre, 
 around which will soon gather all, who on any account 
 are discontented ; all who regard a superior with envy 
 or an exalted equal with jealousy; not seldom all who 
 would fain displace him, and succeed to his station. 
 So it fared with Mr. Banks ; for he too, had early per- 
 ceived, and speedily checked some manifest abuses. 
 The chief of these was the ease with which the door 
 of the Society was opened, to admit all who desired to 
 be Fellows. The Secretaries might be almost said to 
 elect them at their pleasure ; for whoever wished to 
 add the title of F.R.S. to his name, as author of a book, 
 or as a Divine seeking preferment, or as a Physician in 
 quest of practice, had only to become acquainted with 
 those officers, and obtain their good will. Their con- 
 
358 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 stant intercourse with the members gave them so many 
 opportunities of recommendation, that the election was 
 quite secure of any whom they chose to favour. The 
 President was little consulted, whose especial duty, 
 however, it is, to preserve the purity of election, and 
 to see that improper or improvident choice be not 
 made. It is well known that D'Alembert, in allusion 
 to the extreme prodigality with which the honours of 
 the fellowship were distributed, was in use to ask jocu- 
 larly any person going to England, if he desired to be 
 made a member, as he could easily obtain it for him, 
 should he think it any honour. The new President 
 was resolved that this should no longer be allowed, 
 and though the unlimited number of its fellows must 
 always prevent the place of F.R.S. from being an ob- 
 ject of so much value and of so much desire as that of 
 an Academician in France, he thought that at all events 
 it should be restored to somewhat of its primitive value, 
 by being no longer indiscriminately bestowed. Two 
 principles were laid down by him ; first, that any per- 
 son who had successfully cultivated science, especially 
 by original investigations, should be admitted, what- 
 ever might be his rank or his fortune ; secondly, that 
 men of wealth or station, disposed to promote, adorn, 
 and patronise science, should, but with due caution and 
 deliberation, be occasionally allowed to enter. There 
 could be no objection to these principles, or to limiting 
 the choice in future to cases thus defined. It is to be 
 lamented that an end was not also put to the extremely 
 absurd and even degrading statute by which, while all 
 others must have their claims published twelve weeks 
 before being considered, Peers and Privy Councillors 
 may be balloted for the moment they are proposed 
 a law every way bad in itself, and worse in its execu- 
 tion, for that which is really intended as distinction, is 
 in practice regarded as unimportant, and the claim of 
 no person of rank is ever subjected to the least scru- 
 tiny; he is chosen at once on being proposed. But 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 359 
 
 the other and pressing case of abuse, the indiscriminate 
 election, was at once corrected by Mr. Banks, and with 
 a firm hand. He announced to the secretaries and 
 members his determination to watch over the appli- 
 cations for admission, and the election by ballot. Pre- 
 vious to the election, he spoke to the members who 
 usually attended ; he gave his opinion freely on the 
 merits of candidates, and when he considered a rejec- 
 tion proper, he hesitated not to advise it giving his 
 opinion, and recommending, or asking a black-ball 
 from individuals at the time of the ballot. The con- 
 sequence was the rejection of several persons, and this 
 was afterwards made the chief ground of attack upon 
 him in the dissensions which unfortunately broke out, 
 and for some time grievously disturbed the peace of 
 the Society. 
 
 The immediate occasion of these dissensions, how- 
 ever, was an accident of a different kind. The office 
 of Secretary for Foreign Correspondence had been con- 
 ferred upon Dr. Charles Hutton, a mathematician of 
 distinguished reputation, and whose official duties at 
 the Koyai Academy of Woolwich, obliged him to re- 
 side there. Some neglect of his duties, as Secre- 
 tary was said to have been thus occasioned. Upon 
 examination, the. charge was found to rest on very in- 
 sufficient grounds ; and the childish complaint of M. 
 Bonnet, of Geneva, that a dry and laconic answer had 
 been returned to his letter, accompanying a present of 
 his works, really appears to be the only remains of the 
 accusation which a full inquiry left standing against 
 Dr. Hutton.* It was a much more serious charge, 
 that he held no communication with the President; 
 and certainly this was mainly imputable to his residing 
 at a distance. The Council passed a resolution, 20th 
 
 * The feeble and very trimming tract of Dr. Kippis on these disputes, 
 seriously represents the dry style of Dr. Hutton' s letter as worthy of blame. 
 The doctor desiderated more courtesy, that is, flummery after the foreign 
 fashion. 
 
360 SIB JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 November, 1783, recommending that the Foreign Secre- 
 tary should reside in London, and Dr. Button tendered 
 his resignation. The emoluments of the office were 
 only twenty pounds a-year, from a bequest of Mr. Keck 
 half a century before ; and Dr. Hutton having to hire 
 chambers in town for the performance of his official 
 duties, had been in reality a loser by holding the place. 
 
 This resolution of the Council, and resignation of 
 the Foreign Secretary, immediately caused a great sen- 
 sation in the society. It appears that the embers of 
 discontent with the President's administration had been 
 for some time smouldering ; and now the spark acci- 
 dentally flung, made them break out in a flame. Dr. 
 Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, really considered 
 his friend Dr. Hutton as ill-treated ; so might Baron 
 Maseres, and one or two others ; but the most active 
 mover, who indeed took the lead in the opposition to 
 the Council, was Dr. Horsley, a priest of intolerant 
 nature, of extreme arrogance, of violent temper, and 
 guided by a most inflated estimate of his own im- 
 portance as a cultivator of mathematical science, in 
 which capacity he was nearly if not altogether insigni- 
 ficant. Finding himself joined with Dr. Maskelyne 
 and Baron Maseres, he chose to hoist a standard for 
 the mathematical sciences in opposition to natural his- 
 tory, which the President and his especial friends 
 chiefly cultivated ; and he considered the treatment of 
 Dr. Hutton as an overt act of hostility to those studies 
 to which he untruly represented that his own life was 
 devoted. 
 
 The motion was carried, by a majority of thirty to 
 twenty-five, that Dr. Hutton be thanked for his services 
 as Foreign Secretary ; and Sir Joseph Banks's party 
 committed their first error in opposing this proposition, 
 on a ground, plausible, but wholly insufficient, that the 
 Council alone, and not the Society at large, had the 
 means of judging how far the duties of Dr. Hutton's 
 office had been well performed. The New Council 
 
361 
 
 coming into office 29th November, affirmed, with a 
 single dissentient voice, the resolution of their prede- 
 cessors, requiring the Foreign Secretary to reside in 
 London. Before the next meeting of the Society, Dr. 
 Hutton's written defence was read, and a resolution 
 was passed by a large majority (45 to 15), that, " if 
 he had been censured, he had fully justified himself." 
 Here the matter might have ended, and here it cer- 
 tainly would have ended, had the case of Dr. Hutton 
 alone furnished the matter of dispute. But it was the 
 occasion, not the cause of the dissension. A party had 
 clearly been formed against the President : at the 
 head of that party Dr. Horsley had placed himself; 
 he had raised an absurd cry that the mathematics were 
 neglected, and botany alone patronised ; and he was 
 plainly looking to eject Sir Joseph Banks, and raise 
 himself to the chair. This enabled the latter to com- 
 mit his second great error the calling in members 
 who were only titular, and never took a part in the 
 ordinary business of the Society, any more than they 
 were capable of sharing in its labours. These came 
 down on the 8th January, 1784, in great numbers ; 
 and, after a long debate, they carried, by a large ma- 
 jority of 119 to 42, a vote of confidence, " approving 
 of Sir Joseph Banks as President, and resolving to sup- 
 port him in his office." At a subsequent meeting, a 
 motion for rescinding the resolution of the Council on 
 the residence of the foreign Secretary, was lost by a 
 majority of 85 to 47 ; as were afterwards, by still 
 larger majorities, three several motions, censuring all 
 endeavours of the President to influence the votes of 
 members by solicitation, either on elections or on any 
 other matters. The two most important of these 
 motions were lost by 115 to 27, the other by 102 to 
 23. Mr. Maty, a person of some accomplishments, of 
 amiable character, of hasty, fickle temper, who had 
 warmly sided with the President's opponents, soon 
 after resigned his place as one of the ordinary secre- 
 
362 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 taries ; Dr. Blagden was chosen his successor by 139 
 to 39, Dr. Hutton being the other candidate. It was 
 possibly a third error of the President, that he sought 
 for a defender in a learned equity barrister, the Ac- 
 countant-general, Mr. Anguish, who was unknown in 
 the Society for any philosophic attainments ; while the 
 opposite party, in availing themselves of Mr. Poore's 
 and Mr. Watson's aid, had advocates who were re- 
 spected in the literary world. 
 
 The main charge urged in these debates against the 
 President, was his interference with elections: and 
 this was loudly objected to, both as overbearing, even 
 despotic, and as having excluded several persons, 
 worthy of the honour they sought. The general 
 objection was wholly groundless. Sir Joseph Banks 
 only interfered as he was bound by the duty of his 
 office to interfere ; and if his frank and manly nature, 
 despising all indirect roads to his object, scorning all 
 covert proceedings to attain that which he felt bound 
 to seek the honour and the advantage of the Society 
 made him openly state his objections to candidates, 
 and openly ask his brethren to join in rejecting them, 
 instead of canvassing against them in the dark, no 
 better reason can be assigned for loudly" applauding 
 the course which he took. That he might have com- 
 mitted mistakes in one or two instances is equally 
 certain. The rejection of Major Desbarres, already 
 mentioned as a pupil of the Bernouillis, and the 
 instructor of Captain Cook, and soon after appointed 
 to a foreign government, was the strongest case cited; 
 the only other person of admitted merit, among the 
 twelve black-balled in four years, was Mr. Henry 
 Clarke of Manchester, a schoolmaster, and a writer of 
 some merit on mathematical subjects ; and all admitted 
 that the President's interference had proved most 
 useful to the Society's honour, in carrying the rejection 
 of four or five unworthy candidates. These, under the 
 old and lax system, would in all probability have found 
 
SIE JOSEPH BANKS. 363 
 
 their way into the Society, though their object only 
 was to use the title of Fellows as a snare for enticing 
 customers.* 
 
 As for the charge of favouring natural history at the 
 expense of the severer sciences, never was anything 
 more unfounded. Full as many papers had been 
 received and printed by Sir Joseph Banks's Council on 
 the latter subject, as had ever been so treated in any 
 other period ; quite as small a proportion of papers 
 upon the former. The Copley medal, five times be- 
 stowed, had been thrice given to mathematical and 
 astronomical papers, twice to chemical; and I may add, 
 never either then or since, to papers upon the subjects 
 which the President was supposed most to favour. 
 The appearance of a naturalist in the chair was a 
 phenomenon by no means now for the first time ob- 
 served in the sphere of the Society. Sir Isaac Newton 
 himself had been succeeded by Sir Hans Sloane, who 
 filled the chair fourteen years, and preceded by Lord 
 Somers, whose eminence is certainly not scientific, 
 though it may be of a higher order. Of the nineteen 
 Presidents before Sir Joseph Banks, nearly, if not 
 quite the greater number were men of eminent station, 
 who never, either before or after their elevation to the 
 chair, were known to have cultivated, much less im- 
 proved, any branch of " natural knowledge." Nor let 
 it be supposed, as Dr. Horsley and his more factious 
 adherents used to represent, that none but botanists 
 opposed their proceedings, and sided with the Presi- 
 dent. The names of Cavendish, "Watson, Fordyce, 
 Heberden, Hunter, Kirwan, are quite sufficient, both 
 in number and value, to rescue Sir J. Banks's sup- 
 porters from that imputation, and to take from their 
 adversaries all pretence that they had a monopoly of 
 important science. 
 
 Although the majorities were obtained and the de- 
 
 * One was the patentee of a new water-closet. 
 
364 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 bates chiefly carried 011 by men who did not usually 
 attend, there can be no doubt that the Society was 
 greatly benefitted by their interference. The asperity 
 which had marked the progress of the contest was testi- 
 fied in the speeches of the opposition leader, Dr. Horsley. 
 He had, moreover, given a great and threatening notice 
 of so many motions as might occupy the Society 
 for the whole session, and until the annual period 
 came round for electing the officers, when he plainly 
 hinted his hope that another President would be 
 chosen. The haughtiness of this arrogant ecclesiastic's 
 tone in the debates gave general offence, even to those 
 who might be disposed to admit the cleverness of his 
 speeches. When, perceiving a defeat approaching, 
 he threatened a secession of the mathematical party, 
 he exclaimed, " The President will then be left with 
 his train of feeble amateurs and that toy* upon the 
 table ; the ghost of the Society in which Philosophy 
 once reigned, and Newton presided as her minister." 
 
 To have saved the Society from such a consumma- 
 tion as being under Dr. Horsley's presidency was truly 
 a service of the highest value, which, in a somewhat 
 unusual though certainly not an irregular manner, was 
 rendered by the members who attended and resisted 
 the factious combination. His assuming the station of 
 leader among the mathematicians was altogether pre- 
 posterous ; and he might have been raised to the chair, 
 by dint of the intrigue which he set on foot, and the 
 ferment which he excited in the bosom of the Society, 
 without any victory whatever being gained for mathe- 
 matical and physical science. His writings had never 
 placed him higher than a mere " amateur," and a some- 
 what "feeble amateur" in all essentials, though stout 
 enough in the overbearing language of his polemical 
 writings, and magniloquent enough in the diction of his 
 self-laudatory prefaces. Some of his efforts are merely 
 
 * The mace, to which he pointed. 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 365 
 
 puerile, like the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which he tried, 
 he says, " Diis propitiis usus ;" some are far too easy 
 to confer any fame, like the restoration of Apollonius's 
 Inclinations ; while his great attempt, an edition of 
 Newton, is confessed by all to be as signal a failure as 
 any on record in the history of science.* 
 
 The escape from such a chief was further enhanced 
 in value by the excellent qualities of him whom the 
 victory kept in the chair. He showed no jealousy of 
 any rival, no prejudice in one person's favour rather 
 than another's. He was equally accessible to all, for 
 counsel and for help ; where his own knowledge did 
 not suffice, he could easily obtain the aid of those more 
 devoted to the subject of the application. His house, 
 his library, his whole valuable collections, were at all 
 times open to men of science ; while his credit, both 
 with our own and foreign Governments, and, if need 
 were, the resource of his purse, was ever ready to help 
 the prosecution of their inquiries. I know of many 
 persons, since eminent, who when only tyros in science, 
 and wholly unknown to fame, have been patronized by 
 
 * The reader who compares Bishop Horsley's praises of his own exploits 
 with the exploits themselves, will readily concur in Professor Playfair's 
 opinion of them expressed delicately but sharply in the fourth volume of 
 the ' Edinburgh Review.' He has not indeed entered into particulars, as 
 to the great failure, the ' Newton.' But who can read an edition of the 
 ' Principia,' the ' Optics,' and the ' Fluxions,' published in 1778-80, and not 
 marvel at the author's apparent ignorance of all that had been done since 
 Sir I. Newton's time? There is not a word of the Calculus of Variations 
 or of Partial Differences, not an allusion to D'Alembert's principle of 
 Dynamics, nor to the objection of the Bernouillis and D' Alembert, touch- 
 ing the Hydraulic Cataract; no reference to the progress of Hydrodyna- 
 mical science; nor to the discoveries of Dollond and others on refraction. 
 Indeed the ' Optics ' is given almost without note or comment, while the 
 comments on the ' Principia' are only upon passages of no difficulty, leaving 
 the darker ones in their original obscurity, unless where reference is made 
 to the commentary of Le Sueur and Jacquier, Varignon and Herman 
 and the Bernouillis are unnoticed. In short no one can read the book, 
 however cursorily, and rise from its perusal with the least respect for the 
 Right Reverend Editor, or the least disposition to admit his claim either as 
 head of the mathematicians whom he marshalled to defeat, or as aspiring 
 to fill the Society's chair. 
 
366 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 him ; and one of these tells me, with grateful recollec- 
 tion, of the kindness he experienced in his younger 
 days from that useful and liberal patron, " who would 
 (says my friend) send all over Europe and further to 
 
 fet either the information or the thing that I wished to 
 ave." Where private aid failed of the desired effects, 
 he had access to the Government; he could obtain coun- 
 tenance and assistance from the public departments, 
 beside removing those many and so often insurmount- 
 able obstacles which the forms of office and the preju- 
 dices of official men plant in the way of literary re- 
 search. 
 
 Many circumstances concurred to give Sir Joseph 
 Banks the power which he so largely exercised of 
 patronizing and promoting the labours of scientific men. 
 His ample fortune; the station which he filled in society; 
 the favour which he enjoyed at Court and with the 
 Ministers of the Crown ; the fame of his voyages ; his 
 indefatigable industry ; his ever-wakeful attention to 
 the representations and requests of the student; his 
 entire freedom from all the meaner feelings which mere 
 literary men are but too apt to entertain one towards 
 another ; his great natural quickness and unerring saga- 
 city, never leaving him long to seek for the point of 
 any argument, nor ever suffering him to be deceived 
 by plausible errors or designing parties ; his large and 
 accurate knowledge of mankind, and of men as well as 
 of man ; the practical wisdom which he had gathered 
 from extensive and varied experience all formed in 
 him an assemblage of qualities, natural and acquired, 
 extrinsic or accidental, and intrinsic or native, so rare 
 as had hardly ever met together in any other individual. 
 
 . . Quid virtus et quid sapientia possit 
 Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem. 
 ..... Multorum providus urbes 
 Et mores hominum inspexit ; latumque per sequor 
 Dum sibi, dum sociis reditum parat, aspera multa 
 Pertulit adversis rerum immersabilis undis. (Hor. Ep.) 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 367 
 
 He was thus for upwards of forty years the great 
 promoter of philosophical pursuits ; and it may fairly 
 be said, that no one, either before or since his time, 
 ever occupied the high station in which he was placed 
 with such eminent advantage to the interests of the 
 scientific world. 
 
 His own studies continued, as they always had been, 
 devoted to natural history ; and botany was the portion 
 of it which he chiefly loved to cultivate. He was, 
 perhaps, the most accomplished botanist of his day, 
 and among the very first in the other branches of 
 natural history. During the greater part of his life 
 his time and his fortune were assiduously bestowed on 
 the preparation of a magnificent series of botanical 
 drawings and engravings. But he never retained any 
 of these, as it were, locked up for his own gratification; 
 and his habitual indifference to literary fame made him 
 so slow to publish, that he is believed to have given 
 over to other cultivators of the same studies the fruits 
 of his own labour, as constantly as these fruits were 
 ripened and ready to be gathered in ; and while all 
 men's books were crowded with his designs, and all 
 men's inquiries promoted by the stores of his know- 
 ledge, he alone reaped no fame from his researches, 
 nor profited by the treasures which he had amassed, 
 except by the gratification of seeing them made sub- 
 servient to the progress of his favourite pursuits. 
 
 A baronetcy had been bestowed on him in 
 1780, and in 1795 he was invested with the Order 
 of the Bath, a rare instance in those days of this 
 distinction being bestowed on any but a military or 
 a diplomatic person ; not, however, by any means the 
 first instance ; for Sir Kobert Atkins, the Chief Baron, 
 was also a Knight of the Order. In 1797, he was 
 made a Privy Councillor. He was chosen Kecorder 
 of Boston on the Duke of Ancaster's death. Though 
 often pressed to take a seat in Parliament, he always 
 declined. The favour which he enjoyed with George 
 
368 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 III. was of long standing : that Prince loved the manly 
 frankness of his character, the cburage with which he 
 had so often exposed himself to danger in the pursuit 
 of knowledge, and the firmness with which his conduct 
 was marked on all trying occasions. Sir Joseph's poli- 
 tical principles, too, those of a high tory, were much 
 to the Monarch's liking ; and a country gentleman who 
 never troubled himself with Parliamentary life, nor 
 ever desired to rise above the rank he was born to, 
 was sure to find a friend in His Majesty. Though a 
 tory, and very firm in his opinions, both in Church 
 and State, he was anything rather than a party man. 
 He never interfered in politics beyond using his legiti- 
 mate influence in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire, where 
 his property lay, to aid those country gentlemen whom 
 he believed fitted to make useful representatives of the 
 landed interest; and so entirely devoid of common 
 party feelings was his use of this influence, that he 
 always supported Lord Yarborough, then Mr. Pelham, 
 a whig, as well as Mr. Chaplin, a tory. This just and 
 impartial conduct was not displeasing to the King; 
 and among other marks of good-will, was his recom- 
 mending to Sir Joseph an attention to agricultural 
 pursuits. I have heard him say that he took to farm- 
 ing by the King's desire. He pursued this pleasing 
 occupation with his characteristic energy, and under- 
 stood its principles thoroughly, as he practised it with 
 far more than the success that usually attends amateurs. 
 When the King fell hopelessly ill, in 1811, I well re- 
 member Sir Joseph Banks saying, he had ceased since 
 then being a farmer, having only " taken up the trade 
 by his Majesty's commands." 
 
 A common story is to be found in the slight attempts 
 that have been made to write his life, as if the Minis- 
 ters were used occasionally to employ his personal 
 influence with the King, to obtain his consent to 
 measures which he disliked. I will venture to give 
 this statement a very peremptory contradiction. 1 am 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 369 
 
 pretty confident that he never would have undertaken 
 any such mission ; but I am perfectly certain that the 
 King never would have suffered Sir Joseph to approach 
 him on any subject of the kind. This opinion I can 
 state the more emphatically, since my worthy friend 
 Sir E. Knatchbull, who did me the favour of examin- 
 ing this Life, gives me the most positive assurance of 
 his uncle never having at all interfered, as the story 
 asserts he did. An interference of a very different 
 description he did exert, and with the happiest results. 
 During the long war, which desolated the world by 
 land and by sea, after the year 1792, he constantly 
 exerted himself to mitigate its evils, and alleviate its 
 pressure upon men of science and upon the interests 
 of philosophy. It was owing to him that our Govern- 
 ment issued orders in favour of La Perouse, whereso- 
 ever our fleets should come in contact with that un- 
 fortunate navigator. When D'Entrecasteaux was sent 
 in search of him, and Billardiere's collections were 
 captured and brought to England, Sir Joseph Banks 
 had them restored to him, and without even opening 
 to examine them, as if he feared that any one should 
 profit by any discoveries save their rightful owner, the 
 author. On ten several occasions did he procure the 
 restoration to the Jardin des Plantes of collections 
 addressed to that noble establishment, and which had 
 fallen a prey to our naval superiority. He sent to the 
 Cape of Good Hope, to recover some charts belonging 
 to Humboldt, which our cruizers had seized, and in no 
 instance would he suffer the expenses he had under- 
 gone to be repaid. He even interfered to remedy in- 
 juries which foreign nations had inflicted on scientific 
 men. Broussonet had fled from France to save his 
 life from the anarchists of Paris. Sir Joseph Banks 
 directed his correspondents in Spain and in Portugal 
 to supply his wants ; and he found a friendly purse 
 open to him both at Madrid and at Lisbon. Dolomieu, 
 cast into a dungeon in Sicily by the tyranny of the 
 2 B 
 
370 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 profligate and cruel Queen, experienced the humanity 
 of Sir Joseph during a long captivity, although his 
 unwearied efforts to obtain his liberation failed of 
 success. His own countrymen, when detained by the 
 arbitrary and perfidious policy of Napoleon, were in 
 repeated instances indebted to Sir Joseph Banks for 
 their permission to return home ; and a learned friend 
 of mine, one of the first Oriental scholars of the age, 
 the late Professor Hamilton, must have perished at 
 Verdun but for his generous interference. By his in- 
 terposition the Institute exerted itself in various other 
 cases ; and whenever it could be made to appear that 
 a man of science or of letters was among the detained, 
 no very strict scrutiny being exercised either by Sir 
 Joseph or his Paris colleagues, the order for his libera- 
 tion was applied for and obtained. 
 
 In 1802 he was chosen one of the Foreign Members 
 of that illustrious body, and in acknowledging this 
 high honour he expressed his gratitude in warm terms. 
 Much offence was given to the zealots of the Anti- 
 Gallican party in this country ; the remains of Bishop 
 Horsley's party were roused to censure him ; an anony- 
 mous attack upon him was published in the daily 
 papers, and afterwards acknowledged to have pro- 
 ceeded from the Bishop ; Mr. Cobbett, then as bitter 
 an enemy of France and of peace as he soon after- 
 wards became a zealous friend, addressed a letter to 
 the Members of the Royal Society, calling upon them 
 to depose the President from the chair, because he had 
 called the Institute the first literary body in Europe ; 
 but the silly faction and the paltry storm it had raised, 
 soon sank into their natural insignificance, and all men 
 of sense saw plainly that nothing in the complimentary 
 language of his letter exceeded the ordinary limits of 
 such compositions, or betokened the least want of re- 
 spect for his own Society.* 
 
 * If Mr. Cobbett was ever less happy on one occasion than another, it 
 was when he meddled with such subjects. He congratulated his country 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 371 
 
 His assiduous cultivation of natural history, and his 
 devotion to agricultural pursuits, did not prevent him 
 from taking the most active part in promoting the dis- 
 covery of unknown regions, the most favourite of all 
 his pursuits. He was the real founder of the African 
 Association ; and it is well known that when Ledyard, 
 the most accomplished of the travellers next to Mungo 
 Park, was in want of support on his celebrated jour- 
 ney, it was on Sir Joseph Banks that he drew a bill, 
 which in the remote region where the traveller then 
 was, found an immediate honour and discount. The 
 captivity of Flinders, whom I have heard him more 
 than once compare to Cook, was greatly mitigated by 
 his exertions and influence with the French Govern- 
 ment ; and he not only promoted discovery with all 
 his means to the end of his life, but applied himself 
 vigorously to improving the discoveries successively 
 made to the real use of mankind. The good treatment 
 of the aborigines was ever a main object of his humane 
 exertions. He it was who may be truly said to have 
 planted and founded the colony of Botany Bay. He 
 it was, too, who suggested the means of transplanting 
 the bread-fruit tree from the South Sea Islands to the 
 West Indies, (the object of Captain Bligh's unfortu- 
 nate voyage,) and of also naturalizing there the mango 
 of Bengal. The fruits of Ceylon and of Persia were 
 successfully, through his exertions and experiments, 
 brought from thence to the West Indies and to Europe. 
 So little did his love of plants end, like that of other 
 botanists, in mere description and classification, in the 
 composition of a catalogue, or the preparation of a 
 Herbal! Horticulture, indeed, was a subject the use- 
 fulness of which was sure strongly to attract his care, 
 and accordingly the Society for its improvement owed 
 
 in one of his papers on Captain Glennie having discovered the quadrature 
 of the circle, the captain having gained his scientific fame, in Cobbett's 
 eyes, by joining in the combination against the Duke of York, a year or 
 two before. 
 
372 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 its success, if not its origin, to him. The British 
 Museum was a constant object of his anxious care, and 
 during the forty-two years of his official trusteeship he 
 paid unremitting attention to its concerns, and largely 
 endowed it with presents ; he bequeathed to it his 
 noble library and all his principal collections. 
 
 I have already said that his published works bore no 
 proportion either to his scientific labours or his exer- 
 tions in behalf of learned men. They consisted only 
 of some tracts on agricultural and horticultural sub- 
 jects, as the mildew in wheat, and Merino sheep on 
 Indian and spring wheat on the Spanish chesnut on 
 Roman forcing-houses and some others. 
 
 For the last thirty years of his life, Sir Joseph 
 Banks suffered frequently and severely from gout; 
 and during the last fourteen years he was so much a 
 martyr to it, that he could take no exercise on foot. 
 He tried various expedients to lessen the violence of 
 the attacks, such as giving up the use of fermented 
 liquors, and abstaining entirely from animal food ; but 
 if the fits were less severe, their recurrence was more 
 frequent. Small doses of Husson's medicine were lat- 
 terly resorted to with considerable effect ; and with 
 his wonted sagacity and firmness he met the objections 
 of those who urged how certain the tendency of that 
 cure was to shorten life, by asking " how many years 
 they supposed he could hope to live if he took none 
 of it ?" At last he gradually sank under the exhaust- 
 ing effects of this ailment, after having for a consi- 
 derable length of time entirely lost the use of his lower 
 limbs. He died at his villa of Spring Grove, Houns- 
 low, 19th June, 1820, in the seventy-eighth year of his 
 age, after suffering with the greatest cheerfulness for 
 many years the pains of this tormenting malady, and 
 its debilitating effects, much more intolerable to one 
 of his active habits and strong animal spirits. 
 
 The directions of his will were characteristic of his 
 tastes as a lover of science, and its provisions truly 
 
SIR- JOSEPH BANKS. 373 
 
 marked the man, ever careless of the fame of great 
 and good actions, and only intent on performing 
 them. C To Mr. Brown, his librarian, he gave an an- 
 nuity of 200, with the use of his library and col- 
 lections, on condition that he should continue his 
 studies in natural history, and assist in superintending 
 the Botanic Garden at Kew. To Mr. Bauer, who had 
 been his draughtsman for thirty years, he gave an an- 
 nuity of 300, on condition of his continuing to reside 
 at Kew, and to carry on the drawings of the Kew plants. 
 He gave the whole collection of the Kew drawings to 
 the King, and strongly recommended the appointment 
 of a resident draughtsman, being of opinion that no bo- 
 tanic garden can be complete without one. He adds, 
 that he had hoped this truth would have obtained from 
 the Government a salary for Mr. Bauer, but if not, he 
 charges it on his Lincolnshire estates. So far the 
 bequests. The directions were, that he should be 
 interred in the parish where he might happen to die ; 
 he entreated his relatives to spare themselves the 
 affliction of attending the ceremony ; and he earnestly 
 requested that they would not erect any monument to 
 his memory. 
 
 He left his widow surviving ; she was the daughter 
 and co-heiress of Mr. Hugessen, of Provender in Kent, 
 and had been married to him in 1779. His mother 
 only died in 1804, at a very advanced age ; and his 
 sister, who always resided with him, died in 1818. He 
 never had any children ; and his large estates devolved 
 upon his wife's relations, the Knatchbull and Stanhope 
 families, the late Sir E. Knatchbull having married 
 Lady Banks' sister, and co-heiress with her ; and his 
 property in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire being left by 
 his will to Colonel Stanhope, brother of the present 
 Earl, who was the grandson of his aunt, Margaret 
 Eleanor Banks, by Henry Grenville, brother of Earl 
 Temple. Sir E. Knatchbull, his nephew by marriage, 
 was appointed executor of his last will. 
 
374 SIK JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 CAPT. COOK TO ME. BANKS. 
 " DEAE SIE, 
 
 <: I received a note from Mr. Marsh, of the Victual- 
 ling Office, wherein he desires that we will call upon him on 
 Friday morn, as he is obliged to attend at the Admiralty on 
 Thursday. I left a line at your house yesterday, desiring 
 to know your sentiments concerning a stove for the cabin, 
 it being necessary the officers of Deptford Yard should know 
 how to act. If you approve of a green baize floor-cloth for 
 the great cabin, I will demand as much cloth from the Yard 
 as will make one. As you mean to furnish the cabin well, 
 I think you should have brass locks and hinges to the doors, 
 &c., this, however, will be a private affair of your own, as 
 nothing of this kind is allowed ; the round-house will be 
 fitted in this manner at my expense. Thus far I had got 
 with this letter when your note arrived : I think it a good 
 thought to take Mr. Buzagio's stove with you, as it may 
 be very useful on many occasions. I shall go to Deptford 
 to-morrow to give directions about the other. Whenever 
 it is certain that Dr. Lynd goes with us, I beg you will 
 let me know by the penny post. My respects to the Dr.,* 
 and am, 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your very humble servant, 
 " JAMES COOK. 
 
 "Monday Evening, Six o'clock." 
 
 DE. PEIESTLET TO ME, 
 
 " DEAE SlE, " LEEDS, December 10, 1771. 
 
 " After the letter which I received about a fortnight 
 ago from Mr. Eden, who informed me that he wrote at your 
 
 * Dr. Solander. f See ' Life of Priestley.' 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 375 
 
 request, I cannot help saying that yours and his, which I 
 have now received, appear a little extraordinary. In the 
 former letter there was far from being the most distant hint 
 of any objection to me, provided I would consent to accom- 
 pany you. You now tell me that, as the different Professors 
 of Oxford and Cambridge will have the naming of the per- 
 son, and they are all clergymen, they may possibly have 
 some scruples on the head of religion ; and that, on this 
 account, you do not think you could get me nominated at 
 any rate, much less on the terms which were first mentioned 
 to me. Now what I am, and what they are, with respect 
 to religion, might easily have been known before the thing 
 was proposed to me at all. Besides, I thought that this 
 had been a business of philosophy and not of divinity. If, 
 however, this be the case, 1 shall hold the Board of Longi- 
 tude in extreme contempt, and make no scruple of speaking 
 of them accordingly, taking it for granted that you have 
 just ground for your suspicions. 
 
 " I most sincerely wish you a happy voyage, as I doubt 
 not it will be greatly to the emolument of science ; but I 
 am surprised that the persons who have the chief influence 
 in this expedition, having (according to your representation) 
 minds so despicably illiberal, should give any countenance 
 to so noble an undertaking ; and I am truly sorry that a 
 person of your disposition should be subject to a choice 
 restricted by such narrow considerations. 
 
 " I am, dear Sir, 
 " Your obedient, humble servant, 
 
 "J. PRIESTLEY." 
 
 "To GEO, ROSE, ESQ., TREASURY CHAMBERS. 
 
 " MY DEAR SlR, " SOHO SQUARE, March 2nd, 1787. 
 
 " By an Arret, dated April 23, 1775, M. Turgot took 
 off all kinds of droits from books imported under the most 
 general description, as t: relies ou vieux ou neitfs." I wish I 
 had his Eloge, in which the compliments paid him on the 
 occasion are pretty. I have sent to borrow it from Lord 
 Lansdowne's library, but his Lordship has not yet risen after 
 the fatigues of last night. The exemption is still continued, 
 as may be seen in the Recueil des Droits, printed last year. 
 
376 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 " Far be it from me to press the subject. I shall always 
 consider literature as under great obligations to Mr. Pitt, 
 who scrupled not a moment to forbid the additional tax 
 intended by the compilers of the rate-book ; but sure he 
 might, by giving up a very small receipt, oblige a numerous 
 body whose claim of exemption has been acceded to by the 
 French nation, which circumstance, however, I only wish to 
 bring forward as my apology for the trouble I have given. 
 
 " Should it be thought expedient to continue the tax upon 
 bound books, lest the bookbinders might suffer, a clause 
 allowing a quarter of a hundred instead of under ten pounds 
 for each man's private books would make strangers easy ; 
 and in that case, if the unbound were quite given up, with 
 only the proviso against books of which editions are extant, 
 printed in England, we should be secured from piracy, and 
 a small portion indeed of revenue sacrificed. 
 
 " In France those who attempt to import a pirated edition 
 are very roughly handled by other laws. 
 " Believe me, clear Sir, 
 
 " Most faithfully, 
 " Your obliged humble servant, 
 
 "Jos. BANKS." 
 
 " ME. PAEKINSON, "July 17th, 1809. 
 
 " I am not certain that I well understand what Mr. 
 
 by which he expects to 
 an increased tax on the lands I hold in my own hands ; he 
 dares not, I am confident, venture even to suppose that I 
 have let my land collusively, or received any fine or other 
 consideration in hand to lower the amount of the reserved 
 rent. 
 
 " I let my land, as you know, at a rent which I think 
 and believe to be its real value, that is, I take to myself 
 such a share of the produce as ought in my opinion to be- 
 long to the landlord, leaving the tenant what in my opinion 
 he ought to have as his share, and I do not calculate this 
 idly or by guess. You have laid before me on divers occa- 
 sions what the produce of a farm will be, if well managed 
 in an average season, stating the gross amount of receipt 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 377 
 
 on each article of produce valued at an average price, such 
 as you and I think likely to be permanent ; of this sum you 
 and I allot what we think necessary for the cultivation of 
 the farm, what we think the tenant ought to have to pay 
 his household, pay his tithes, rates and taxes, and allow 
 some savings to him. if he is industrious and frugal ; the 
 rest is apportioned to me as my share, and more than that 
 portion no landlord ought to take, and in fact most land- 
 lords of gentlemen's families and liberal educations are con- 
 tented with such a proportion. 
 
 " Those who exact higher rents, who have no feeling for 
 the oppression of their tenants, who employ attorneys as 
 their stewards, or keep lawyers in pay by retaining fees to 
 watch over their interests, and recover arrears from their 
 tenants when they can no longer support their families, and 
 who are at last compelled to deduct from their net profits 
 the cost of law charges, the losses suffered by tenants un- 
 able to pay the whole of the arrears, and the increase of 
 poor's rates on their estates, which must arise from the 
 persons who used to pay them being reduced to the neces- 
 sity of receiving them or of starving, are surely not to be 
 considered as examples which Government wishes to hold 
 up for imitation, and compel humane men to adopt. 
 
 " If I am mistaken in the rate I have set upon my lands 
 as rent, the Commissioners will by enforcing the surcharges 
 put me right ; I must in that case raise the farms not in 
 lease to the rent they consider as a proper one : Government 
 will in that case have the credit of raising my estate very 
 much to my emolument, as I must receive 18s. for every 
 2s. they get, but the whole of the unpopularity of the mea- 
 sure must rest on their shoulders. 
 
 " Thus much for my tenants : for the lands I hold in hand, 
 I have no objection, if the Commissioners choose to rate me 
 so, to pay at the value fixed upon it by the quality men ; 
 they acted under parliamentary sanction, and upon their 
 oaths ; they are persons over whom I have no kind of in- 
 fluence, and if I had, I should have urged them to value as 
 high as possible, because in that case I should get the greater 
 share of the Fen to be divided. I have, however, entirely 
 acquiesced in their valuation, and have received my share of 
 "Wildmore Fen at their rate : am I therefore to receive under 
 
378 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 the sanction of one Act of Parliament at a low rate, and to 
 be taxed under another Act at a high one ? English policy 
 does not admit such an idea, and I doubt whether it would 
 b(! well received in Turkey or in Barbary; besides, no in- 
 crease in the value of stock has taken place since this valu- 
 ation was made. 
 
 " I thank you much for having provided me with a 
 pony. I can do without it till I come to lievesby : you 
 will by that time be perfectly acquainted with its qualities. 
 Perfect surefootedness is my great object. I am weak ; 
 and if a horse should fall under me, I cannot hold myself 
 upon him. 
 
 " You were right in telling the Fen Commissioners, that 
 if they do not allow to the soke their just rights over the 
 Fodder Fen, I must seek justice elsewhere. The Fodder 
 Dike is so strong an argument, and the constant usage, 
 that it would be in truth a crying injustice to be blind, as 
 they seemed to wish to be, to a right so substantially 
 established. 
 
 " If you wish for further instructions on the subject of 
 the surcharges, be good enough to write to me, and state 
 what your opinion is, and what other people think. I could 
 easily fill another sheet of paper, for I am sure that Govern- 
 ment never meant a surcharge on property let honestly and 
 i'nirly, however low that rent might be ; all they sought for 
 was to check collusion and other kinds of cheating. 
 " Your sure friend, 
 
 11 Jos. BANKS." 
 
 SIE J. BANKS TO LOED GRENYILLE. 
 
 " MY LOUD, " SOHO SQUARE, July 20th, 179G. 
 
 " When I had the honour near three weeks ago of 
 waiting upon your Lordship, by your appointment, on the 
 business of M. de Billardiere, I was in hopes I had con- 
 vinced your Lordship that the measure of returning to that 
 gentleman the collections of natural history he had made 
 during his employment as a naturalist on the voyage of 
 discovery sent from France for the purpose of inquiring 
 into the fate of the late M. de Peyrouse, was a measure 
 likely to do honour to the national character of the English, 
 
SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 379 
 
 as a people loving science and abounding with generosity, 
 as well as with justice, and liable to no reasonable objection 
 whatever. 
 
 " I was in hopes also that your Lordship would consider 
 it as creditable to His Majesty's Ministers to grant in this 
 instance a truce to the unfortunate animosities at present 
 subsisting between England and France, by following the 
 precedents of their predecessors in the case of M. de Con- 
 damine, of the French nation under their late form of 
 government in that of Captain Cook, and under their pre- 
 sent one in the mistaken instance of M. Spillard. 
 
 " I hope I have not been mistaken, though your Lord- 
 ship will allow that I have reason to fear the contrary, be- 
 cause you promised me a speedy answer, and I have not 
 heard from your Lordship since. Respecting the opinion 
 of M. de Billardiere having received any special commission 
 or enjoyed any salary from the late King of France, I have 
 made every inquiry in my power without learning anything 
 to make me believe that to have been the case ; the late 
 King did certainly draw up private instructions for M. de 
 Peyrouse, and this has probably been the origin of the 
 mistake. 
 
 " Allow me then, my Lord, to request a speedy answer 
 to this interesting subject, and to deprecate a refusal. M. 
 de Billardiere is, as I arn informed by printed documents, at 
 this time Director of the Botanic Garden at Paris, at the 
 head of his department of science, and in a country where, 
 however humanity may have been outraged by popular 
 leaders, science is held in immeasurable esteem, he will have 
 it in his power to appeal to Europe, if in his case the justice 
 is refused which was formerly granted by us to De Conda- 
 mine, and by his countrymen to Cook ; and I fear Europe, 
 if such an appeal is made, is more likely to take part with 
 the complainant than with a nation which for the first time 
 refuses a reasonable indulgence to science in alleviation of 
 the necessary horrors attendant on a state of warfare. 
 
 " As I possibly may have occasion to correspond with 
 your Lordship on another subject similar in principle to that 
 now under consideration, I take the liberty to state as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " The French either have, or will soon solicit from His 
 
380 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 Majesty's Ministers, a passport for a ship intended to be sent 
 to Trinidad for the purpose of bringing away a collection of 
 living plants deposited there for fear of capture. I hope, 
 my Lord, that this request will be readily granted. The 
 credit Europe has given to the English for having brought 
 useful plants from the South Seas to their colonies in the 
 west, has fully shown that all good men respect the extensive 
 benevolence of increasing the food of mankind, by removing 
 useful plants to countries where Nature has not provided 
 them ; and our amiable Monarch has set the example of 
 sending useful plants from his Botanic Gardens to the East, 
 to the West Indies, and to Africa. 
 
 " Besides, my Lord, the very application virtually offers, 
 during the horrors of a war unprecedented in the * mutual 
 implacability of the parties engaged, an unconditional armis- 
 tice to science ; surely, my Lord, such an offer should not be 
 neglected ; the ready acceptance of it may be the signal of 
 the return of the dawnings of good will towards men, and 
 produce consequences, in the present position of Europe, 
 valuable beyond appreciation to all the nations who in- 
 habit it. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, my Lord, with due respect 
 and unfeigned esteem, 
 
 " Your Lordship's obedient, 
 
 humble servant, 
 
 "Jos. BANES." 
 
 SIE J. BANKS TO M. CHAEEETIE. 
 
 " SlE, " August 10th, 1796. 
 
 " I have great pleasure in acquainting you that I am 
 now fully empowered to deliver to you the collection made 
 by M. de Billardiere, in order to their being put on board 
 the next Cartel ship, and conveyed by you to that gentle- 
 man. 
 
 " If you will do me the honour of calling in Soho Square, 
 at any time to-morrow before twelve o'clock, I shall have 
 great pleasure in consulting with you on the proper mode of 
 packing them safely for the voyage., and also on the time 
 which you choose to have them conveyed to the place from 
 
SIK JOSEPH BANKS. 381 
 
 whence they are to be put on board ; matters which, I appre- 
 hend, cannot be so well settled any where as on the spot 
 where the collection now is." 
 
 M. CHAEEETIE TO SIR J. BANKS. 
 
 " WALCOT PLACE, le 10 Aofit, 1796. 
 
 " M. Charretie fait bien ses complimens a Monsieur le 
 Chevalier Banks, et ne doutant pas que ce ne soit a ses de- 
 marches que le Gouvernement Francois soit redevable de la 
 remise de la collection de M. la Billardiere, il peut etre per- 
 suade de la reconnoissance du Direct oire Executif. M. Char- 
 retie aura 1'honneur d'aller demain avant midi temoigner a 
 Monsieur Banks toute sa gratitude particuliere pour ses bons 
 offices, et conferer des moyens les plus propres a faire 1' envoi 
 de la collection dont il s'agit." 
 
 II. 
 
 THE very imperfect manner in which the attempts to 
 write Sir Joseph Banks's Life have been made we have already 
 had occasion to remark, as well as the errors which have been 
 introduced into the accounts hitherto given of that eminent 
 person. There is but too much reason to fear that this work 
 ill supplies the defect in our scientific history, owing, among 
 other things, to his having strictly ordered all his letters and 
 other manuscripts to be destroyed. But errors have been 
 corrected, and it is hoped that some important particulars 
 have been given. 
 
 Among the accounts hitherto offered to the world those 
 of the French writers are beyond all comparison the most 
 erroneous and indeed fanciful. The ' Biographic Universelle' 
 may be cited as peculiarly abounding in such inventions. 
 The statement that Sir Joseph allowed Dr. Solander a salary 
 or pension of 400/ a-year I believe to be wholly groundless ; 
 the sum would have been preposterous, especially considering 
 that the Doctor enjoyed a considerable place in the British 
 Museum. The institution of the Copley Medal is said to 
 be for " the experiments the most useful to the preservation 
 of lives," whereas it is for the " best paper on experimental 
 
382 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 philosophy in the year." The group called the "Society 
 Islands" is said to derive its name from the " caractere doux 
 et sociahle des hahitans," and Otaheite is said to be the chief. 
 Now Otaheite is 150 miles distant, and belongs to the 
 Friendly Islands ; and Cook tells us himself that he named 
 the others Society Islands, six in number, " on account of 
 their being contiguous to each other." 
 
 I am truly happy to announce my hope that a fuller Life of Sir J. Banks, 
 being in such excellent hands as those of Mr. Dawson Turner, of Great 
 Yarmouth, will be finished by that much and justly respected gentleman. 
 
(383) 
 
 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 THE pleasures of a purely scientific life have often 
 been described ; and they have been celebrated with 
 very heartfelt envy by those whose vocations pre- 
 cluded or interrupted such enjoyments, as well as 
 commended by those whose more fortunate lot gave 
 them the experience of what they praised ; but it may 
 be doubted, if such representations can ever apply to 
 any pursuits so justly as to the study of the mathe- 
 matics. In other branches of science the student is 
 dependent upon many circumstances over which he 
 has little control. He must often rely on the reports 
 of others for his facts ; he must frequently commit to 
 their agency much of his inquiries ; his research may 
 lead him to depend upon climate, or weather, or the 
 qualities of matter, which he must take as he finds it ; 
 where all other things are auspicious, he may be with- 
 out the means of making experiments, of placing nature 
 in circumstances by which he would extort her secrets ; 
 add to all this the necessarily imperfect nature of in- 
 ductive evidence, which always leaves it doubtful if 
 one generalization of facts shall not be afterwards 
 superseded by another, as exceptions arise to the rule 
 first discovered. But the geometrician* relies entirely 
 on himself; he is absolute master of his materials ; his 
 whole investigations are conducted at his own good 
 pleasure, and under his own absolute and undivided 
 
 * It may be as well to adopt the expression always used on the conti- 
 nent, to denote the cultivation of mathematical science : " Ce grand geo- 
 metre," is a phrase now universally understood and applied to mathema- 
 ticians of every description. 
 
384 D'ALEMBEET. 
 
 control. He seeks the aid of no assistant, requires the 
 use of no apparatus, hardly wants any books ; and with 
 the fullest reliance on the perfect instruments of his 
 operations, and on the altogether certain nature of his 
 results, he is quite assured that the truths which he 
 has found out, though they may lay the foundation of 
 further discovery, can never by possibility be dis- 
 proved, nor his reasonings upon them shaken, by all 
 the progress that the science can make to the very end 
 of time. 
 
 The life of the geometrician, then, may well be sup- 
 posed an uninterrupted calm; and the gratification which 
 he derives from his researches is of a pure and also of 
 a lively kind, whether he contemplates the truths dis- 
 covered by others, with the demonstrative evidence on 
 which they rest, or carries the science further, and 
 himself adds to the number of the interesting truths 
 before known. He may be often stopped in his re- 
 searches by the difficulties that beset his path ; he 
 may be frustrated in his attempts to discover relations 
 depending on complicated data which he cannot un- 
 ravel or reconcile ; but his study is wholly indepen- 
 dent of accident ; his reliance is on his own powers ; 
 doubt and contestation and uncertainty he never can 
 know ; a stranger to all controversy, above all mys- 
 tery, he possesses his mind in unruffled peace ; bound 
 by no authority, regardless of all consequences as of 
 all opposition, he is entire master of his conclusions 
 as of his operations ; and feels even perfectly indif- 
 ferent to the acceptance or rejection of his doctrines, 
 because he confidently looks forward to their univer- 
 sal and immediate admission the moment they are 
 comprehended. 
 
 It is to be further borne in mind, that from the la- 
 bours of the geometrician are derived the most impor- 
 tant assistance to the researches of other philosophers, 
 and to the perfection of the most useful arts. This 
 consideration resolves itself into two : one is the plea- 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 385 
 
 sure of contemplation, and consequently is an addition 
 to the gratification of exactly the same kind, derived 
 immediately from the contemplation of pure mathe- 
 matical truth; much, indeed, of the mixed mathematics 
 is also purely mathematical investigation, built upon 
 premises derived from induction. The other gratifica- 
 tion is of a wholly different description; it is con- 
 nected merely with the promotion of arts subservient 
 to the ordinary enjoyments of life. This is only a se- 
 condary and mixed use of science to the philosopher ; 
 the main pleasure bestowed by it is the gratification 
 which, by a law of our nature, we derive from con- 
 templating scientific truth, when indulging in the 
 general views which it gives, marking the unexpected 
 relations of things seemingly unconnected, tracing the 
 resemblance, perhaps identity, of things the most un- 
 like, noting the diversity of those apparently similar. 
 This is the true and primary object of scientific inves- 
 tigation. This it is which gives the pleasure of science 
 to the mind. The secular benefits, so to speak, the 
 practical uses derived from it, are wholly independent 
 of this, and are only an incidental, adventitious, secon- 
 dary advantage. I have fully explained this doctrine 
 in the Preliminary Discourse to the works of the So- 
 ciety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and in 
 the Introduction to the ' Political Philosophy.' It 
 never had been stated, as far as I know, before ; but it 
 rests on such irrefragable principles, that it has not 
 since been called in question.* 
 
 It is an illustration of the happiness derived from 
 mathematical studies, that they possess two qualities in 
 the highest degree, not perhaps unconnected with one 
 
 * It gave me great pleasure to find it highly approved by my revered 
 friend, Professor Stewart, who regarded it as indeed of more value and 
 originality than I had myself considered it. The outline of it had been 
 read many years before (1798) in a literary society at Edinburgh, to which 
 Lord Jeffrey, Dr. Brown, Mr. Homer, and others belonged. See Appen- 
 dix to Life of Robertson, vol. ii. 
 
 2 c 
 
386 
 
 another. They occupy the attention, entirely abstract- 
 ing it from all other considerations; and they produce 
 a calm agreeable temper of mind. 
 
 Their abstracting and absorbing power is very re- 
 markable, and is known to all geometricians. Every 
 one has found how much more swiftly time passes 
 when spent in such investigations, than in any other 
 occupation either of the senses or even of the mind. 
 Sir Isaac Newton is related to have very frequently 
 forgotten the season of meals, and left his food await- 
 ing for hours his arrival from his study. A story is 
 told of his being entirely shut up and disappearing, as 
 it were eclipsed, and then shining forth grasping the 
 great torch which he carried through the study of the 
 heavens ; he had invented the Fluxional Calculus. I 
 know not if there be any foundation for the anecdote ; 
 but that he continually remained engaged with his re- 
 searches through the night is certain, and that he then 
 took no keep of time is undeniable. It does not re- 
 quire the same depth of understanding to experience 
 the effects of such pursuits in producing complete ab- 
 straction ; every geometrician is aware of them in his 
 own case. The sun goes down unperceived, and the 
 night wanes afterwards till he again rises upon our 
 labours. 
 
 They who have experienced an incurable wound in 
 some prodigious mental affliction, have confessed, that 
 nothing but mathematical researches could withdraw 
 their attention from their situation. Instances are well 
 known of a habit of drinking being cured by the like 
 means ; an inveterate taste for play has within my own 
 observation been found to give way before the revival 
 of an early love of analytical studies. This is possibly 
 a cause of the other tendency, which has been men- 
 tioned, the calming of the mind. We have seen in the 
 life of Simson, how he would fly from the conflicts of 
 metaphysical and theological science, to that of neces- 
 sary truth, and how in those calm retreats he ever 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 387 
 
 " found himself refreshed with rest."* Greater tran- 
 quillity is possessed by none than by geometricians. 
 Even under severe privations this is observed. The 
 greatest of them all, certainly the greatest after New- 
 ton, was an example. Euler lost his sight after a long 
 expectation of this calamity, which he bore with per- 
 fectly equal mind ; both in the dreadful prospect and 
 the actual bereavement, his temper continued as cheer- 
 ful as before, and his mind, fertile in resources of every 
 kind, supplied the want of sight by ingenious mechan- 
 ical devices, and by a memory more powerful even 
 than before, f He furnishes an instance to another 
 purpose. Thoughtless and superficial observers have 
 charged this science with a tendency to render the 
 feelings obtuse. Any pursuit of a very engrossing or 
 absorbing kind may produce this temporary effect; 
 and it has been supposed that men occasionally ab- 
 stracted from other contemplations, are particularly 
 dull of temper. But no one ever had more warm 
 or kindly feelings than Euler, whose chief delight 
 was in the cheerful society of his grand- children, 
 to his last hour, and whose chief relaxation from 
 
 * Page 131. 
 
 f My late learned and esteemed friend, Mr. Gough, of Kendal, was 
 another example of studies being pursued under the same severe depriva- 
 tion but he had never known the advantages of sight, having lost his 
 eyes when an infant, and never had any distinct recollection of light. He 
 was an accomplished mathematician of the old school, and what is more 
 singular, a most skilful botanist. His prodigious memory resembled 
 Euler's, and the exquisite acuteness of his smell and touch supplied in a 
 great measure the want of sight. He would describe surfaces as covered 
 with undulations which to others appeared smooth and even polished. 
 His ready sagacity in naming any plant submitted to his examination was 
 truly wonderful. I had not only the pleasure of his acquaintance, but I 
 have many particulars respecting his rare endowments, from another 
 eminent mathematician, who unites the learning of the older with that of 
 the modern school, my learned friend and neighbour, Mr. Slee, of Tirrel. 
 A detailed account of Mr. Gough's case, by Mr. Slee and Professor Whe- 
 well (a pupil of his), would be most curious and instructive. Euler's 
 memory was such, that he could repeat the jEneid, noting the words that 
 begin and end each page. Mr. Gough also was an excellent classical 
 scholar. 
 
388 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 his severer studies was found in teaching these little 
 ones. 
 
 It has been alleged, and certainly has been some- 
 what found by experience to be true, that the habit of 
 contemplating necessary truth and the familiarity with 
 the demonstrative evidence on which it rests, has a 
 tendency to unfit the mind for accurately weighing 
 the inferior kind of proof which we can alone obtain 
 in the other sciences. Once finding that the certainty 
 to which the geometrician is accustomed cannot be 
 attained, he is apt either to reject all testimony, or to 
 become credulous by confounding different degrees of 
 evidence, regarding them all as nearly equal from their 
 immeasurable inferiority to his own species of proof 
 much as great sovereigns confound together various 
 ranks of common persons, on whom they look down 
 as all belonging to a different species from their own. 
 In this observation there is, no doubt, much of truth ; 
 but we must be careful not to extend its scope too far, 
 so as that it should admit of no exceptions. The fol- 
 lowing life affords one of the most remarkable of these ; 
 as far as physical science went, Laplace afforded 
 another; in several other branches he was, perhaps, 
 no exception to the rule.* 
 
 The hold which their favourite studies have, and 
 keep over geometricians is not the least remarkable 
 proof of the gratification which they are calculated to 
 afford. I well know, to take one instance within my 
 own observation, that my learned and esteemed friend, 
 the present Lord Chancellor, a most successful student 
 of the mathematics in his earlier years, reverted to the 
 pursuits in which he had so often found delight, long 
 
 * It is said that when the Emperor asked him -why he had left out the 
 consideration of a Supreme Intelligence in his speculations, he answered 
 that he conceived he could explain the phenomena without that hypothesis. 
 But when we look to his demonstration of the high improbability of the 
 system having been formed without an intelligent cause, (above four 
 millions of millions to one he proves it in his Calcul de Frobabilite,) we 
 cannot lend much faith to this Paris anecdote. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 389 
 
 after he had held the highest offices and been engaged 
 in the most dissimilar discussions. As late as 1838, 
 when I was engaged in preparing my Analytical Re- 
 view of the Principia, I found that, by an accidental 
 coincidence, he was amusing his leisure with the cal- 
 culus long intermitted ; and I am sure that he could 
 have furnished as correct and more elegant analytical 
 demonstrations of the Newtonian theorems than 1 had 
 the fortune to obtain in composing that work. 
 
 I have thought it a useful thing to consider the 
 personal history with the scientific achievements of a 
 very great geometrician, with a view to the illustration 
 of these remarks and I have chosen D'Alembert in 
 preference to Euler or to Clairaut, the two other illus- 
 trious analysts of their age, because we have more 
 ample materials for the study. Whatever of peace 
 and comfort he enjoyed, D'Alembert owed to geometry, 
 and confessed his obligations. Whatever he suffered 
 from vexation of any sort, he could fairly charge upon 
 the temporary interruption of his mathematical pur- 
 suits. In both portions of his history, therefore, it is 
 likely to prove instructive, and to enforce the doctrine 
 which I have laid down. 
 
 Jean le Rond d'Alembert was born on the 17th of 
 Nov., 1717, being a foundling exposed near the church 
 of St. Jean le Rond in Paris, and thus called by the 
 name of the parish, as is usual in most countries. The 
 commissary of the district, before whom the infant was 
 carried, perceiving its feeble and almost dying condi- 
 tion, instead of sending it to the hospital gave the 
 charge to the wife of a poor but honest glazier in the 
 neighbourhood, living in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, for 
 he was acquainted with the good woman's respecta- 
 bility. In a few days the father, M. Destouches, 
 commissary of artillery, came forward to own the 
 child, and made provision for its support. The general 
 belief is, that the exposition had been concerted with 
 the police. But if so, a very needless risk was unac- 
 
390 
 
 countably Incurred by exposing so tender an infant in 
 a winter's night, when the parties might have sent it 
 at once to the place where it was destined to be 
 brought up. It is more likely that the mother, afraid 
 of the discovery, if not of the burthen to be thrown 
 upon her, caused the exposure before the father was 
 apprized of the birth having happened, and that as 
 soon as he knew of what had been done, he hastened 
 to send after the person who had been entrusted with 
 the charge. The mother was an unmarried lady, sister 
 to Cardinal Tencin, Archbishop of Lyons, and she was 
 afterwards well known in the circles of Paris as a 
 person of rare talents and accomplishments. Mar- 
 montel, in his Memoirs, calls her Madame de Tencin, 
 she having probably in her old age passed by that 
 name; and he relates some of her sayings, of which 
 one is singular in relation to the life of her celebrated 
 son. " Woe to him," said she, " who depends for his 
 subsistence on his pen ! The shoemaker is secure of 
 his wages ; the bookmaker is not secure of anything." 
 She was wont also to give the result of her experience 
 of men, by recommending persons who lacked friends 
 to prefer choosing them among women, as they are 
 far more zealous to serve those they wish well to ; but 
 then, she added, " You must be their friend, and not 
 their lover." She was the author of a novel, ' Les 
 Memoires du Comte de Cominges,' of which a good 
 judge, Baron Grimm, says, " 11 est en possession de 
 faire pleurer." After giving an account of the plot, 
 he adds. " II a toujours conserve beaucoup de repu- 
 tation;" and he adds, "II est de feu Mme. Tencin, 
 soeur du Cardinal de ce nom ; cette femme celebre de 
 plus d'une maniere."* This celebrated person was 
 the centre of a distinguished circle of society remark- 
 able for wit, talents, and accomplishments, and after 
 her death Mme. GeofFrin succeeded to her post. 
 
 * Corr. iv., 276. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 391 
 
 The young D'Alembert, who probably took his 
 name from his nurse, was sent at the age of twelve to 
 the college of the Quatre Nations, where the professors, 
 at that time of warm controversy, belonged to the 
 Jansenist party ; and observing the early appearance 
 of genius in their young pupil, they took pains to im- 
 bue him with a taste for polemical subjects. In the 
 first year of his studies in philosophy he had written 
 an able and learned commentary of St. Paul's Epistle 
 to the Romans, and as he showed a general capacity 
 for science, the worthy enemies of the Jesuits, finding 
 to their great delight that all profound learning was 
 not engrossed by that body, cherished a hope that a 
 new Pascal had been given to them for renewing 
 their victories over their learned and subtle adversaries. 
 It was with this view that they made him betimes 
 study the mathematics, in which Pascal had so greatly 
 and so early excelled ; but they had to deal with a 
 less docile subject than the Port-Royal had formerly 
 found in young Blaise, for they soon perceived that it 
 was in vain to make him quit his figures and his cal- 
 culations and take to the divinity of the schools ; and 
 all their descriptions of the tendency which such 
 studies had to " dry up the heart"* failed to make him 
 abandon what had taken so strong a hold of his whole 
 mind. 
 
 When he left the college he showed the first re- 
 markable instance of that kind and even tender dispo- 
 sition which distinguished him through life, and is 
 another example to rescue the geometrician's pursuits 
 from the reproach of hardening the heart. He found 
 himself solitary in the world, without any kindred that 
 acknowledged him, and he reverted to her whose care 
 had reared and comforted his earlier years ; he took 
 
 * These good fathers did not quite use the language they had employed 
 to turn away Fenelon from " se laisser ensorceler par les attraits diaboli- 
 ques de la geometric." Certainly it is a proof of the evil one's ubiquity 
 that we should find him lurking in this of all places. 
 
392 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 refuge in the humble dwelling of his nurse, feeling, as 
 he afterwards used to say, that the small income which 
 alone he possessed, a pension of less than fifty pounds 
 settled upon him by his father, would tend to increase 
 somewhat the comforts of the poor people with whom 
 he should board. In that lowly dwelling, a single 
 confined room of which he occupied as his bed-room 
 and his study, he established himself, living with the 
 family and faring as they fared. Here he remained 
 happy and contented for forty years, that is, until his 
 health compelled him to change his abode, when the 
 age of the good woman would not permit her to 
 accompany him. When her husband died she was 
 ill-treated by her grandchildren, who were stripping 
 her of her little property and reducing her to great 
 distress. "Laissez," said D'Alembert, "Laissez tout 
 emporter par ces indignes. Je ne vous abandonnerai 
 point." Nor did he ; he provided for all her wants, 
 and as long as she lived he visited her twice a week, 
 to satisfy himself by his own observation that nothing 
 was wanting of care and attention to secure her com- 
 forts. When he became famous his mother's vanity 
 led her to desire his intimacy, a step which natural 
 affection had not suggested. Discovering to him the 
 secret of his birth, she would have had him come and 
 live with her. But he plainly said he regarded the 
 nurse as his mother, and only saw a step-mother in 
 Mme. Tencin.* 
 
 In this obscure retreat he devoted himself to his 
 daily pursuits. Such books of mathematics as he could 
 purchase he bought ; others he was obliged to consult 
 at the public libraries. From the very small scale of 
 
 * " Que me dites-vous Ik, madame ?" he exclaimed ; " Ah ! vous n'etes 
 qu'une maratre ! C'est la vitriere qui est ma mere." This touching anec- 
 dote is differently related by some, as Grimm in his ' Correspondence.' 
 They report the interview as having taken place in presence of the old 
 nurse; that D'Alembert exclaimed, "Ma mere! Ah! lavoila! Je ne 
 connais point d'autre." And therewithal fell upon her neck and bathed 
 it in his tears. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 393 
 
 Ms library, and from the degree to which in his edu- 
 cation and his subsequent studies he was left to him- 
 self, it happened that he was constantly making what 
 seemed to him discoveries, and as constantly finding 
 in some book, which he had not before been able to 
 consult, that he had been anticipated. He drew from 
 hence a very inaccurate inference ; he supposed that 
 nature had refused him the gift of original genius, and 
 that he must rest satisfied with studying what others 
 had discovered. But this gave him no pain; the 
 gratification of investigating mathematical truth was 
 all he desired, and with having that enjoyment in his 
 studies he was abundantly contented, regarding the 
 glory of first making the step a very subordinate con- 
 sideration, and esteeming the pleasure of the contem- 
 plation a sufficient reward of his labour. This most 
 interesting circumstance was related by himself to M. 
 Condorcet, a profound and accomplished geometrician, 
 who enjoyed his entire confidence, and succeeded him 
 in the Academy. 
 
 While, however, his time thus passed in tranquil 
 enjoyment, the very moderate income which he pos- 
 sessed rendered it advisable that he should seek for 
 some means of increasing it, and rendering himself in- 
 dependent, as well as helping more actively those he 
 cared for. He was advised to study the law, and in 
 the law he took his degrees. But nothing could less 
 suit his taste than this study, and he changed it for 
 that of medicine. 
 
 Finding that his passion for the mathematics inter- 
 fered with this pursuit, he adopted the singular expe- 
 dient of sending his books to a friend's house, that he 
 might keep temptation out of his way. The resolution 
 was, that he should not be allowed to have them again 
 until he had taken his Doctor's degree. For some 
 time this arrangement succeeded ; but his mind han- 
 kering after the forbidden scene, he would be ever 
 haunted with the vision of some quantity, some func- 
 
394 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 tion whose exact exponents had escaped him, some 
 formula of which he could not recal the solution ; he 
 would then get back a volume, and thus one by one 
 the whole of his little stock of precious learning re- 
 turned into his possession, while the title of Doctor, 
 the quantity, the arbitrary function M.D., remained 
 without any approximation. He then fairly gave up 
 the struggle, and devoted his life to geometrical 
 pursuits. 
 
 The account which he always gave of his following 
 years was one glowing with the recollection of the 
 purest happiness ; and he was fond of dwelling upon 
 all its details. Perfectly tranquil, without a thought 
 of wealth or power or distinction, his whole enjoy- 
 ments of an intellectual cast, his existence was as en- 
 tirely that of a philosopher as ever fell to the lot of any 
 one in ancient or in modern days. " I awoke," he 
 would say, " every morning to look back, with a feel- 
 ing of gladness in my heart, on the investigation which 
 I had begun over-night, and exulting in the prospect 
 of continuing it to the result as soon as I rose. When 
 I stopt my operations for a few moments to rest my- 
 self, I used to look forward to the evening when I 
 should go to the theatre and enjoy another kind of 
 treat, but also aware that between the acts I should be 
 thinking on the greater treat my next morning's work 
 was to afford me." It was at this period of his life, at 
 once glorious and happy, though still passed in ob- 
 scurity, that the good old woman whom he loved as a 
 mother, and who doated on him as a son, would say 
 when any one told her of the great renown he was pre- 
 paring for his name, " Oh, you will never be any thing 
 better than a philosopher. And what's a philosopher? 
 A foolish body who wears his life out to be spoken of 
 after he's dead." 
 
 His studies, however, as might well be expected, 
 soon proved eminently successful. In 1739 he pre- 
 sented to the Academy of Sciences a paper containing 
 
D'ALEMBEKT. 395 
 
 some important corrections of errors into which Pere 
 Reynau had fallen in his treatise 'Analyse Demon- 
 tree;' these errors D'Alembert had discovered when 
 studying the book in order to learn the calculus, and 
 they related to the integrals of binomials.* This me- 
 moir gave a most favourable impression of his capacity 
 to the eminent men who at that time formed the ma- 
 thematical portion of this illustrious body, Mairan, 
 Cassini, Camus, Fouchy, above all Clairaut, then in the 
 meridian of his great and just renown. The young 
 analyst became their acquaintance first, then their 
 friend. In 1741 he was admitted into the Society, at 
 the early age of twenty-four. Excepting Clairaut, 
 who for the maturity of his extraordinary faculties at 
 an early age is an exception to all rules, no one had 
 ever been an Academician so young. Clairaut had by 
 Royal Ordinance, dispensing with the rule that re- 
 quired the age of twenty complete, been admitted an 
 Adjoint at eighteen, and an Associate at twenty; but 
 at twelve he had presented a memoir upon an im- 
 portant analytical subject, and at the same early 
 age he had made some progress in his greatest work, 
 the ' Courbes a double Courbure,' which was nearly 
 completed at thirteen, and at sixteen was actually 
 published.! 
 
 In 1743, two years after D'Alembert entered the 
 Academy, appeared his ' Traite de Dynamique,' which 
 at once placed him in the highest rank of geometri- 
 cians. The theory is deduced with perfect precision, 
 and with as great clearness and simplicity as the sub- 
 ject allows, from a principle which he first laid down 
 
 * The 'Hist, de 1'Acad.' 1739, p. 30, records the reading with much 
 approbation of the Memoir of M. le Rond D'Alembert. 
 
 f It would certainly have been published in 1725, before he was four- 
 teen years old, but for a violent head-ache which his labours brought on, 
 and which obliged him to give up writing. When his first paper was 
 read at the Academy, the good Father Eeynau burst into tears of joy at 
 so marvellous a performance. The ' Hist, de 1'Acad.' 1726, p. 45, records 
 his age to have been twelve years eight months. 
 
396 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 and explained, though it be deducible from the equality 
 of action and re-action, a physical rather than a mathe- 
 matical truth, and derived from universal induction, 
 not from abstract reasoning a priori. 
 
 The Principle is this, (' Dyn.' pt. 2. ch. i.) If there 
 are several bodies acting on each other, as by being 
 connected through inflexible rods, or by mutual attrac- 
 tion, or in any other way that may be conceived ; sup- 
 pose an external force is impressed upon those bodies, 
 they will move not in the direction of that force as 
 they would were they all unconnected and free, but in 
 another direction ; then the force acting on the bodies 
 may be decomposed into two, one acting in the direc- 
 tion which they actually take, or moving the bodies 
 without at all interfering with their mutual action, the 
 other in such direction as that the forces destroy each 
 other, and are wholly extinguished; being such, that 
 if none other had been impressed upon the system, it 
 would have remained at rest.* This principle reduces 
 all the problems of dynamics to statical problems, and 
 is of great fertility, as well as of admirable service in 
 both assisting our investigations and simplifying them. 
 It is, indeed, deducible from the simplest principles, 
 and especially from the equality of action and re- 
 action ; but though any one might naturally enough 
 have thus hit upon it, how vast a distance lies between 
 the mere principle and its application to such prob- 
 lems, for example, as to find the locus or velocity of a 
 
 ^ * Lagrange's statement of the principle is the most concise, but I ques- 
 tion if it is the clearest, of all that have been given. " If there be im- 
 pressed upon several bodies, motions which they are compelled to change 
 by their mutual actions, we may regard these motions as composed of the 
 motions which the bodies will actually have, and of other motions which 
 are destroyed ; from whence it follows, that the bodies, if animated by 
 those motions only, must be in equilibrio." (' Mec. An.' vol. L, p. 239, 
 Ed. 1811.) It is not easy to give a general statement of the principle, 
 and I am by no means wedded to the one given in the text. A learned 
 friend has communicated one which the reader will find in Appendix L, 
 together with a statement, by another excellent geometrician, of the real 
 benefit derived from the Principle. 
 
D'ALEMBEET. 397 
 
 body sliding or moving freely along a revolving rod, 
 at the extremity of which rod a fixed body moves 
 round in a given plane a locus which the calculus 
 founded on the Principle shows to be in certain cases 
 the logarithmic spiral.* 
 
 No one can doubt that the Principle of D'Alembert 
 was involved in many of the solutions of dynamical 
 problems before given. But then each solution rested 
 on its own grounds, and these varied with the different 
 cases ; their demonstrations were not traced to and 
 connected with one fundamental principle. He alone 
 and first established this connexion, and extended the 
 Principle over the whole field of dynamical inquiry. 
 
 The 'Traite' contains, further, (part 1. ch. ii.), anew 
 demonstration of the parallelogram of forces. The rea- 
 son of the author's preference of this over the common 
 demonstration, is not at all satisfactory. His proof 
 consists in supposing the body to move on a plane 
 sliding in two grooves parallel to one side of the 
 parallelogram, and at the same time carried along in 
 the direction of the other side. This is not one whit 
 more strict and rigorous than the ordinary supposition 
 
 ydx* 2Dydy* 
 * The general equation is d 2 y = - -j- ~T^_|_ D a in wW< * # 
 
 is the distance of the moving body D from the fixed point, or the length 
 of the rod, at the end of which is the body A, describing an arch of a 
 circle, and x that arch. The velocity of D is likewise found in terms of 
 the same quantity. 
 
 I have freely admitted that the principle of D'Alembert flows from the 
 equality of action and re-action ; but nothing can be more incorrect than 
 the remark made by a learned critic, (' Quarterly Review,' vol. v., p. 345,) 
 that " this boasted principle is little more than Newton's third law of 
 motion modified so as to suit the algebraical method of investigating pro- 
 positions;" on which is grounded a complaint that the French, while 
 praising D'Alembert, never mention Newton, the real author of the prin- 
 ciple. The third law of motion was assuredly no discovery of Sir I. 
 Newton ; and as certainly the praise of the step made was due to D'Alem- 
 bert, unless indeed Bernouilli, and still more Fontaine, in some sort anti- 
 cipated him, probably without his being aware of it. The critic to whom 
 I allude is well founded in urging the like complaints against the French 
 chemists for omitting all mention of Black. But Fourcroy and others are 
 great exceptions. See Life of Lavoisier, p. 319. 
 
398 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 of the body moving along a ruler parallel to one side, 
 while the ruler at the same time moves along a line 
 parallel to the other side. Indeed I should rather pre- 
 fer this demonstration to D'Alembert's. 
 
 The 'Traite de Dynamique' appeared in 1743, and 
 in the following year its fundamental principle was 
 applied by the author to the important and difficult 
 subject of the equilibrium, and motion of fluids, the 
 portion of the ' Principia' which its illustrious author 
 had left in its least perfect state. Pressed by the dif- 
 ficulty of the inquiry, which is one of the most im- 
 portant in Hydrodynamics, the motion of a fluid through 
 an orifice in a given vessel, and despairing of the data 
 affording the means of a strict and direct solution, 
 Newton had recourse to assumptions marked by the 
 most refined ingenuity, but admitted to be gratuitous 
 and to be unauthorized by the facts. The celebrated 
 Cataract is of this description. He supposes (' Prin- 
 cipia,' lib. ii. prop. 36,) that a body of ice shaped like 
 the vessel, comes in contact with the upper surface of 
 the liquid and melts immediately on touching it, so as 
 to keep the level of the fluid always the same, and that 
 a cataract is thus formed, of which the upper surface 
 is that of the fluid, and the lower that of the orifice, 
 His first investigation assumed the issuing column to 
 be cylindrical, but he afterwards found that the lateral 
 pressure and motion gave it the form of a truncated 
 cone which he called a vein ; and his correction of the 
 former result was a matter of much controversy among 
 mathematicians. Daniel Bernouilli at first maintained 
 it to be erroneous against Kiccati and others, but he 
 afterwards acquiesced in Newton's view. He, however, 
 always resisted the hypothesis of the cataract, as indeed 
 did most other inquirers. Newton's assumptions, in 
 other parts of this very difficult inquiry, have been 
 deemed liable to the same objections; as where he 
 leaves the purely speculative hypothesis of perfectly 
 uncompressed and distinct particles, and treats of the 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 399 
 
 interior and minute portions of fluids, as similar to those 
 which we know. (Lib. ii. prop. 37, 38, 39.) It must, 
 however, be admitted as D'Alembert has observed, 
 (' Encyc.' v. 889, and ' Resistance des Fluides,' xvii.) 
 that "those who attacked the Newtonian theory on 
 this subject had no greater success than its illustrious 
 author; some having, after resorting to hypothesis 
 which the experiments refuted, abandoned their doc- 
 trines as equally unsatisfactory, and others confessing 
 their systems groundless, and substituting calculations 
 for principles." 
 
 Such was the state of the science when D'Alembert 
 happily applied his Dynamical principle to the pres- 
 sure and motion of fluids, and found that it served 
 excellently for a guide, both in regard to non-elastic 
 and elastic fluids. In fact the particles of these being 
 related to one another by a cohesion which prevents 
 them not from obeying an external impulse, it is'mani- 
 fest that the principle may be applied. Thus, if a fluid 
 contained in a vessel of any shape be conceived divided 
 into layers perpendicular to the direction of its motion, 
 and if v represent generally the velocity of the layers 
 of fluid at any instant, and d v the small increment of 
 that velocity, which may be either positive or negative, 
 and will be different for the different layers, v + dv 
 will express the velocity of each layer as it takes the 
 place of that immediately below it ; then if a velocity 
 + dv alone were communicated to each layer, the fluid 
 would remain at rest. ('Traite de Fluides,' Liv. ii. ch. 
 1. Theor. 2.) Thus the velocity of each part of the 
 layer being taken in the vertical direction is the same, 
 and this velocity being that of the whole layer itself, 
 must be inversely as its horizontal section, in order 
 that its motion may not interfere with that of the other 
 layers, and may not disturb the equilibrium. This, then, 
 is precisely the general dynamical principle already ex- 
 plained applied to the motion of fluids, and it is impos- 
 sible to deny that the author is thus enabled to demon- 
 
400 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 strate directly many propositions which had never before 
 been satisfactorily investigated. It is equally unde- 
 niable that much remained after all his efforts incapable 
 of a complete solution, partly owing to the inherent 
 difficulties of the subject from our ignorance of the 
 internal structure and motions of fluids, and partly 
 owing to the imperfect state in which all our progress 
 in analytical science still has left us, the differential 
 equations to which our inquiries lead having, in very 
 many cases, been found to resist all the resources of 
 the integral calculus. 
 
 This remark applies with still greater force to his 
 next work. In 1752, he published his Essay on a new 
 theory of the Resistance of Fluids. The great merit of 
 this admirable work is that it makes no assumption, 
 save one to which none can object, because it is in- 
 volved in every view which can well be taken of the 
 nature of a fluid ; namely, that it is a body composed 
 of very minute particles, separate from each other, and 
 capable of free motions in all directions. He applies 
 the general dynamical principle to the consideration of 
 resistance in all its views and relations, and he applies 
 the calculus to the solution of the various problems 
 with infinite skill. It is in this work that he makes 
 the most use of that refinement in the integral calculus 
 of which we shall presently have occasion to speak more 
 at large, as having first been applied by D'Alembert to 
 physical investigation, if it was not his own invention. 
 But the interval between 1744 and 1752 was not passed 
 without other important contributions to physical and 
 analytical science. In 1746, he gave his Memoir on 
 the general theory of Winds, which was crowned by 
 the Eoyal Academy of Berlin. The foundation of this 
 able and interesting inquiry is the influence of the sun 
 and moon upon the atmosphere, the aerial tides, as it 
 were, which the gravitation towards these bodies pro- 
 duces ; for he dismisses all other causes of aerial cur- 
 rents as too little depending upon any definite opera- 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 401 
 
 tion, or too much depending upon various circumstances 
 that furnish no precise data, to be capable of analytical 
 investigation. The Memoir consists of three parts. In 
 the first he calculates the oscillations caused by the 
 two heavenly bodies supposing them at rest, or the 
 earth at rest in respect of them. In the second, he 
 investigates their operation on the supposition of their 
 motion. In the third, he endeavours to trace the effects 
 produced upon the oscillations by terrestrial objects. 
 The paper is closed with remarks upon the effects of 
 temperature. The whole inquiry is conducted with 
 reference to the general dynamical principle which he 
 had so happily applied to the equilibrium and pressure 
 of fluids, in his first work upon that difficult subject. 
 
 The subject of fluids was, perhaps, the one which 
 most occupied D'Alembert's attention, and for the 
 greatest number of years. His ' Opuscula' contain 
 several interesting tracts upon its various depart- 
 ments, especially the first and fifth volumes, which 
 were published in 1761 and 1768 respectively. But 
 above half the eighth volume relates to the same sub- 
 ject, and it appeared as late as 1780, so that this 
 inquiry had retained its hold on his mind for a period 
 of nearly forty years.* 
 
 * The readers of D'Alembert's papers on these subjects will have real 
 obligations to Bossut, if they read with D'Alembert that great didactic 
 writer's admirable treatise, ' Hydrodynamique,' second edition. He was 
 an intimate friend and, indeed, may be said to have been a pupil, of 
 D'Alembert and of Condorcet. His ' Calcul Integral et Differentiel,' is 
 also a truly excellent and useful work. Of the four great elementary 
 treatises on this subject, Lacroix's, Bougainville's, Cousin's, and Bossut's, 
 the last appears to me the best ; but I am aware of the high opinion which 
 D'Alembert entertained of Bougainville's. He was accustomed to refer to 
 Bossut those who applied to him for explanations of his writings, as New- 
 ton did to Demoivre Why, may it be permitted us respectfully to ask, 
 
 why will so many mathematicians fancy it beneath them to write clearly, 
 simply, and, as didactic matter should be written, intelligibly and always 
 proceeding from what is known and explained to what is not, without an- 
 ticipation? Surely Bossut was as great a geometrician as themselves, 
 and he condescended to write as if he were teaching and not commenting, 
 alluding, or referring. 
 
 2 D 
 
402 
 
 We may further observe, that the extreme interest 
 which he took in it seems to have made him some- 
 what susceptible, when he conceived others had not 
 done justice to his labours in this favourite department 
 of science. Not only is he anxious, perhaps beyond 
 what is altogether beseeming the calm and disinterested 
 love of investigation, to secure the admission of his 
 claims as the original discoverer; but we sometimes 
 find him even querulous, as to the remarks of others, 
 and complaining of them for not rendering him justice. 
 In the * Opuscula,' torn, i., p. 158, we have not only an 
 anxious statement of his having been the first to use 
 the method employed in the ' fissai sur la Resistance 
 des Fluides,' and adding, that " great geometricians 
 had so much valued it as to apply it in their inquiries ;" 
 but he objects to their having maintained that his 
 theory was capable of greater extension than he had 
 given it, and observes that he had turned it to other 
 inquiries which had escaped them. In the able and 
 learned article Hydrodynamique, in the * Diet. Encyc.,' 
 vol. viii., p. 373, he attacks Euler for supposing, in his 
 'Memoire Acad. de Berlin,' 1755, that D'Alembert's 
 method in his Essai was not general; and he adds, 
 " II me semble que M. Euler auroit du rendre plus de 
 justice a mon travail sur ce sujet et convenir de 
 1'utilite qu'il en avoit three." Assuredly if ever man 
 was above all suspicion of either usurping iipon others 
 or overrating his own discoveries, it was this most 
 illustrious geometrician, whose inherent richness of 
 invention made him even blameably careless of his 
 own claims to originality. No one can have contem- 
 plated the different periods of D'Alembert's life without 
 being assured that such feelings of jealousy and irrita- 
 tion as appear in the passages just now cited, were 
 not congenial to his nature and to his earlier habits, 
 when his darling science maintained undisputed pos- 
 session of his mind, excluded all anxiety save in the 
 search after truth, and calmed every temporary ruffling- 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 403 
 
 of his composure. The dates these passages bear, of 
 1761 and 1765, long after his admission into the circle 
 of Madame du DefFand, and his participation in the 
 labours and factions of the Encyclopaedists, the Dide- 
 rots, the Holbachs, the Voltaires, show sufficiently that 
 he had exchanged the peace of geometry for the 
 troubled existence of coterie and party. 
 
 We ought, while on this subject, to add the just and 
 judicious remark of Bossut on the circumstance of 
 James Bernouilli having anticipated in some sort 
 D'Alembert's method of treating dynamical problems : 
 " That the latter seemed to prove, by the numerous 
 and important applications which he had made of his 
 Principle, that in all probability he owed the discovery 
 of it solely to himself." (' Hydrodyn,' I., xv.) 
 
 In treating of Hydrodynamics D'Alembert had found 
 the ordinary calculus insufficient, and was under the 
 necessity of making an important addition to its pro- 
 cesses and its powers, already so much extended by 
 the great improvements which Euler had introduced. 
 This was rendered still more necessary when, in 1746, 
 he came to treat of the winds, and in the following 
 year when he handled the very difficult subject of the 
 vibration of cords, hitherto most imperfectly investi- 
 gated by mathematicians.* In all these inquiries the 
 differential equations which resulted from a geometrical 
 examination of the conditions of any problem, proved 
 
 * Taylor ('Methodus Incrementum') had solved the problem of the 
 vibrating cord's movement, but upon three assumptions that it departs 
 very little from the axis or from a straight line, that all its points come to 
 the axis at the same moment, and that it is of a uniform thickness in its 
 whole length. D'Alembert's solution only requires the last and the first 
 supposition, rejecting the second. The first, indeed, is near the truth, 
 and it is absolutely necessary to render the problem soluble at all. The 
 third has been rejected by both Euler and Daniel Bernouilli, in several 
 cases investigated by them. D'Alembert's solution led to an equation of 
 
 (tf y\ /d* y\ 
 
 J = a 9 ( \ in which t is the 
 
 time of the vibration, x and y the co-ordinates of the curve formed by the 
 vibration. 
 
404 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 to be of so difficult integration that they appeared to 
 set at defiance the utmost resources of the calculus. 
 When a close and rigorous inspection showed no day- 
 light, when experiments of substitution and transfor- 
 mation failed, the only resource which seemed to remain 
 was finding factors which might, by multiplying each 
 side of the equation, complete the differential, and so 
 make it integrable either entirely, or by circular arches, 
 or by logarithms, or by series. D'Alembert, in all pro- 
 bability, drew his new method of treating the subject 
 from the consideration that, in the process of differen- 
 tiation we successively assume one quantity only to be 
 variable and the rest constant, and we differentiate with 
 reference to that one variable ; so that x d y -f y d xis 
 the differential of x y, a rectangle, and xydz-j-xzdy 
 \-yzdx the differential of x y z, a parallelopiped, and 
 so of second differences, d 2 z being (when z = # m ) = 
 (m 2 m) # m ~ 2 dx 2 -f m x m ~ l d 2 x. He probably con- 
 ceived from hence that by reversing the operation and 
 partially integrating, that is, integrating as if one only 
 of the variables were such, and the others were con- 
 stant, he might succeed in going a certain length, and 
 then discover the residue by supposing an unknown 
 function of the variable which had been assumed con- 
 stant, to be added, and afterwards ascertaining that 
 function by attending to the other conditions of the 
 question. This method is called that of partial dif- 
 ferences. Lacroix justly observes that it would be more 
 correct to say partial differentials; and a necessary part 
 of it consisted of the equations of conditions, which other 
 geometricians unfolded more fully than the inventor 
 of the calculus himself; that is to say, statements of 
 the relation which must subsist between the variables 
 or rather the differentials of these variables, in order 
 that there may be a possibility of finding the integral 
 by the method of partial differences. It appears that 
 Fontaine,* a geometrician of the greatest genius, gave 
 * Euler had so high an opinion of Fontaine, that in 1751 he told La- 
 
405 
 
 the earliest intimation on this important subject ; for 
 the function of one or both variables which is multi- 
 plied by d x being called M, and that function of one or 
 both which is multiplied \>y d y being called N, the 
 canon or criterion of integrability is that 
 
 = 
 
 d y d x 
 
 and we certainly find this clearly given in a paper of 
 Fontaine's read before the Academy, 19th Nov., 1738. 
 It is the third theorem of that paper. Clairaut laid 
 down the same rule in a Memoir which he presented 
 in 1739 ; but he admits in that Memoir his having seen 
 Fontaine's paper. He expounds the subject more 
 largely in his far fuller and far abler paper of 1740 ; 
 and there he says that Fontaine showed his theorem to 
 
 lande, "If any unexpected discovery shall be made, I believe it will be 
 Fontaine that will make it." (Montucla, iv., 77, note by Lalande.) His 
 name is not even mentioned in the scientific Encyclopaedias; nor does 
 Professor Leslie, in his Dissertation to the ' Encyc. Brit.,' show that he had 
 ever heard of it. The delay of the Academy in publishing his papers is 
 apparently suspected by Montucla as having resulted from some unfair 
 feeling towards him. He was a person of the most philosophic habits, 
 living always in the country, where he cultivated a small estate ; and 
 having had the misfortune to be involved in an oppressive litigation he 
 appears to have abandoned scientific pursuits during the latter years of his 
 life. (Mem., 1771.) We find him mentioned in some of the contemporary 
 Memoirs, among the very first geometricians. Grimm always treats him 
 as such, and he gives some anecdotes of him. " Fontaine vit a la campagne, 
 et ne vient a Paris que rarement. II passe aupres des connaisseurs 
 pour le premier geometre du royaume. II met du genie dans ses ouvrages, 
 et quand on le connait on n'est pas difficile a persuader sur ce point. C'est 
 un homme d'un tour d' esprit tres-piquant. II r6unit une finesse extreme 
 a je ne sais quoi de niais." (Corr. ii., 287.) It must, however, be con- 
 fessed, that Grimm writes on a subject he knew nothing of, having mixed 
 error with truth. Thus he says of D'Alembert, " Sans avoir rien invente, 
 il passe pour mettre beaucoup d'elegance et de clarte dans ses ouvrages 
 geometriques," p. 215 ; thus praising him for exactly that in which he is 
 most deficient, and denying him the originality which was his great merit. 
 Of Clairaut he elsewhere says : " Un tres-grand geometre, presque sur la 
 ligne des Euler, des Fontaine, des Bernouilli, et des D'Alembert. II avait 
 moins de genie que Fontaine, plus de justesse et de surete et moins de 
 penetration que D'Alembert. Ce dernier a perdu a son mort un rival 
 qui le tenait sans cesse en haleine, et c'est une grande perte." (Corr. iv., 
 456.) This latter passage is very just in all respects; but the word 
 "presque" at the beginning is altogether absurd. 
 
406 
 
 the Academy the day this second paper of Clairaut's 
 was read erroneously, for Fontaine had shown it in 
 November, 1738 ; and had said that it was then new at 
 Paris, and was sent from thence to Euler and Bernouilli. 
 The probability is, that Clairaut had discovered it in- 
 dependent of Fontaine, as Euler certainly had done ; 
 and both of them handled it much more successfully 
 than Fontaine. D'Alembert, in his demonstrations, 
 1769, of the theorems on the integral calculus, given 
 by him without any demonstration in the volume for 
 1767, and in the scholium to the twenty-first theorem, 
 affirms distinctly that he had communicated to Clairaut 
 a portion of the demonstration, forming a corollary to 
 the proposition, and from which he says that Clairaut 
 derived his equation of condition to differentials involv- 
 ing three variables. It is possible ; but as this never 
 was mentioned in Clairaut's lifetime, although there 
 existed a sharp controversy between these two great 
 men on other matters, and especially as the equation of 
 conditions respecting two variables might very easily 
 have led to the train of reasoning by which this exten- 
 sion of the criterion was found out, the probability is, 
 that Clairaut's discovery was in all respects his own. 
 
 The extreme importance of this criterion to the 
 method of partial differences, only invented, or at least 
 applied, some years later, is obvious. Take a simple 
 case in a differential equation of the first order, 
 
 d z = (2 a x y y*) dx + (ax 2 3 a; y 2 ) dy 
 
 where M = 2 a # y y 3 , N = a # 2 3 # ?/ 
 
 For the criterion = 2 a x 3 y 2 
 dy 
 
 gves us 
 
 dy dx 
 
407 
 
 which shows that the equation M rf # + N d ?/ is a 
 complete differential, and may be integrated. Thus 
 integrate (a a 2 3 x y 2 ) d y, as if x were constant, and 
 add X (a function of x, or a constant), as necessary to 
 complete the integral, and we have 
 
 ax* y ^?/ 3 + X = Z; 
 now differentiate, supposing y constant, and we have 
 
 dz 3 , ( <ZX 
 
 _ =( ^ 2/ _ 2/ 3 ) + __ 
 
 (because of the criterion) = < 2axy ?/ 3 , 
 consequently -= = o, and X = C, a constant. 
 
 CL X 
 
 Accordingly, z = a x* y x y B 4. C ; 
 
 and so it is, for differentiating in the ordinary way, x 
 and y being both variable, we have 
 
 dz = Zaxydx-i r ax'*dy Sxy* dy 
 
 which was the equation given to be integrated. 
 
 j ~\r 
 
 To take another instance in which -= , the differen- 
 
 d x 
 
 tial coefficient of the quantity added is not = o or X 
 constant. Let 
 
 in which, by inspection, the solution is easy 
 
 Here M = f + 3 a? 
 
 and j = 2 y = -= 
 
 dy d x 
 
408 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 So z = x 2/ 2 -|- X, and differentiating with respect to x 
 
 d x d x 
 
 Hence X = x 3 4. C 
 
 and z = # ?/ 2 + z? + C, 
 
 the integral of the equation proposed. 
 
 It must, however, be observed of the criterion, that 
 an equation may be integrable which does not answer 
 the condition 
 
 d y d x 
 
 It may be possible to separate the variables and 
 obtain X d x = Y d y, as by transformation ; or to find 
 a factor, which, multiplying the equation, shall render 
 it integrable, by bringing it within that condition. The 
 latter process is the most hopeful ; and it is generally 
 affirmed that such a factor, F, may always be found 
 for every equation of the first order involving only 
 two variables. However, this is only true in theory : 
 we cannot resolve the general equation by any such 
 means ; for that gives us 
 
 M d N\ ^ d F , f d F 
 y d x ) ' d x d y 
 
 an expression as impossible to disentangle, it may 
 safely be asserted, as any for the resolution of which 
 its aid might be wanted. It is only in a few instances 
 of the values of these functions (M and N) that we can 
 succeed in finding F. It is quite unaccountable* that 
 Clairaut should, in reference to his equation, which is 
 substantially the same with the above, describe it as 
 " d'une grande utilite, pour trouver p " (that is F). 
 
 * Mem. del'Acad. 1740, p. 299. I find my surprise shared by a very 
 learned mathematician to whom I had mentioned it. 
 
D'ALEMBEET. 409 
 
 It is here to be observed, that not only Fontaine had, 
 apparently, first of all the geometricians, given the crite- 
 rion of integrability, but he had also given the notation 
 which was afterwards adopted for the calculus of Partial 
 Differences. < being a function of two variables, x and 
 
 v, he makes - stand for the differential coefficient of 
 d x 
 
 d> when x only varies, and ~- for the same differential 
 
 dy 
 
 coefficient when y only varies. Hence he takes - 
 
 CL $ 
 
 X d x, not, as in the ordinary notation it would be, = 
 d 0, the complete differential of ^ ; whereas that differ- 
 ential would, in this solution, be 
 
 d x dy 
 
 Thus if $ = x i/ 2 , its complete dif. d $ = 2 y x d y + 
 
 7/ 2 ^, but d^ = y 2 
 
 It is quite clear, therefore, that Fontaine gave the 
 notation of this calculus. 
 
 But D'Alembert had been anticipated in the method 
 itself, as well as in the notation or algorithm ; for 
 Euler, in a paper entitled ' Investigatio functionum ex 
 data differentialium conditione,' dated 1734,* integrated 
 an equation of partial differences ; and he had after- 
 wards forgotten his own new calculus, so entirely as to 
 believe that it was first applied by D'Alembert in 1744. 
 So great were the intellectual riches of the first of 
 analysts, that he could thus afford to throw away the 
 invention of a new and most powerful calculus ! A 
 germ of the same method is plainly to be traced in 
 
 Petersburgh Memoirs,' Vol. VII. 
 
410 D'ALEMBEET. 
 
 Nicolas Bernoulli's paper* in the * Acta Eruditorum' 
 for 1720, on Orthogonal Trajectories.! 
 
 While mentioning Fontaine's great and original 
 genius for analytical investigations, we must not over- 
 look his having apparently come very near the Calculus 
 of Variations. In a paper read at the Academy, 17th 
 February, 1734, we find a passage that certainly looks 
 towards that calculus, and shows that he used a new 
 algorithm as requisite for conducting his operation : 
 " J'ai etc oblige," he says, " de faire varier les memes 
 lignes en deux manieres differentes. 11 a fallu designer 
 leurs variations differemment." " J'ai marque les unes 
 commes les geometres Anglais par des fluxions (points) ; 
 les autres par des differences (d x) a notre maniere ; 
 de sorte qu'ici d x ne sera pas la meme chose que #, d x 
 que #," (p. 18.) "II peut y avoir," he afterwards adds, 
 " des problemes qui dependroient de cette methode 
 fluxio-differentielle." 
 
 * See, too, the paper in John Bernoulli's Works, Vol. II., p. 442, 
 where he investigates the transformation of the differential equation dx = 
 P d y (P heing a function of a, or, and y) into one, in which a also is 
 variable. 
 
 f While upon the subject of Partial Differences, we must naturally feel 
 some disappointment that this important subject has not been treated more 
 systematically, especially by later analysts. Some of these, indeed, seem 
 to have formed an extremely vague notion of its nature. Thus Professor 
 Leslie, in his declamatory and inaccurate Dissertation on the progress of 
 mathematical and physical science, ('Encyc. Brit.,' I., 600,) gives a defi- 
 nition of this calculus, which is really that of the fluxional or differential 
 calculus in general, and which, thouph authorized by an inaccurate pas- 
 sage in Bossut's excellent work, ('Cal. Dif. et Int,' II., 351,) could 
 never have been adopted by any one who did more than copy after another. 
 He afterwards (p. 606) supposes Clairaut's addition to the 'inverse square 
 
 of the distance ( 4 J to have been adding what he calls " a small 
 
 portion of the inverse cube joined to the ordinary term of the inverse 
 square ;" and he considers, most unaccountably, that this is not a function 
 of the distance at all. His account of the calculus of variations is equally 
 vague ; and the example unhappily chosen is one in which the relations of 
 the co-ordinates do not change, but only the amount of the parameter 
 (Ib., p. 600.) I must also most respectfully enter my protest here, once 
 more, against mathematicians writing metaphorically" and poetically, as 
 this learned Professor does in almost every sentence. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 411 
 
 Nothing that has now been said can, in any manner, 
 detract from the renown justly acquired by D'Alemberfc 
 and Lagrange as the first who fully expounded the two 
 great additions to the Differential Calculus, first applied 
 them systematically to the investigation of physical as 
 well as mathematical questions, and therefore may truly 
 be said to have first taught the use of them as instru- 
 ments of research to geometricians.* 
 
 In the year 1746 the Academy of France proposed, 
 as the subject of its annual prize essay for 1748, the 
 disturbances produced by Jupiter and Saturn mutually 
 on each other's orbits. Euler's Memoir gained the 
 prize ; and it contains the solution of the famous Pro- 
 blem of the Three Bodies namely, to find the path 
 which one of those bodies describes round another 
 when all three attract each other with forces varying 
 inversely as the squares of their distances, their velo- 
 cities and masses being given, and their directions in 
 the tangents of their orbits.f This, which applies to 
 the case of the Moon, would be resolved were we in 
 possession of the solution for the case of Jupiter and 
 Saturn, which, instead of revolving round each other, 
 revolve round the third body. Euler's investigation, 
 did not appear quite satisfactory; and, in 1750 the same 
 subject was announced for 1752, when he again carried 
 off the prize by a paper exhausting the subject, and 
 affording such an approximation to the solution as the 
 utmost resources of the integral calculus can give. 
 But while we admit, because its illustrious author him- 
 self admitted, the justice of the Academy's views re- 
 specting his first solution, we must never forget the 
 
 * There was nothing in the observation of Fontaine that can be termed 
 an anticipation of Lagrange, though D'Alembert, unknown to himself, 
 had certainly been anticipated by Euler. 
 
 f The problem of the Three Bodies, properly speaking, is more general; 
 but, in common parlance, it is confined to the particular case of gravita- 
 tion, and indeed of the sun, earth, and moon, as three bodies attracting 
 each other by the law of gravitation, and one of which is incomparably 
 larger than the other two. 
 
412 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 extraordinary genius displayed in it. He did not com- 
 municate the whole, or even the more essential portion 
 of his investigation, but he afterwards gave it in a paper 
 to the Berlin Academy in 1747, and in another to the 
 Petersburgh Academy in 1750, the first of these con- 
 taining our earliest view of the variation of arbitrary 
 constants in differential equations, and the development 
 of the radical which expresses the relative disturbance 
 between two planets in a series of sines and co-sines 
 of angles multiples of the elongation, a series so artistry 
 framed that every three consecutive terms are related 
 together in such a manner as to give the whole series 
 from a determination of the first two terms. Clairaut 
 appears to have turned his attention to the same pro- 
 blem some time before Euler. In 1743, he gave a 
 Memoir on the Moon's Orbit, according to the New- 
 tonian theory of gravitation, and it appears in the 
 volume for that year ; but this paper must be admitted 
 to have been a somewhat slight performance for so con- 
 summate a geometrician. It rather evaded the diffi- 
 culties of the problem than surmounted by enounter- 
 ing them ; for he assumed the orbit of the moon to 
 differ imperceptibly from a circle ; and his differential 
 equation could not have been integrated without this 
 supposition. Now, the only assumptions which had 
 been conceived permissible were the incomparably 
 greater mass of one body than those of the two others,* 
 the nearly equal distance of that body from each of 
 the two others, and the almost elliptical path of the 
 one whose orbit was sought, leaving its deviation from 
 that path alone to be sought after. Accordingly, the 
 paper of 1743 did not satisfy its illustrious author, 
 who, in 1747, produced another worthy of the sub- 
 ject and of himself. This was read 15th November, 
 
 * In truth, the mass of the sun being 355,000 times that of the earth, 
 and that of the earth being between sixty-eight and sixty-nine times that 
 of the moon, the mass of the sun is twenty-five millions of times greater 
 than that of the moou. 
 
D'ALEMBEET. 413 
 
 1747, but part of it had been read in August. He 
 asserts positively in a note ('Mem.,' 1745, p. 335,) 
 that though Euler's first paper had been sent in the 
 same year, he had never seen it till after his solution 
 was obtained ; therefore, Lalande had no right to state 
 in his note to the very bad edition of Montucla which 
 he published, that Fontaine always said that Clairaut 
 was enabled to obtain his solution by the paper of 
 Euler, (Vol. iv. p. 66.) 
 
 At the time that Clairaut was engaged in this in- 
 vestigation, D'Alembert, unknown to him, was working 
 upon the same subject. Their papers were presented 
 on the same day, and Clairaut's solution was unknown 
 to D'Alembert; but so neither could D'Alembert's 
 solution have been known to Clairaut, because the 
 paper is general on the problem, and the section appli- 
 cable to the moon's orbit was added after the rest was 
 first read, and was never read at all to the Academy. 
 Nothing, therefore, can be more clear than that neither 
 of these great geometricians borrowed from the other, or 
 from Euler. It is just possible that Euler in his com- 
 plete solution of 1752 might have had the advantage 
 of their previous ones ; but as it clearly flowed from 
 his earlier paper, there is no doubt also of his entire 
 originality. Nevertheless, when D'Alembert's name 
 became mixed up with the party proceedings among 
 the literary and fashionable circles of Paris, there were 
 not wanting those who insisted that the whole fame of 
 this great inquiry belonged to Clairaut; and it is 
 painful to reflect on the needless uneasiness which such 
 insinuations gave to D'Alembert. We shall recur to 
 the subject afterwards, and now must continue the 
 history of this problem. 
 
 Thus, in investigating this famous " Problem of the 
 Three Bodies," all the three geometricians, without 
 communicating together, took the same general course 
 in the field, like three navigators of consummate skill 
 and most practised experience tracing the pathless 
 
414 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 ocean, unseen by one another, and each trusting to his 
 seamanship, his astronomical observations, and his 
 time-keeper, and all of them steering separately the 
 same course. They were each led to three equations, 
 which nearly resembled those obtained by the other 
 two. Of the three equations the most important is 
 
 dv 
 
 T 
 
 in which u is the reciprocal of the projection on the 
 plane of the ecliptic of the moon's distance from the 
 earth, v the moon's longitude with respect to the centre 
 of gravity of the earth and moon, P and T the result- 
 ants respectively of all the forces acting on the moon 
 
 parallel and perpendicular to , and parallel to the 
 
 plane of the ecliptic, h an arbitrary constant. P and 
 r being complicated functions of the longitudes of the 
 sun and moon, as well as of the eccentricities of their 
 orbits, have to be developed for the further solution of 
 the problem. 
 
 Now, it is a truly remarkable circumstance that the 
 conclusion at which all these great men separately 
 arrived was afterwards found to be erroneous. They 
 made the revolving motion of the moon's apogee (or 
 the revolution which the most distant part of her orbit 
 makes in a certain time) half as much as the observa- 
 tions show it to be ; and in a revolution of the moon, 
 1 30' 43", instead of 3 2' 32" the observations giving 
 about nine years for the period, which the revolution 
 really takes, instead of eighteen. Clairaut first stated 
 this apparent failure of the Newtonian theory, and as 
 he had taken pains to make the investigation " avec 
 toute 1'exactitude qu'elle demandoit," ('Mem.' 1745, p. 
 336,) he was with great reluctance driven to conclude 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 415 
 
 that the doctrine of gravitation failed to account for 
 the progression of the apogee or revolution of the lunar 
 orbit; and if so, as Euler justly observed, (Prix., torn, 
 vii., 'Recherches sur Jupiter et Saturne,' p. 4,) we 
 must have been entitled to call in question the opera- 
 tion of the same principle on all the other parts of the 
 planetary system. Clairaut even went so far as to 
 propose, in consequence of the supposed error, a 
 modification of the law of gravitation ; and that we 
 should, instead of considering it as in the proportion of 
 
 -rg, (d being the distance,) regard it as proportional 
 d 
 
 partly to -~-, the inverse square, and partly to --T-, the 
 d d 
 
 inverse fourth power of the distance. But this sugges- 
 tion was far from giving satisfaction even to those who 
 admitted the failure of the theory. A controversy 
 arose between this great geometrician and a very un- 
 worthy antagonist, BufTon, who on vague, metaphysical, 
 and even declamatory grounds, persisted in showing 
 his ignorance of analysis, and his obstinate vanity ; nor, 
 though he was by accident, quite right, could any one 
 give him the least credit for his good fortune. Clairaut 
 answered him, and afterwards rejoined to his reply, 
 with a courtesy which betokened entire civility and 
 even respect for the person, with an infinitely low es- 
 timation of either his weight or his strength quanti- 
 ties truly evanescent. At length it occurred to him 
 that the process should be repeated, a course which 
 he certainly must have taken at first had he not natu- 
 rally enough been misled by the singular coincidence 
 of both Euler and D'Alembert* having arrived at the 
 same conclusion with himself. He found that he ought 
 to have repeated his investigation of the differential 
 
 * Euler had stated it incidentally, as regarded the lunar apogee, in his 
 prize memoir, in 1746, on Jupiter and Saturn, but he mentioned it more 
 fully in a letter to Clairaut. ('Mem.' 1745, p. 353, note.) 
 
416 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 equation to the radius, after obtaining, by a first inves- 
 tigation, the value of the third term above given in 
 that equation 
 
 _ 
 
 d v 1. ( as above given.) 
 
 w 3 (A 2 + &c. 
 
 This omission he now supplied, and he found that 
 the result, when applied to the case, made the pro- 
 gression of the moon's apogee twice as quick as the 
 former operation had given it, or nine years, agreeing 
 with the actual observation. He deposited, in July, 
 1746, with the secretary of the Academy, as well as 
 with Sir Martin Folkes, president of the Royal Society, 
 a sealed paper containing the heads of his analysis, but 
 delayed the publication of it until he should complete 
 the whole to his satisfaction : a most praiseworthy cau- 
 tion, after the error that had been committed in the 
 first instance. He announced, however, the result, 
 and its confirming the Newtonian theory, in May of 
 the same year; and added, that his reasoning was 
 purely geometrical, and had no reference to vague 
 topics, giving, at the same time, a conclusive exposition 
 of Bufibn's ignorance in his hot attack, which showed 
 him to be wholly incapable of appreciating any part 
 of the argument. In May, 1752, the Memoir itself was 
 given to the Academy, and it appears in the volume 
 for 1748.* It is entitled, " De 1'Orbite de la Lune, en 
 ne negligeant pas les quarres des quantites de meme 
 ordre avec les forces perturbatrices ; which has misled 
 many in their conception of the cause to which the 
 error must be ascribed. But in the volume for 1748, 
 p. 433, he leaves no doubt on that cause ; for he states 
 
 * For an account of the irregular and irrational manner in -which the 
 Memoirs of the Academy were published, see ' Life of Lavoisier.' The 
 inconvenience of it meets us everywhere. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 417 
 
 that having originally taken the radius vector r, (the re- 
 ciprocal of u in our former equation.) = , 
 
 1 cos. m v 
 
 k 
 he now takes fully that reciprocal u or = 1 e 
 
 cos. m v + Q cos. 7 cos. ( m ] v 4- cos. 
 
 n \n / 
 
 (2 \ / 2 \ 
 h m ) v % cos. ( 2m) v, terms obtained 
 n / \n / 
 
 by the first or trial integration, which he had fully ex- 
 plained in his first Memoir to be the more correct 
 mode of proceeding, (' Mem.,' 1745, p. 352 ;) and the 
 consequence of this is to give the multiplier, on which 
 depenids the progression of the apogee, a different value 
 from what it was found to have in the former process. 
 It is never to be forgotten that the original investiga- 
 tion was accurate as far as it went ; but by further 
 extending the approximation a more correct value of 
 m was obtained, in consequence of which the expres- 
 sion for the motion of the apogee became double that 
 which had been calculated before. 
 
 It should be observed, in closing the subject of the 
 Problem of Three Bodies, that Euler no sooner heard 
 of Clairaut's final discovery, than he confirmed it by 
 his own investigation of the subject, as did D'Alembert. 
 But in the meantime Matthew Stewart, (Life of Sim- 
 son, p. 137,) had undertaken to assail this question by 
 the mere help of the ancient geometry, and had mar- 
 vellously succeeded in reconciling the Newtonian 
 theory with observation. Father Walmisley, a young 
 English priest of the Benedictine order, also gave an 
 analytical solution of the difficulty in 1749. 
 
 The other great problem, the investigation of which 
 occupied D'Alembert, was the Precession of the equi- 
 noxes and the Nutation of the earth's axis, according 
 to the theory of gravitation. Sir Isaac Newton, in the 
 xxxix. prop, of the third book, had given an indirect 
 2 E 
 
418 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 solution of the problem concerning the Precession; the 
 Nutation had only been by his unrivalled sagacity con- 
 jectured a priori, and was proved by the observations 
 of Bradley. The solution of the Precession had not 
 proved satisfactory; and objections were taken to the 
 hypotheses on which it rested, that the accumulation 
 of matter at the equator might be regarded as a belt 
 of moons, that its movement might be reckoned in the 
 proportion of its mass to that of the earth, and that the 
 proportion of the terrestrial axes is that of 229 to 230; 
 that the earth is homogeneous, and that the action of 
 the sun and moon ad mare movendum, are as one to 
 four and a half nearly, and in the same ratio ad equi- 
 noctia movenda. Certainly the three last suppositions 
 have since Newton's time been displaced by more ac- 
 curate observations; the axes being found, to be as 
 298 to 299, the earth not homogeneous, and the ac- 
 tions of the sun and moon on the tides more nearly as 
 one to three. But it has often been observed, and 
 truly observed, that when D'Alembert came to discuss 
 the subjectj it would have been more becoming in him 
 to assign his reasons for denying the other hypothesis 
 on which the Newtonian investigation rests, than 
 simply to have pronounced it groundless. However, 
 it is certain that he first gave a direct and satisfactory 
 solution of this great problem; and that he investi- 
 gated the Nutation with perfect success, showing it to 
 be such that if it subsisted alone, (i. e., if there were 
 no precessional motion) the pole of the equinoctial 
 would describe among the stars a minute ellipse, hav- 
 ing its longer axis about 18" and its shorter about 13", 
 the longer being directed towards the pole of the 
 ecliptic, and the shorter of course at right angles to it. 
 He also discovered in his investigations that the Pre- 
 cession is itself subject to a variation, being in a revo- 
 lution of the nodes, sometimes accelerated, sometimes 
 retarded, according to a law which he discovered, 
 giving the equation of correction. It was in 1749 that 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 419 
 
 lie gave this admirable investigation; and in 1755 he 
 followed it up with another first attempted by him, 
 namely, the variation which might occur to the former 
 results, if the earth, instead of being a sphere oblate at 
 the poles, were an elliptic spheroid, whose axes were 
 different. He added an investigation of the Precession 
 on the supposition of the form being any other curve 
 approaching the circle. This is an investigation of as 
 great difficulty perhaps as ever engaged the attention 
 of analysts. It remains to add that Euler, in 1750, 
 entered on the same inquiries concerning Precession 
 and Nutation ; and with his wonted candour, he de- 
 clared that he had read D'Alembert's memoir before 
 he began the investigation. 
 
 The only other works of D'Alembert which it is ne- 
 cessary to mention, are his three papers on the integ- 
 ral calculus. Of these one, in the Berlin Memoirs, is 
 replete with improvements extremely important in the 
 methods of integration, and contains a method of treat- 
 ing linear equations of any order that serve as a foun- 
 dation for the approximate solutions, which are abso- 
 lutely indispensable to physical astronomy in the pre- 
 sent imperfect state of the calculus. The other two 
 are in the French Academy's Memoirs for 1757 and 
 1769, the latter giving the demonstrations of the theo- 
 rems on integration contained in the former. It is in 
 the twenty-first of these that he claims having sug- 
 gested, as we have already seen, to Clairaut his equa- 
 tion of conditions in the case of three variables. The 
 ' Opuscules' contain likewise, especially the 4th, 5th, 
 and- 7th volumes, some most important papers on the 
 calculus. Nor must we omit to record that there is 
 every reason to give him credit for having discovered 
 Taylor's Theorem. It is certain that he first gave this 
 celebrated formula complete, having, in the article 
 ' Series' of the 'Encyclopedic,' first given the remain- 
 ing terms left out by Taylor, and also a demonstration 
 of the whole, better than the original inventor's. Con- 
 
420 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 dorcet, who only knew the Theorem from this exposi- 
 tion of it, treats him as certainly being its author; and 
 D'Alernbert himself, citing no other discoverer, plainly 
 gives it as altogether his own.* 
 
 I have thought it better to pursue the same method 
 in treating of D'Alembert's works that I adopted re- 
 specting Voltaire's,f giving all his scientific researches, 
 his important physical and analytical discoveries, in a 
 connected order, and thus avoiding the interruption of 
 the series which an exclusive regard to the chronolo- 
 gical succession of his different works on all subjects 
 would have occasioned. We must now return to the 
 history of his life, and the other pursuits with which 
 his severer studies were interrupted, and his enjoy- 
 ments, as it were, variegated. 
 
 In those scientific pursuits, the history of which we 
 have been surveying, he passed the first eighteen years 
 after he left the College, and he passed them in un- 
 interrupted tranquillity and happiness, in tasting the 
 pleasure of contemplating the relations of necessary 
 truths, in adding to the number which had been before 
 ascertained, and in enlarging the sphere of his own 
 usefulness as well as his fame. His existence had been 
 one which the children of this world, the pampered sons 
 of wealth and fashion, the votaries of vulgar pleasure, 
 and the slaves of ordinary ambition would regard as 
 obscure and even wretched ; for he had neither wealth 
 nor rank, and all his gratifications were of a purely in- 
 tellectual kind. But his enjoyment had been unbroken ; 
 he had no wants unsupplied ; he tasted perfect tran- 
 quillity of mind ; and his friends, who esteemed him, 
 
 * If very small things might be compared to great, I should note the 
 circumstance the accident, I may well term it of my having hit upon 
 the Binomial Theorem, and given it as an exercise to Professor Playfair, 
 when attending his class in 1794. He kept my paper, and used to men- 
 tion this circumstance. He said he concluded I had found it only by in- 
 duction, which was true. The demonstration is, indeed, of considerable 
 difficulty. 
 
 f In Vol. II. of this Series. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 421 
 
 were great men of congenial habits. He had now 
 passed his thirty-fifth year 
 
 " II mezzo di camin di nostra vita." Dante. 
 
 His devotion to the mathematics had all along 
 estranged him from those branches of physical science 
 which do not lend themselves to analytical investiga- 
 tion. Indeed, as I have shown in the Life of Simson, 
 he appears even to have disregarded all geometrical in- 
 quiries which were unconnected with modern analysis. 
 But he had always cultivated a taste for the belles- 
 lettres, and both read and understood poetry. He was 
 also well acquainted with moral and metaphysical sub- 
 jects. The singularity is, therefore, great, that he should 
 have had no taste for the inductive sciences. Herein 
 he differed widely from other great geometricians. To 
 say nothing of the greatest of mathematicians, Newton 
 himself, alike of inexhaustible resources in experimental 
 as in analytical and geometrical investigation, Euler and 
 Laplace both were much attached to experimental 
 philosophy. D'Alembert had, moreover, lived in the 
 society of several persons whose pursuits were not at 
 all confined to the mathematics, and with some for 
 whom that science had no attractions. Of these Diderot 
 was his most intimate and earliest friend; and he it 
 was who prevailed upon him to join in the conduct of 
 a great literary undertaking, the first French Encyclo- 
 psedia. This w^ork was published at Paris from 1751 
 to 1758 ; and of these seven volumes D'Alembert and 
 Diderot were the joint editors. D'Alembert also con- 
 tributed many of the best articles, and wrote the cele- 
 brated Preliminary Discourse upon the distribution and 
 the progress of the sciences. The merit of those arti- 
 cles is generally, as might have been expected from 
 such a writer, great in proportion as he exerted him- 
 self to elaborate and to finish them. But the best are, 
 as might also have been expected, the mathematical. 
 
 The Preliminary Discourse has, in my very humble 
 
422 D'ALEMBERT, 
 
 opinion, and speaking with an unfeigned respect for 
 both its illustrious author and its eminent eulogists, 
 been praised much beyond its merits. The very ground 
 of those panegyrics, that it traces the invention of the 
 sciences and the arts to the necessities and the desires 
 of individual nature, seems to be a satisfactory proof 
 how fanciful and indeed how confined the whole plan 
 of the work is. Professor Stewart has most justly re- 
 marked (* Dissertation, Encyc. Brit. Introd.') that there 
 is in the Discourse a total confusion of two things, in 
 themselves wholly different and which ought to have 
 been carefully kept distinct the character and circum- 
 stances and progress of the individual, and those of the 
 rcies. It is the scientific advance of the race that 
 author professes to treat ; but he is constantly deal- 
 ing with the unfolding of the faculties in the man. 
 There arises from hence a most shadowy, indistinct, 
 and vague view of most points discussed. And not 
 unconnected with this confusion is the other main error 
 of the whole treatise, the error into which Bacon had 
 fallen before ; the sciences are classified under the heads 
 of memory, imagination, and reason, only Bacon's ar- 
 rangement revived. But nothing can be more fanciful, 
 nothing less accurate, than such a distribution, which 
 sacrifices sense to point, and sound principles of classi- 
 fication to outward symmetry and affected simplicity. 
 The total want of precision, and of logical arrangement 
 in the details of this division, is indeed striking. Thus 
 under History we have Natural History, or a record of 
 all facts, whether relating to animals, or vegetables, or 
 minerals, or the heavenly bodies, or the elements, as 
 to heat, air, water, meteors. Then in what does this 
 differ from inductive or experimental philosophy, which 
 yet forms a branch of the second great division ? More- 
 over, why are moral facts omitted in the division of 
 history? Then the application of natural powers to 
 different uses is another branch of History, and thus 
 all the arts are introduced under this head. In the 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 423 
 
 division of Natural Philosophy we find equal want of 
 precision. Can anything be more inexplicable than to 
 find a person, who like D'Alembert was both a mathe- 
 matician and a metaphysician, treating mathematics as 
 a branch of natural science, as if number, or indeed 
 quantity, could be regarded as a physical existence? 
 Not more happy is the execution of this plan in the 
 moral and intellectual division. These are ranged under 
 the science of Man. Then what place has the subject 
 of instinct, which is just as intellectual a branch as that 
 of reason ? Logic is defined to be the science of in- 
 tellect, or the means of finding truth ; Morals, that of 
 the will, or the grounds of virtue. But the Fancy is 
 as much a subject of intellectual science as the Keason. 
 Moreover the moral qualities belong to the understand- 
 ing. Under Logic he brings hieroglyphics and heraldry 
 ('La Science du Blason'), and also rhetoric, including 
 the art of versification ; but poetry belongs to the third 
 great division, Imagination, though oratory is ranged 
 under the second, with Logic. 
 
 Thus of this celebrated classification and the famous 
 genealogical tree applied to it, the object of so much 
 self-gratulation with the Encyclopaedists, we may fairly 
 judge by its fruits, and they are of but mean value. 
 It shares the same blame, however, with the division 
 of Bacon, the root and seed from which it springs. We 
 find that great master of logic classifying the mechani- 
 cal arts and history together ; nay, in his threefold 
 division of the sciences, according as the Deity, man, 
 or external nature are their objects, he classes intellec- 
 tual and moral philosophy with anatomy and medicine, 
 optics and acoustics with ethics, the chemical qualities 
 of human bones and blood with human philosophy, that 
 of animal bones and blood with natural philosphy. So 
 D'Alembert not lagging behind his master in paradox, 
 affirms that imagination has the greatest share in meta- 
 physics and geometry of all the sciences connected 
 with reason. 
 
424 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 That the celebrated Discourse contains many bold 
 general views, often more bold indeed than considerate, 
 that it abounds with learning, that it is full of ingenious 
 suggestions, is perfectly true. That it is written in a 
 plain, perspicuous style, well suited to a didactic work, 
 is also certain. But that the impression which it pro- 
 duced was owing much more to its large scope, to the 
 amplitude of its range, than to the soundness of its 
 doctrines, or even to any felicity with which these were 
 illustrated, is, I believe, now the opinion of all who 
 impartially consider the subject. 
 
 No sooner did the great work appear, to which this 
 Discourse formed the introduction, than the freedom 
 which marked some of the opinions delivered, perhaps 
 the omission of certain subjects altogether, but certainly 
 much more than either of these circumstances, the well- 
 known sentiments upon religious questions of many 
 contributors, though that subject was in general avoided 
 with care, raised a great opposition among the friends 
 of the Church, who were soon joined by those of the 
 temporal government; and this hostility was encouraged 
 by all who made a trade of literature, the professed 
 authors not belonging to the circle of the Encyclopae- 
 dists, a name soon applied not only to the authors of 
 the work but to the whole free-thinking part of the 
 community. The storm soon became general, but the 
 article ' Geneve' was the first cause of attack. The free 
 constitution of that little republic was praised, the con- 
 duct of its magistrates commended, the character of 
 its people extolled, but there were doubts thrown upon 
 the orthodoxy of its pastors, and a distinct condemna- 
 tion was pronounced of Calvin's prohibition of the 
 drama being still maintained in force. 
 
 Rousseau, though himself the author of plays and 
 operas, attacked this article. His ' Letter' had extra- 
 ordinary success, and D'Alembert's reply is on all hands 
 allowed to have been a failure. Even his indiscrimi- 
 nate panegyrist, Condorcet, is fain to confess " Nous 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 425 
 
 avouons sans peine que sareponse eut moins de succes." 
 (' Hist. Ac.' 1783, p. 102.) The attack on the Ency- 
 clopedists was not confined to their literary adversaries 
 or rivals, terms far too frequently synonymous, to the 
 disgrace of letters. The circles of fashion, which at 
 Paris always had their factious divisions, and always 
 connected themselves both with literature and the 
 theatre, took their share in the controversy. The clergy, 
 of course, were not slow to join; and the Government 
 became influenced against the great work and its con- 
 ductors. D'Alembert now first knew what it was to 
 have the hitherto unruffled calm of a -geometrician's 
 life broken and agitated by the tempests of controversy 
 and of faction. Though he had never lived retired 
 from the world, yet he had not been so mixed up in 
 its affairs as to have acquired the callousness by which 
 practical men soon become protected against the buf- 
 fetings of the world. He could not easily reconcile 
 himself to the bitterness that assailed him, and the in- 
 justice to which it led. When the Government refused 
 in 1758 to let the 'Encyclopedic' be any longer pub- 
 lished in France, and its seat was transferred to Neuf- 
 chatel, he retired from all share in the direction, 
 (which Diderot alone continued to exercise,) and only 
 contributed articles on mathematical and metaphysical 
 subjects. 
 
 During the stormy years which now passed over 
 his head he published his ' Melanges de Philosophic, 
 d'Histoire, et de Litterature,' his 4 Memoirs of Queen 
 Christina of Sweden,' his ' History of the Fall of the 
 Jesuits,' and his ' Essay on the Intercourse of Literary 
 Men with the Great,' a work in which he reads to his 
 brethren lessons of independence, fully as distasteful 
 as wholesome. His serious, rational, and dignified 
 remonstrances are known to have at least had the salu- 
 tary effect of terminating the degrading practice of 
 authors dedicating their works, both of fancy and of 
 science, to the great, in addresses which savoured rather 
 
426 D'ALEMBEKT. 
 
 of prostrate submission before a superior being, than 
 of gratitude for human patronage. He had long before 
 accommodated his own practice to the course which 
 his principles, as expounded in this Essay, would sanc- 
 tion ; his first work (the ' Dynamique') having been 
 inscribed to M. de Maurepas, Minister of Marine, in a 
 respectful but dignified address, only stating that a 
 scientific work was naturally enough dedicated to a 
 statesman who protected the sciences.* 
 
 The annoyance and frequent irritation which the 
 deviations from his proper pursuits occasioned him, 
 made him always most willing to resume his more 
 calm and congenial occupation. His researches on 
 various important questions of physical astronomy, and 
 his completion of the solution which he had a few 
 years before given, as we have seen, of the great pro- 
 blem of disturbing forces, were published during the 
 stormy years of his life. But it is truly painful to think 
 that the soreness which he experienced from unjust 
 attacks was suffered on more than one occasion to ex- 
 tend its influence into the serene regions of abstract 
 science, and that the geometrician and the controver- 
 sialist were sometimes perceived to be the same in- 
 dividual. The absurd attempt of ignorant men to de- 
 preciate his labours in the great problem, by represent- 
 ing him as borrowing from Clairaut, instead of only 
 exciting his indignation against the silly propagators 
 of such insinuations, which assuredly had no counten- 
 ance whatever from Clairaut, as we have already seen, 
 led him to show more heat than beseemed the geome- 
 trical character in scientific disputes on the subject 
 
 * His dedication to M. D'Argenson of his ' Essai sur la Resistance des 
 Fluides,' did not by any means conform to his principles. After, praising 
 many other qualities, he ascribes, perhaps with some show of justice, to 
 that virtuous Minister, " Modestie, candeur, amour du bien public, et tou- 
 tes les vertus que notre siecle se contente d'estimer." Did he mean to 
 conceal under the latter branch of this sentence only the meaning that M. 
 D'Argenson gives an example of loving the virtues which others only 
 admired? 
 
D'ALEMBEKT. 427 
 
 with that illustrious colleague, whom he showed an un- 
 worthy disposition to differ with. A controversy of 
 some length arose between them, when the principles 
 of the solution respecting the lunar orbit were applied 
 to the construction of lunar tables. D'Alembert' s were 
 published in his ' Eecherches' in 1754, and he soon 
 found their inaccuracy to be considerable ; the results 
 of his calculations sometimes differing seven or eight 
 minutes from the observations. He was obliged in 
 1756 to give a corrected set after further investigation. 
 Clairaut was writing at the same time on this subject, 
 and he had received a prize from the Academy of 
 Petersburgh for his work. D'Alembert, who had been 
 a candidate too, attacked his methods in his ' Recher- 
 ches,' 1756, Clairaut gave a criticism of this book 
 and of the author's method in the ' Journal de S9avans;' 
 D'Alembert replied in the * Mercure ;' and Clairaut re- 
 joined in 1758. The same unworthy spirit broke out 
 on Clairaut having applied his investigation of the dis- 
 turbing forces to the comet of 1682, (Halley's comet,) 
 expected in 1759, but appearing a month earlier than 
 Clairaut foretold, owing to an error of nineteen days 
 in the computation. Anonymous attacks upon him he 
 ascribed to D'Alembert, and a long series of controver- 
 sial papers in different journals ensued ; until Clairaut 
 appeared to silence his adversary by an elaborate sum- 
 mary of the dispute, in 1762.* Again, when Clairaut 
 
 * I observe that Montucla (vol. iv. p. 72) considers D'Alembert as the 
 author of the anonymous attacks, but he is evidently prejudiced against 
 him. Indeed it is not clear that the editor, Lalande, may not have modi- 
 fied some passages. A person who could write the note about Clairaut 
 might, indeed, be rather suspected of leaning against him. But there is 
 no being certain respecting one who is so weak as Lalande ; one who, not 
 content with constantly recording his own small exploits in science, prints 
 a motto under his portrait in the edition of Montucla, purporting that 
 though the heavens were under his empire, and his genius penetrated 
 through space, he yet reigned still more in the hearts of men. His flippant 
 note (vol. iv. p. 188), on Boscovich shows his dislike of D'Alembert. "Le 
 Pere Boscovich ne fesait pas autant de calcul integral que D'Alembert, 
 mais il avoit bien autant d'esprit." He charges D'Alembert with perse- 
 
428 D'ALEMBEBT. 
 
 investigated the figure of the earth upon the hypothesis 
 of a variable density in the different zones, but the 
 same throughout each, D'Alembert was not satisfied 
 with giving his own solution more generally and more 
 rigorously, but assailed Clairaut's hypothesis. However, 
 this controversy was carried on with much less heat 
 than the former. Geometricians appear to be agreed 
 that in the one case, that of the lunar tables, Clairaut 
 had the decided advantage over his adversary, whose 
 mind did not easily lend itself to such details ; but that 
 the balance inclined in his favour upon the question of 
 the earth's figure, D' Alembert's solution being certainly 
 more general and less dependent upon assumption. His 
 treatise on this subject is universally admired by geo- 
 metricians, and it contains both the differential equa- 
 tions, then first given, of the equilibrium of fluids, and 
 the new and most important theorem upon the relation 
 between the polar oblateness and increase of gravita- 
 
 cuting the Pere all his life. But little reliance can be placed on this 
 assertion, at least if we may judge by the manifest falsehood of his state- 
 ment, that "D'Alembert attacked Boscovich in his ' Opuscule,' vol. i. 
 p. 246 ; " for all the attack consists in defending himself against an objec- 
 tion made by " an Italian geometrician of note in the science." The utter 
 incompetency of a person like Lalande to edit such a work as Montucla's, 
 can hardly be conceived without reading what he has done. Such ignor- 
 ance or want of judgment is inconceivable, as could make him call Priest- 
 ley's ' History of Optics' (so he terms it) a work of great importance, and 
 one of its author's best, while by speaking of it as a book in 813 4to pages, 
 he shows that he never had seen it ; such ignorance as could also make 
 him speak of Priestley's "universal erudition," vol. iii. p. 604, 5.) 
 The entire want of common care as to dates is shown in his quoting 
 Black's experiments as published in 1777 instead of 1755, if indeed this 
 be a mere error, for the error is made to support the absurd argument that 
 Priestley by his experiments, 1772, preceded Black as founder of the new 
 chemical system. But nothing can be worse than Lalande's edition. The 
 analytical expressions so abound with errors, possibly of the press, but 
 which Lalande was incapable of correcting, that nothing can be more 
 unsatisfactory than reading the book ; nothing more tiresome than using 
 the formulas, and finding, after perhaps a laborious investigation, as has 
 happened to myself, that there was a gross error in them. Lalande's great 
 merits, in his own department, both as a writer and a professor, beside his 
 labours as a practical astronomer, stand wholly apart from his labours as 
 an editor of a work in its main branches above him. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 429 
 
 tion on all possible suppositions of the earth's internal 
 structure. Finally, as regards this controversy, so pain- 
 ful to every reflecting geometrician, all men must be 
 satisfied that in point of courtesy and candour there is 
 no comparison between the two combatants. D'Alem- 
 bert's blunt habits, which were excused in society as 
 marks of simplicity, gave an unpleasant tinge of bitter- 
 ness to his controversial writings, wholly unworthy of 
 a philosopher, and little to be expected and less to be 
 excused on questions of pure mathematics. 
 
 Let us, for relief from the pain which this portion of 
 D'Alembert's history gives, do, as he did in the actual 
 circumstances, retreat to geometry for comfort and for 
 calm. In the midst of the virulent attacks which his 
 1 Melanges' called forth, and which were at the bottom 
 of his soreness towards Clairaut on very different to- 
 pics, see how he himself describes the truly philoso- 
 phical course which his better reason indicated, and 
 which he generally pursued : " Me voila claque- 
 mure " (walled in, or built round,) " pour long temps et 
 vraisemblement pour toujours dans ma triste, ma tres 
 chere, et tres paisible geometric. Je suis fort content de 
 trouver une pretexte pour ne plus rien faire dans le 
 dechainement que mon livre a excite contre moi. Je 
 n'ai pourtant attaque personne, ni meme designe qui 
 que ce soit plus que n'a fait 1'auteur du Mechant, et 
 vingt autres contre lesquels personne ne s'est de- 
 chaine. Mais il y a heur et malheur. Je n'ai besoin 
 ni de 1'amitie de tous ces gens-la, puisque assurement 
 je ne veux rien leur demander, ni de leur excuse, 
 puisque j'ai bien resolu de ne jamais vivre avec eux : 
 aussi je les mets a pis faire " (to do their worst). Again 
 he says : " Eh bien ! vous ne voulez pas, ni Fourmont 
 non plus, que je me claquemure dans ma geometric ! 
 J'en suis pourtant bien tente ! si vous saviez combien 
 cette geometric est une retraite douce a la paresse ! et 
 puis les sots ne vous lisent point, et par consequent ne 
 vous blament, ni vous louent ; et comptez-vous cet 
 
430 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 avantage la pour rien ? En tout cas j'ai de la geome- 
 tric pour un an tout au moins. Ah ! que je fais a pre- 
 sent de belles choses que personne ne lira ! J'ai bien 
 quelques morceaux de litterature a traiter qui seroient 
 peut-etre assez agreables, mais je chasse tout cela de 
 ma tete comme rnauvais train. La geometric est ma 
 femme et je me suis remis en menage. Avec cela j'ai 
 plus d'argent devant moi que je n'en puis depenser. 
 Ma foi. on est bien fou de se tant connoitre par des 
 choses qui ne rendent pas plus heureux ; on a bien 
 plut6t fait de dire 'Ne pourrois-je pas me passer de 
 cela?' Et c'est la recette dont j'use depuis long 
 temps." 
 
 It is to be considered that the abundance of income 
 which he thus speaks of was not much above one 
 hundred a year ; for we know from himself that a short 
 time before he had but ITOOfs., or 68, and the place 
 of Pensionnaire Surnumeraire, which he obtained by 
 election of the Academy in 1756, when he thus stated 
 his means of living, could not have exceeded lOOOfs. 
 
 In the autumn of 1752, the King of Prussia, to whom 
 he had inscribed his Prize Memoir on the Winds, with 
 some tolerable Latin lines,* invited him to settle in 
 Berlin, offering a pension of 500/. a year, apartments 
 and a table in the palace, with the office of President 
 of the Academy, in the event of Maupertuis' death, 
 who was not expected to live. D'Alembert refused 
 this handsome offer, on the ground of his whole enjoy- 
 ment being the society of his friends in the Parisian 
 circle to which he belonged ; and of his somewhat ex- 
 cessive fear of any connection which should interfere 
 with, or put in jeopardy, the perfect freedom so essen- 
 tial to his happiness a feeling so strong in him, that 
 his friends used to say he was " the slave of his own 
 liberty." At this time he states, in the correspondence 
 
 * Haec ego de Ventis, dum Ventorum ocyor alis 
 Palantes agit Austriacos Fredericus, et orbi, 
 Insignia lauro, ramum protendit olivae. 
 
D'ALEMBEET. 431 
 
 with M. D'Argens, through whom Frederick's offer 
 was made, his income, as I have stated, did not exceed 
 1700fs. not quite 70/. a year. The scruple of deli- 
 cacy which he felt as to Maupertuis was at once re- 
 moved by the King desiring him to take the appoint- 
 ments independent of all connection with the Academy, 
 and assuring him that Maupertuis' wish was to have 
 him for a successor. But nothing could tempt him to 
 quit Paris. Ten years after this, he received a still 
 more flattering offer, and one which, to an ambitious 
 mind, would have presented more charms. The Em- 
 press of Russia, in 1762, desired him to undertake the 
 superintendence of her son's education the Czaro- 
 witch, afterwards the Emperor Paul. The appoint- 
 ments were 4000 a year, with residence in the palace. 
 But still he preferred Paris, " the air of which agreed 
 with his tastes and habits, notwithstanding the intoler- 
 ance he was exposed to." 
 
 Indeed a great change had taken place in his man- 
 ner of life, before either the Prussian monarch or the 
 Russian became suitors for his favour. The society in 
 which he now lived was one to which he had, about 
 the year 1744, been introduced, and of which he soon 
 became an intimate and esteemed member. It fre- 
 quented the two houses of Mdme. Geoffrin and Mdme. 
 du Deffand, or rather the house of the former, and the 
 apartment which the latter occupied in the Convent of 
 St. Joseph. Mdme. Geoffrin had succeeded to the 
 coterie which used to assemble round Mdme. du 
 Tencin, D'Alembert's mother; and all accounts agree 
 in representing her as a person of extraordinary merit 
 sensible, clever, exceedingly amiable, of kindly dis- 
 position, and of the most active, but unostentatious 
 benevolence. His intimacy continued to her death ; 
 or rather, as we shall presently see, to the commence- 
 ment of her long illness. Mdme. du Deffand was a 
 woman of another caste very clever, extremely sati- 
 rical, extremely selfish, and of a cold un amiable charac- 
 
432 D'ALEMBEBT. 
 
 ter. Beside meeting his literary friends at her apart- 
 ment, he there made an acquaintance which proved 
 the bane of his life. 
 
 Mdlle. de 1'Espinasse was a young person of great 
 brilliancy, and of a warm and romantic disposition, 
 which contributed as much as her talents to captivate 
 all who came Avithin the sphere of her attraction. The 
 similarity of their history produced a mutual interest 
 between her and D'Alembert, for she too was an ille- 
 gitimate child. She was the daughter of Mdme. 
 D'Albon, but not by her husband, being the fruit of a 
 criminal intercourse with her lover. Mdme. D'Albon's 
 daughter by her husband was married to M. de Vichy, 
 and she allowed her unfortunate sister to live with her 
 as a governess, her parents having only" settled twelve 
 pounds a year upon her. Constant ill usage in this 
 house made her willing to accept the offer of Mdme. 
 du Deffand, whose deceased husband was supposed to 
 be her father. The moderate sum of sixteen pounds 
 a year was to be allowed her; and in 1752 she went 
 to live with her new patroness. Her humble office was 
 to be the companion of that lady, to bear her intoler- 
 able humours, and to read her to sleep at an early 
 hour of the morning for in her life the night was 
 turned ir-to day, and she seldom rose much before 
 sunset, or went to sleep before sunrise. The unhappy 
 attendant was thus condemned also to pass her day in 
 bed ; but she rose an hour or two before her patroness, 
 and that short interval, her only enjoyment of life, 
 was passed in receiving D'Alembert and a few other 
 friends, unknown to the Marchioness, who, however, 
 discovered these secret meetings, and treating them 
 as a conspiracy against her, drove the poor girl rudely 
 from her situation, warning D'Alembert, at the same 
 time, that he must choose between the two. As might 
 be expected, he at once preferred his young friend ; 
 and, joining with others, obtained for her both a 
 suitable residence and a small pension. An inflamma- 
 
433 
 
 tion of the bowels, with which he very soon after was 
 seized, and which had well nigh proved fatal, made it 
 necessary, by the opinion of his physicians, to remove 
 from his old nurse's small and ill-aired lodgings in the 
 dark and narrow street, Rue Michel-le-Comte, in which, 
 as in one of his letters he tells Voltaire, he only could 
 see a yard or two of sky ; and he took up his abode 
 with Mdlle. de 1'Espinasse, who had nursed him 
 tenderly during his illness. No one whispered a syl- 
 lable of suspicion respecting a connection which all 
 were fully convinced could only be of the most innocent 
 kind ; and he continued to reside in the same apart- 
 ment during the remaining twelve years of her singular 
 life. It is now necessary to state some particulars of 
 this attachment, which appear to have been given in 
 an authentic form, and which cannot be easily recon- 
 ciled with the feelings of a high and honourable 
 nature, according to the facts as they stand recorded 
 under his own hand. 
 
 Marmontel, one of the circle (c6terie), and an inti- 
 mate and admiring friend of D'Alembert, informs us 
 that this young lady began to entertain the design of 
 fixing in the substantial and regular form of wedded 
 love, or at least of matrimony, the hitherto erratic 
 admiration of which she had long been the object with 
 many friends. He mentions an accomplished officer, 
 M. Guibert, known for his able military writings, as 
 ^^ one on whom she first set her affections ; and 
 when he escaped her, tells us that she transferred her 
 attempts to the Marquis Mora, a young Spanish 
 grandee of the Fuentes family. But he falls into an 
 evident mistake ; for the correspondence of Mdlle. de 
 1'Espinasse, since published, shows that she fell desper- 
 ately in love with Guibert while she was carrying on 
 her affair with Mora. Guibert, more wary and more 
 experienced, avoided the snare. The Spaniard was 
 completely caught ; and being ordered home by his 
 family, fell ill, as was said, from the excess of his 
 2 F 
 
434 D'ALEMBEET. 
 
 passion. She obtained an opinion of Lorry, the famous 
 physician, that the air of France was necessary for his 
 recovery ; and his family yielding to this representa- 
 tion, he set out for Paris, but died on the way. Not- 
 withstanding her passion for Guibert, which had been 
 intercalated as it were, she is said to have taken 
 Mora's death so much to heart, that her excitable and 
 feeble frame could not stand against the shock, and she 
 died about two years after, in May 1776. 
 
 Now, strange as it must seem to all men of right and 
 honourable feelings, D'Alembert was so completely the 
 dupe of his passion for her, that she made him the con- 
 fidant of hers for Mora. Nay, he was sent every morn- 
 ing to the post-office for his absent and favoured rival's 
 letters, that he might have them ready on her awaken- 
 ing. Nay, further, the opinion of Lorry which recalled 
 him, was obtained through the solicitation of D'Alem- 
 bert, the Doctor's intimate friend ; and he wrote the 
 most tender letter to Mora's father, condoling upon the 
 young man's death. Marmontel sets all this down to 
 the account of his extreme devotion to his mistress, and 
 the great simplicity of his character. But this assumes 
 that he believed her to be really in love with Mora. 
 D'Alembert's own account is entirely different. In his 
 * Address to her Manes,' and his ' Address at her Tomb,' 
 we find him distinctly complaining that she had de- 
 ceived him, and made him believe for eight years and 
 upwards that she loved him, when he discovered, by a 
 paper left for him to read after her death, that all the 
 time she really loved another. She appointed him her 
 executor ; and he found that she had kept masses of 
 letters from others and not one from himself; also she 
 bequeathed all these letters to different persons and 
 none to him. He then bursts out into this complaint: 
 " Pourquoi les devoirs que cette execution m'impo- 
 soit m'ont-ils appris, ce que je ne devois pas savoir et 
 ce que j'aurois desire ignorer? Pourquoi ne m'avez- 
 vous pas ordonne bruler sans 1'ouvrir ce manuscrit 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 435 
 
 funeste, que j'ai cru pouvoir lire sans j trouver de 
 nouveaux sujets de douleur, et qui m'apprit que depuis 
 Imit ans au moins, je n'etois plus le premier objet de 
 votre coeur, malgre toute 1'assurance que vous m'en 
 aviez si souvent donnee ?" He then goes on naturally 
 enough to ask what security he could have, after this 
 discovery, that she ever had loved him ; and that she 
 had not been also playing upon his affections ("trompe 
 ma tendresse") during the eight or ten other years 
 which he had believed to be so filled with love for 
 him. (GEuv., Vol. I., p. 25.J 
 
 Now, how can we possibly account for this but by 
 supposing, that she had made him believe her professed 
 affection for Mora was all a pretence ? But if so, what 
 did he think was the nature of her connexion with that 
 enthusiastic young Spaniard ? Assuredly he must have 
 been aware that Mora was in love with her. Then what 
 was her plan with respect to him? I confess I am 
 driven, how reluctantly soever, to the painful conclu- 
 sion, that he lent himself to the plan of her inveigling 
 the Spaniard into a marriage, and deceived himself into 
 a belief that her heart was still his own. Marmontel's 
 account is inaccurate enough in some particulars ; but 
 the story of D'Alembert's going for the young man's 
 letters cannot be a fiction. It is an office no one could 
 have easily invented for a lover. Besides, the apparent 
 passion for Mora was known to all Mdlle. de 1'Espinasse's 
 circle. She never could conceal such a feeling when it 
 took possession of her. That passion was not an affair 
 of a few weeks or months ; it lasted considerably more 
 than six years ; for in April, 1768, we find D'Alembert 
 introducing him to Voltaire as his dear friend, and the 
 young man's death was in May, 1774. (Corr. avec 
 Voltaire, CEuv. XVI, 49.) 
 
 The fancy of this susceptible lady for Guibert was 
 equally well known. D'Alembert saw these demon- 
 strations of love as well as every one else ; but she 
 continued to make him believe that they were not real 
 
436 
 
 indications of passion. This he tells us plainly himself. 
 It remains to explain what he took them for ; and no 
 one can easily suppose that he was not made to believe 
 they were connected with a plan of obtaining for her 
 a settlement in life by marriage. The certificate which 
 he obtained from Lorry to make Mora revisit Paris is 
 of itself a proof that such was the project, and that to 
 this project D'Alembert was privy. 
 
 The character of Mdlle. de 1'Espinasse has been 
 drawn by several masters, and by all in very favourable 
 colours. Marmontel and D'Alembert himself have 
 both laboured the portrait exceedingly; and if the 
 passion of the latter may make the truth of the resem- 
 blance doubtful, at least to the pencil of the former, 
 both more skilful and more faithful, we must give 
 credit. " Cette demoiselle etoit un eton nant compose 
 de bienseance, de raison, de sagesse, avec la tete la 
 plus vive, Tame la plus ardente, 1'irn agination la plus 
 inflammable, qui ait existe depuis Sappho. Le feu qui 
 circuloit dans ses veines et dans ses nerfs, et qui don- 
 noit a son esprit tant d'activite et de charme, 1'a con- 
 sommee avant le terns. Sa partie dans ces dines (at 
 Mdme. GeofFrin's, where she was the only woman 
 present except the hostess,) etoit d'un interet inexpri- 
 mable. Continuel objet d' attraction, soit qu'elle ecou- 
 tat, soit qu'elle parlat elle-meme, et personne ne par- 
 loit mieux; sans coquetterie, elle inspiroit 1'innocent 
 desir de lui plaire ; sans pruderie, elle fesoit sentir a 
 la liberte des propos jusqu'ou elle pouvoit aller sans 
 inquieter la pudeur et sans effleurer la decence. Son 
 talent de jeter en avant la pensee et de la donner a 
 debattre a des hommes de cette classe (les Turgot, les 
 Condillac, les D'Alembert, aupres d'elle comme un 
 simple et docile enfant,) son talent de discuter elle- 
 meme, et comme eux avec precision, quelque fois avec 
 eloquence ; son talent d'amasser des nouvelles idees et 
 de varier 1'entretien, toujours avec 1'aisance et la faci- 
 lite d'une fee qui, d'un coup de baguette change a son 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 437 
 
 gre la scene de ses enchantemens ; ce talent n'etoit 
 d'une femme vulgaire. Ce n'etoit pas avec les niaiseries 
 de la mode et de la vanite que tons les jours durant 
 quatre heures de conversation, sans langueur et sans 
 vide, elle savoit se rendre interessante pour un cercle 
 de bons esprits." (Marmontel, Vol. II.) 
 
 In the society of this attractive person, D'Alembert's 
 evenings were all passed; and during the twelve years 
 that elapsed between her quarrel with Madame du 
 Duffand and her decease, he lived more constantly, of 
 course, in her company, as he occupied the same 
 lodgings. His mornings, after he quitted his study, 
 were generally spent at Madame Geoffrin's ; and the 
 circle which he met at both those houses was nearly 
 the same, except that Madame Geoffrin's was acces- 
 sible to the better class of statesmen, according to her 
 maxim that the protection of her favourites the men 
 of letters and of science was well worth purchasing at 
 this price ; but for this use to which her benevolence 
 knew how to turn them, she declared that after nine 
 o'clock none but men of genius should find her door 
 open, as far as her own taste was concerned. 
 
 The habits of French society, so entirely unlike our 
 own, assemble in very small numbers, the same persons 
 almost every evening at the same houses. The master 
 or the mistress, generally the latter, hardly ever leaves 
 home at the hours consecrated to this refined and agree- 
 able intercourse, or only does so on stated nights, sel- 
 dom more than one in a week. It is not easy for those 
 who have never experienced the charms of this kind of 
 society to understand its merits. Far from becoming 
 dull or monotonous, in consequence of the sameness of 
 the persons who compose it, this very circumstance it 
 is that gives so much comfort and even enjoyment to 
 the intercourse. The intimacy of a family circle is 
 kept up, and the interest which each takes in the 
 others becomes a powerful incentive to bestowing 
 mutual confidence, while it gives a pleasurable feeling 
 
438 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 to such as have no families of their own. There is, 
 too, a variety always occurring, which no family circle 
 can possess. The knowledge of each other's charac- 
 ter, hahits, pursuits, tastes, renders the conversation 
 easy and interesting. The same subjects are continued 
 from day to day. The kind of wit or humour of the 
 circle is well known, and gives a zest to trifles, or sal- 
 lies of pleasantry, that would be little relished by 
 strangers. Add to which, that the familiarity of all 
 with one another, though giving all a considerable in- 
 terest in the welfare of each, stops short of inspiring so 
 great an interest as would too much excite the feelings ; 
 and in this quasi family circle none of the anxiety is 
 felt which often becomes too painful in the real do- 
 mestic relations. The national character is, perhaps, 
 better suited to such habits than ours Avould be. Cer- 
 tain it is that our neighbours consider us as having 
 nothing which can be, with any propriety of speech, 
 called society; for those whose lives are spent in 
 coteries, when not occupied with business, regard with 
 unmitigated aversion the large parties which, on rare 
 occasions, bring together hundreds of their countrymen 
 at some of our fair country-women's houses, and would 
 have joined a late chief-justice* in his description of 
 the obstruction which such assembled multitudes oc- 
 casion of our streets, if his lordship, passing through 
 the outer-door, had extended his definition of a nuis- 
 ance to the scenes which pass within the walls of those 
 fashionable and not inhospitable mansions. 
 
 All accounts agree in describing D'Alembert as a 
 most agreeable and most acceptable member of those 
 circles, first at Madame du Duffand's, and afterwards 
 at Mademoiselle de 1'Espinasse's and Madame Geoff- 
 rm's. His wit was very playful and easy, and it was 
 without a particle of gall, though not unaccompanied 
 with traits of satire, from which his writings are en- 
 
 * Lord Ellenborouiih. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 439 
 
 tirely free. He is described as coming into society 
 from his geometry like a boy escaped from school ; 
 and with the buoyant spirits which he drew from the 
 success of his morning's investigations, combined with 
 the pleasure of his present relaxation a pure mind, 
 free from all passions, satisfied with itself a gentle 
 and equal spirit, ever true, ever simple and natural, 
 far removed from both pride and dissimulation such 
 is the picture drawn of him by the Marmontels, the 
 Grimms, and the Diderots, who knew him best. His 
 conversation was admitted to be delightful by the 
 members of the most delightful and most fastidious 
 circle in the world. His favourite maxim contributed 
 to the charm of his conversation ; he held that men 
 should be most careful what they did, less careful 
 about what they wrote, and least careful about what 
 they spoke a maxim to which he acted up in all re- 
 spects himself. His inexhaustible memory his lively 
 unexpected sallies that never went a hair's-breadth too 
 far his inimitable talent of telling, and even of acting 
 a story his constant vein of liberal and enlightened, 
 but sound, and therefore tolerant philosophy, are the 
 themes of those who survived him, and found that the 
 blank he had left could not be filled up. That he pos- 
 sessed higher qualities than these is certain, for he was 
 the most kind and charitable of men. Half his small 
 income was given away in beneficent acts as soon as it 
 became greater than his few wants and strict economy 
 required. His patronage was easily obtained for merit; 
 not easily, or at all, by powerful solicitation. An in- 
 stance, and a celebrated one, occurred of this differ- 
 ence. When Laplace came to Paris as a young man, 
 he brought letters of introduction to him from persons 
 of importance in his native town ; but no notice being 
 taken of these, he wrote him a letter on the principles 
 of mechanics. This produced an immediate invitation 
 to call upon the Secretary, who told him he had no 
 need of any introduction but his own merits, and in a 
 
440 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 week obtained for him a professorship in the Ecole 
 Militaire. 
 
 We have seen the warmth of his attachment to the 
 object of his love. It remains to note the dreadful 
 grief in which he was plunged by her death. Mar- 
 montel, whose tender friendship endeavoured to soothe 
 his affliction, describes it as excessive : " He seemed, 
 in returning home to his apartment in the Louvre, as 
 if he was burying himself in a tomb." But nothing 
 better paints his affectionate nature, and the depth of 
 his sorrow, than his own simple and touching expres- 
 sions. Speaking, in a letter to Diderot, of the loss he 
 had sustained already, and the impending one of Ma- 
 dame Geoffrin, he says, " Je passois toutes mes soi- 
 rees chez 1'amie que j'avais perdue, et toutes mes 
 matinees avec celle qui me reste encore. Je ne 1'ai 
 plus et il n'y a plus pour moi, ni soir ni matin." (Cor., 
 (Euv., XIV. 250.) Madame Geoffrin was then on her 
 death-bed, having for some months been given over. 
 It was a great addition to his grief for Mademoiselle 
 de TEspinasse, that he was prevented from ever seeing 
 the only person who could have offered him any con- 
 solation ; but during the year that she lingered, her 
 doors were barred against him by the cruel fanaticism 
 of her daughter, whose name deserves to be recorded 
 in order that her memory may be rescued from its ap- 
 parent obscurity, and delivered over to the scorn of all 
 food men, all charitable Christians. Madame de la 
 erte-Imbaut thought fit to write him an insolent and 
 intolerant letter, filled with abuse, and announcing that 
 she took upon herself to deprive her dying parent of 
 what must have proved a great comfort the society 
 of the man she most esteemed. The ground taken by 
 this furious bigot was the known scepticism of the 
 philosopher's opinions, though every one is aware that 
 he never obtruded them on any society, and never 
 gave to the world a single line in which religion and 
 its institutions were treated with disrespect. 
 
D'ALEMBEKT. 441 
 
 In the deep grief with which these irreparable losses 
 struck him, his friends hastened to administer such 
 consolation as their sympathy could afford. Among 
 others, Frederick II. wrote him several letters, which 
 are superior in point of feeling, and at least equal in 
 ability, to any other f his works ; and by that mon- 
 arch's wise advice he was guided, and with success ; 
 for the only real relief which he experienced was in 
 his favourite pursuit, his fast friend in good and in 
 evil fortune, as Frederick advised him, ((Euv. Vol. 
 XIII. p. 267.) He plunged into the depths of geome- 
 trical investigation, which he had too long abandoned, 
 and he found the most salutary effects from this exer- 
 tion. ((Euv. Vol. XVIII. p. 95.)* 
 
 The change which took place in D'Alembert's habits, 
 when he became a member of those circles to which 
 we have been referring, and passed in them no little 
 portion of his time and all his leisure, may be supposed 
 to have disinclined him towards his studious occupa- 
 tions, if it did not unfit him for them. But this was 
 not the case. He had a great love of these pursuits, 
 and a remarkable facility in following them ; and the 
 principal alteration which took place in his studies was, 
 that he no longer confined himself to the mathematics, 
 but undertook those other works of which mention has 
 already been made. When he was chosen to succeed 
 Duclos, in 1772, as Secretary to the Academy, the fur- 
 ther labour devolved upon him of writing the Eloges 
 of deceased members ; and not content with this, he 
 undertook to give the Eloges of those who had died 
 between 1700 and 1772, and had not been commemo- 
 
 * It must be added as a sufficient reason for our regarding the affair of 
 Mdlle. de Espinasse in the light of a publicly avowed matter, and not one 
 only belonging to the immediate parties, that D' Alembert himself printed 
 the letter to Count Fuentes on Mora's death, and also allowed Frederick's 
 letters on Mdlle. de 1'Espinasse's death to be copied, circulated, and pub- 
 lished, Frederick was exceedingly offended with this ; it produced a 
 serious dryness, which lasted some time. (Vol. XVIII. p. 143. 155.) 
 
442 D'ALEMBEET. 
 
 rated by his predecessors. In three years he composed 
 no fewer than seventy such biographical sketches, which, 
 with thirteen others of his writing, fill six volumes of 
 his works. Nor can we avoid feeling great regret that 
 he should have wasted so much time and labour on a 
 species of composition extreme]^ little to be esteemed. 
 For these Eloges are almost always remarkable for 
 omitting whatever truths tell to the disadvantage of 
 their subjects, so that they are of little value as history; 
 and they are so slight and superficial as notices, that 
 beyond giving dates and facts they give nothing. 
 D'Alembert's offer no exception to this description ; 
 they do not record the history of the learned men's 
 works of whose lives they profess to be sketches, and 
 only general sketches. Many of them, indeed, relate 
 to exceedingly obscure individuals, and the most dis- 
 tinguished are treated of in a manner quite unsatis- 
 factory. The most elaborate is that of Boileau, in 
 the notes of which we find a great number of literary 
 anecdotes. The best, perhaps, is that of a man with 
 no pretensions to literature, Lord Mareschall (Keith) 
 because it contains a number of racy and characteristic 
 traits of the worthy old politician. The taste and judg- 
 ment shown in several is of a very equivocal character. 
 Thus Massillon is described with some reference to his 
 finer sermons, but very indifferent passages are selected 
 for illustrating his prodigious merits ; and his funeral 
 sermons are plainly undervalued, without any exception 
 being made in favour of the most magnificent passage, 
 and the most successful that was perhaps ever delivered 
 from the pulpit, the opening of the sermon on Louis le 
 Grand's death.* Bossuet is plainly preferred to him ; 
 and some passages are given as master-pieces that are 
 far exceeded by others in that great preacher's dis- 
 courses. The "article" on the Abbe Dubois is enter- 
 
 * The body was lying in the church when Massillon began, " Dieu seul 
 est grand, mes freres I " 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 443 
 
 taining ; but, as if to show the incurable vices of the 
 Eloge, a memoir being inserted written by one who 
 had access to know the Abbe's history, D'Alembert 
 admits his having suppressed those portions which re- 
 flected discredit upon him. It is necessary to add that 
 the Eloges which D'Alembert composed officially as 
 Secretary were, according to the custom of the Aca- 
 demy, read at the general or public meetings, which 
 are attended by all who can obtain tickets of admission 
 from the Academicians. At the same meetings were 
 read other pieces of a popular description, as the 
 'Dialogue between Queen Christina and Descartes 
 in Elysium,' that between * Philosophy and Poetry,' 
 and the ' Discourses on Poetry,' on * Eloquence,' and 
 others, upon the annual distribution of the prizes. That 
 D'Alembert suffered himself to be seduced by the com- 
 paratively poor and passing gratification of pleasing 
 or amusing promiscuous audiences on those occasions, 
 cannot be doubted. The productions are of very ordi- 
 nary merit. The two dialogues just referred to contain 
 in their more solid portions nothing at all original or 
 felicitous ; and as jeux d'esprit, they may justly be said 
 to have little of either playfulness or wit. The one in 
 which Christina is a prolocutor, was delivered on the 
 reception of Gustavus III. as a visitor, and it contains 
 some singularly unmerited compliments* to that worth- 
 less and profligate prince, nowise distinguished either 
 for their happy turn or the cautious procedure ever to 
 be used in noting the merits of sovereigns too young 
 to have shown how far taking them on trust is safe. 
 Another jeu d'esprit, the 'Apology for Study,' is ad- 
 mitted among the warmest of D'Alembert's admirers to 
 be a signal failure. 
 
 * " Sa modestie, ou plutot, et ce qui vaut bien mieux encore, sa sim- 
 plieite, car la modestie est quelquefois hypocrite, et la simplicite ne Test 
 jamais." (IV. 82.) It would certainly have been difficult to find a word 
 less applicable than simplicity to the subject of this flattery. See States- 
 men of George III.'s time. 
 
444 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 Another work of D'Alembert's, though not on a 
 scientific subject, falls not within the remarks now made, 
 his ' History of the Destruction of the Jesuits,' an im- 
 portant measure which had been finally accomplished 
 by the Edict of the 6th of August, 1762, after their com- 
 mercial speculations in Martinico had involved them 
 in bankruptcy even prior to the capture of the island; 
 and they had lost important law-suits with the mercan- 
 tile interest in the Parliament of Paris. The Edict of 1762 
 was found insufficient to prevent the Society's subtle 
 intrigues ; and it was followed by several others, which 
 dispersed them and forbade them to come within ten 
 leagues of the capital. This work of D'Alernbert, the 
 * History,' is only remarkable for its calmness and im- 
 partiality. He gives the amplest praise to the dispersed 
 body, and allows them to be alone, of all the monastic 
 orders, distinguished for their genius as well as learn- 
 ing, while of the others the only ones not sunk in 
 ignorance were the Mendicant orders and the Bene- 
 dictine ; the former of whom were only scholastic 
 writers, the latter literary compilers. He also shows 
 that the Jansenists, the implacable enemies of the 
 Jesuits, were exposed to great censure, and had acted 
 like rigorous persecutors ; and he takes the sound and 
 rational course of maintaining that the destruction of 
 one order could only be defended on principles which 
 lead to the destruction of all other orders of monks, 
 and in every state. In other respects the merit of the 
 'History' is but moderate. There is nothing very 
 happy in the narrative, which, indeed, is unconnected, 
 and has the worst of historical faults, proceeding by 
 way of allusion more frequently than of plain and 
 direct recital. There is nothing very original or pro- 
 found in the remarks. There is nothing striking in the 
 descriptions. The style has the excellent qualities of 
 all D'Alembert's writings, clearness and simplicity, and 
 this is the principal praise to which the work is 
 entitled. 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 445 
 
 His translation of select passages of Tacitus, exe- 
 cuted with great zeal, as might be expected from his 
 exaggerated admiration of that classic, and the kind of 
 delusion respecting him under which he laboured, is 
 certainly much better than his critical opinion on the 
 original. But his ideas of a translator's duties are sin- 
 gularly incorrect. He complains of the common run 
 of translators for being so " superstitiously attached to 
 their authors, that they fear to embellish them even in 
 feeble passages;" and contends, by a ridiculous sophism, 
 that as we must often fall short of the originals, so we 
 ought to take compensation by surpassing them when 
 we can. He tells us that he sketched his translations 
 with much rapidity to avoid coldness, and afterwards 
 corrected with great care a proceeding not perhaps 
 much to be condemned ; but he adds, that he has oc- 
 casionally taken the liberty of altering the meaning 
 when "the Latin presented a puerile image or idea, 
 and when Tacitus appears to be below him self." (Ib. 26.) 
 Thus he lends Tacitus a little wit, a metaphor, indeed, 
 in the celebrated description of Tiberius, whose dislike 
 alike of freedom and of flattery made men's words dif- 
 ficult and slippery, or perilous. " Angusta et lubrica 
 oratio sub principe qui libertatem metuebat, adula- 
 tionem oderat." (Ann. 11, 87.) " Tant la servitude 
 meme marchoit par une route etroite et glissante, sous 
 un prince qui detestoit la flatterie et craignait laliberte." 
 ((Euv. xiv. 167.) Can any one doubt that this is a 
 total perversion of the sense ? Tacitus does not say, 
 nor could he with truth say, that the one noble quality 
 of the crafty but able tyrant, his detestation of flattery, 
 made all the actions of men slippery and doubtful. He 
 knew well that in every other respect submissive obedi- 
 ence was their only care ; but the dislike of flattery 
 only created some doubt when they were to write or to 
 speak. Accordingly, other translators have preserved 
 the sense of the original without losing the fine and 
 picturesque expression of "Angusta et lubrica." "Eien 
 
446 D'ALEMBERT, 
 
 de plus etroit et de plus glissant que 1'usage de la 
 parole," says La Bletterie. " Aussi ne restoit-il a 
 1' eloquence qu'un sentier etroit et bien glissant," says 
 another. I have dwelt upon this passage because it is 
 a special favourite of the author, who gives four pages 
 of commentary on his version. So in the famous pas- 
 sage on Domitian, the highly wrought diction and vivid 
 imagery of Tacitus is not sufficient to satisfy the trans- 
 lator. " Prascipua miseriarum pars erat videre et aspici ; 
 cum suspiria subscriberentur ; cum denotandis tot homi- 
 num palloribus sufficeret saevus ille vultus et rubor quo 
 se contra pudorem muniebat." (' Vit. Ag.' c. XLV.) 
 " La fureur de Domitien etait plus cruelle que les sup- 
 plices meme ; nos soupirs etoient comptes ; et le visage 
 du tyran, inflamme par le crime et inaccessible a la 
 honte, rendit plus touchante la paleur du tant de mou- 
 rans." (xiii. 267.) It is not too much to say that 
 D'Alembert, with all his admiration of Tacitus, thought 
 he had greatly improved upon him ; though while affirm- 
 ing that his author had lost " nothing by the transla- 
 tion," he candidly admits " that the original is at least 
 as fine." (Cor. Part. (Euv. xiv., 392.*) It is, however, 
 now admitted by all critics that a good translation of 
 Tacitus into any modem language is impossible I re- 
 member Dr. Parr once saying, in answer to a learned 
 person who asked, or rather took the liberty of asking, 
 his opinion which was the best translation of Tacitus, 
 " Sir, I thought every one had long since admitted 
 there can be none." 
 
 Among D'Alembert's other writings of the inferior 
 kind, to which I have been referring, must be reckoned 
 his * General Reflections on Eloquence.' They are 
 superficial and inaccurate, though, like most of his 
 
 * Numberless examples of failures could easily be given ; but I have 
 only selected a few to show the consequences of his absurd theory of trans- 
 lation. T n the character of the Fenni (De Mor. Germ.) " Fennis mira 
 feritas, fceda paupertas," D'Alembert renders this most tamely and most 
 imperfectly, " tres-feroces et tres-pauvres :" thus getting rid entirely of the 
 sense of the Latin (xiii. 233.) 
 
D'ALEMBEET. 447 
 
 literary pieces, somewhat dogmatical with their shallow- 
 ness. His very definition of Eloquence is entirely 
 faulty ; he calls it the faculty of communicating to 
 others the feelings that fill our own minds ; according 
 to which, however dull or impotent these feelings may 
 be, their impression being truly conveyed, they pro- 
 duce all the effects of the highest eloquence, and so 
 every person may be eloquent nay, almost all may be 
 equally eloquent. His reflections on History are of no 
 higher merit. Of his notions respecting Poetry we 
 have already spoken. 
 
 It remains to speak of his general treatise on the 
 4 Elements of Philosophy.' It is one of his best liter- 
 ary works, and certainly preferable to that which it 
 approaches nearest in the subject-matter, the Introduc- 
 tory Discourse to the Encyclopaedic. It is exceedingly 
 comprehensive ; it is rapid without being hurried or 
 hasty ; it is as clearly written as possible ; and it is 
 accompanied with illustrations judiciously given and 
 very convenient for the general reader. But though 
 it be well entitled to these commendations, it is not 
 easy to follow Condorcet in his eulogy of this piece 
 as containing an important " metaphysical discovery." 
 He regards it as settling for the first time the contro- 
 versy "whether the laws of motion belong to the class 
 of contingent or of necessary truths," and he considers 
 D'Alembert as having first discovered the demonstra- 
 tion that these laws are necessary. Now nothing can 
 be more certain than that D'Alembert does no such 
 thing as prove this position. He only shows, what 
 never could be doubted, that the deductions from cer- 
 tain assumed facts are necessary and not contingent. 
 Assuming the existence of matter, arid also its impene- 
 trability, he treats the vis inertias as demonstrated, and 
 also its corollary, the uniformity of motion once begun 
 and not affected by any external causes. But the im- 
 penetrability of matter is a contingent truth as well as 
 its existence ; and there is nothing in the definition of 
 
448 
 
 matter or of motion to make it impossible that a motion 
 once begun should cease at a time proportioned for 
 example to its quickness, or should be accelerated by 
 the very nature of the original impulse and so of the 
 equality of action and reaction. No doubt, if the vis 
 inertias be granted, and the equality of action and re- 
 action, the composition of forces may be demonstrated, 
 and so may the proposition of equal areas in equal 
 times, and the principle of equilibrium first discovered 
 by D'Alembert. But these are only mathematical de- 
 monstrations of truths deducible and issuing from con- 
 tingent truths. The propositions of geometry are 
 wholly different ; they result necessarily from the de- 
 finitions ; they are indeed involved in those definitions. 
 Thus, if a circle is defined as the curve described by 
 the extremity of a given straight line revolving round 
 a fixed point, in this definition there is really contained 
 the proposition that its length is proportional to the 
 describing line's length, and its surface to the square 
 of that line. We affirm in these two propositions only 
 that if there be a curve line such as to have all the 
 lines equal, which are drawn to it from a given point, 
 that curve must have a certain measure of its length 
 and surface. When we affirm that a body moves in 
 the diagonal if solicited by two impulses along the two 
 sides of a parallelogram, we assume, not merely that 
 there is a body and that there is motion, but that the 
 body has certain qualities and that motion has certain 
 laws, and these are facts which exist, not mere supposi- 
 tions which we make. D'Alembert has only the merit, 
 and a great one it is, of having, first in his i Dyna- 
 mique,' and afterwards in his * Elemens,' reduced the 
 whole laws of motion and equilibrium to the fewest 
 and simplest possible fundamental principles, and there- 
 fore generalized those principles. 
 
 All D'Alembert's writings have now passed under 
 our review : it remains to form a more general esti- 
 mate of his merits in the two capacities with a detailed 
 
D'ALEMBEKT. 449 
 
 view of which, we have been occupied, his merits as a 
 man of science and a man of letters. And certainly 
 the difference is very wide between his position in 
 these two different classes ; nor can I avoid marvelling, 
 with Sir J. Mackintosh, at the partiality which so far 
 blinded Mr. Stewart, as to make him consider him very 
 eminent in both. 
 
 Among mathematicians he holds a high place indeed, 
 ranking on the very first line. Euler was perhaps a 
 more fertile analyst ; and he gave incomparably greater 
 contributions to the science, than either D'Alembert or 
 indeed any other man. Clairaut was excelled by none 
 in the profoundness of his researches, and the origi- 
 nality of his methods, and he passed all others in the 
 marvellous precocity of his genius as a geometrician. 
 At the same time, we can never forget that D'Alem- 
 bert's discovery of the dynamical theorem, and his 
 most felicitous employment of it to arrange the whole 
 of mechanical science, exceeds anything accomplished 
 by either of his illustrious contemporaries in usefulness, 
 indeed in originality ; while of a most important cal- 
 culus he was, if not the father, certainly the person 
 who by applying it and teaching its uses, effected a 
 great change in the face of geometrical and physical 
 science. His investigation of the lunar orbit ; of the 
 earth's figure, of the precession and the nutation, would 
 have entitled him to rank with Euler and with Clairaut, 
 and before Fontaine, had his * Dynamique ' and his 
 ' Partial Differences'* never been given to the world. 
 On the latter subject, Euler and Fontaine in some sort 
 anticipated him ; but taking the former discovery into 
 our account, and his application of the calculus, we 
 shall probably be justified in placing him the first 
 among the philosophers and geometricians who suc- 
 ceeded Sir Isaac Newton. 
 
 * It is in his two works on Fluids, and in his Memoirs on the Winds 
 and Vibrating Chords, that we find this method, and rather used or applied 
 than explained. 
 
 2 G 
 
450 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 It is equally clear that no comparison can be insti- 
 tuted between him and that most illustrious of the 
 human race. The ' Principia ' stands at an immeasur- 
 able distance before the * Dynamique ;' and the Calcu- 
 lus of Partial Differences is but an improvement, 
 though a very great one, of the Method of Fluxions ; 
 while the optical discoveries of Newton have so little 
 that can be compared with them in the history we are 
 contemplating, that D'Alembert never could bring him- 
 self to take an interest at all in experimental philoso- 
 phy, much less to make any discoveries for extending 
 its bounds. Not only was he without any pretension 
 of this kind, but he was incapacitated from such pur- 
 suits by his entire ignorance of many branches of phy- 
 
 1 1 1 1 1 
 
 sical science, an ignorance almost general with mm on 
 everything which did not lend itself to geometry or 
 rather analysis, an ignorance, be it further observed, 
 extremely discreditable to his understanding as a philo- 
 sopher. Who can read without astonishment his 
 avowal that he knows nothing of chemistry; an avowal 
 borne out by some of his writings, and by the Dis- 
 course to the l Encyclopedic ; ' when we reflect at the 
 same time that the greatest of geometricians and analysts 
 did not disdain to be as thoroughly acquainted with 
 the chemistry of his age, as any one who knew nothing 
 else? Indeed some of his most wonderful conjectures 
 respecting the constituent parts of bodies, may be re- 
 ferred as much to chemical as to optical science.* 
 
 D'Alembert's reason for undervaluing the truths of 
 inductive philosophy, must be allowed to have been 
 wholly unworthy of his genius for general speculation. 
 He thought .meanly of the evidence on which it rests, 
 and could take no interest in any investigations other 
 than analytical. Can any one doubt that the evidence 
 of experiments is in the highest degree deserving of 
 our respectful attention, without refusing also his ap- 
 
 ^ * See especially the Queries to the ' Optics.' I remember Dr. Bhek 
 citing these wonderful productions with unbounded admiration. 
 
D'ALEMBEKT. 451 
 
 proval to the whole of human conduct, which of neces- 
 sity proceeds upon the admission that contingent truths, 
 both physical and moral, rest on sufficient grounds for 
 us safely to act upon them in all the affairs of life ? 
 Besides, D'Alembert admitted, both in theory and by 
 his own conduct, that physical science was deserving 
 of attention, when it could bear the application of the 
 calculus. Then how could he be sure that any given 
 branch of experimental philosophy might not be sus- 
 ceptible of strictly mathematical treatment, unless he 
 made himself master of that branch? We find Caven- 
 dish applying geometrical and analytical reasoning to 
 such subjects as electricity. We have profound Me- 
 moirs of my illustrious and lamented colleague, M. 
 Poisson, treating the same subject by the resources of 
 the calculus of which he was so great a master. Capil- 
 lary attraction received a similar consideration from 
 Laplace ; analysis has been successfully applied to op- 
 tical researches by mathematicians of our own times. 
 But I would not by any means be understood in these 
 observations to admit that purely inductive researches, 
 and those to which no geometrical reasoning can be 
 applied, are less worthy of a philosopher's regard than 
 those which easily ally themselves with the science of 
 necessary truth. No one who has studied the inimitable 
 experimental investigations of the second book of the 
 ' Optics,' can hesitate in admitting that they are in every 
 way worthy of the immortal author of the 'Principia.' 
 The inquiries of Black and Cavendish excite the like 
 admiration. Nay, has not D'Alembert himself written 
 many profound optical papers ? We have some of these 
 in the 1st, 5th, and 7th volumes of the ' Opuscules,' and 
 the 3rd volume is composed wholly of such. How then 
 could he tell beforehand that he might not find other 
 physical subjects capable of geometrical treatment? 
 
 It remains to note the inferiority in point of elegance 
 in D'Alembert's investigations to those of many other 
 geometricians. He was anxious only for the result ; 
 
452 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 and the truth once discovered, he was extremely in- 
 different to the neatness of the investigation, whether 
 of the steps by which the analysis had guided his course, 
 or of the synthetical deduction by which he demon- 
 strated the proposition. His own observation was, " Let 
 us discover truths, and there will never want those 
 who can put them in shape." Possibly his quickness 
 (or facilite) the only quality beside " some talent,"* 
 which he modestly claimed for himself, may have had its 
 share in producing this carelessness about any elabora- 
 tion of his analysis. He is generally clear enough in 
 his explanations, always logical in his reasonings ; but 
 we enjoy not the pleasure of seeing the truth unfolded 
 by the most striking methods, or traced in its most 
 surprising relations and connected by remarkable ana- 
 logies with kindred matters. 
 
 If, from contemplating the eminent merits of this 
 illustrious geometrician, we turn to regard him in his 
 literary capacity, there is, unquestionably, a signal fall- 
 ing off. He cannot be said here to occupy even a 
 second place. It is to be observed, that his entering 
 upon the belles-lettres, and, indeed, upon moral and 
 historical subjects also, was a deviation from his ori- 
 inal, and, as it were, his appointed course; nor ought 
 e failures of great men ever to be visited with cen- 
 sure, but under the influence of this candid and just 
 consideration. The accidental relations of society first 
 seduced him from geometry, and the appointment of 
 Secretary to the Academy completed the desertion of 
 his mistress, leading him to indulge in the meretricious 
 course of delivering popular essays to promiscuous 
 assemblies on great occasions of academical display. 
 To the task of handling literary subjects, too, he came 
 with a most imperfect preparation. He had no depth 
 at all of learning ; his knowledge of Latin was respect- 
 
 * " II a apporte dans 1' etude de la haute geometric, quelque talent et 
 beaucoup de facilite ; ce qui lui a fait un assez grand nom de tres-bonne 
 heure." Portrait par lui-meme. (CEuv. i. xliv.) 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 453 
 
 able, not extensive or profound ; of Greek very far 
 from considerable, indeed hardly competent; and of 
 the principles of criticism he was imperfectly master. 
 In truth nothing could be more alien to his natural and 
 amiable diffidence than the position which he assumed, 
 without any title whatever, of dictating ex cathedra his 
 many crude opinions and hasty and superficial com- 
 ments on literary topics. His taste, accordingly, as a 
 critic, was, without being positively vicious, certainly 
 far from very correct. He appears to have preferred 
 Bossuet to Massillon ; but in this he agrees with pro- 
 bably the majority of his countrymen. He is far from 
 placing Corneille on the same level to which his power- 
 ful genius has by general consent elevated him ; and 
 his pleasure was great when he found the idol of his 
 worship, Voltaire, joining in repeated attempts to de- 
 cry that illustrious author. Even Racine pleases him 
 but little. The versification he thinks a model, but the 
 dramatic eifect small. 'Athalie' is a "Tragedie de 
 college " without action, without interest. He compares 
 Eacine, Boileau, and Voltaire, together thus ; Boileau 
 makes us think and feel what labour the verse has cost : 
 Racine makes us think without feeling it: Voltaire 
 makes us neither think it nor feel it ; and to him he 
 gives the decided preference. (Cor. de Volt., (Euv. 
 xvi. 106.) 
 
 Indeed, Voltaire was in all things his idol. No one 
 can read any of his literary works and not be convinced 
 that he regarded that extraordinary man as standing 
 at the head of all writers, ancient and modern, upon 
 literary subjects, as w T ell as of all poets. The first im- 
 pression made upon him was, in all probability, by 
 Voltaire's dramatic works. His other poems confirmed 
 and extended the influence thus acquired over his mind; 
 and the sceptical opinions and satirical spirit of his prose 
 writings completed the enchantment, leaving him no 
 power of supposing either that the god of his idolatry 
 could ever err, or that anything was beyond his reach 
 
454 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 insomuch that we actually find him infinitely flat- 
 tered "par le suffrage accorde a 1' article 'Geometric/" 
 and hoping that Voltaire would be equally pleased 
 with the articles on Forces and Gravitation, and beg- 
 ging him to read that on the Figure of the Earth, the 
 merit of which consists in his correcting Clairaut's 
 hypothesis, and on this correction Voltaire was utterly 
 incapable of offering an opinion. The article on Gravi- 
 tation consists of four sections, three of which are full 
 of calculus, and so unintelligible to Voltaire that it 
 seemed like a mockery to mention them. (Cor. de Volt., 
 (Euv., xv., 41.) 
 
 The admiration which he expresses for Tasso is cer- 
 tainly quite legitimate. But who can allow him to 
 single the ' Gerusalemme' out of all ancient and modern 
 epics, as the " only one which we can read from be- 
 ginning to end with pleasure and interest ?" (CEuv. 
 iv., 116.) He had just pronounced, dogmatically, the 
 somewhat astounding dictum, that no one can read 
 Virgil or Homer through without being weary of the 
 task. When he singles out Tasso, indeed, he makes 
 him the solitary exception " among dead poets ;" but 
 this qualification is manifestly introduced on behalf of 
 the ' Henriade,' the author of which was still alive. 
 
 It is another proof of defective taste that he admires 
 Tacitus beyond all the writers of antiquity, which critics 
 of a much less severe taste than D'Alembert have not 
 been tasteless enough to do. " Prejuge de traducteur 
 a part (says he) comme il est sans comparaison le plus 
 grand historien de 1'antiquite, il est aussi celui dont il 
 y a le plus a recueiller." He goes on to speak of the 
 " various kinds of beauty of which this incomparable 
 writer gives the model," and after mentioning " the 
 energy of his descriptions of men, and the pathos of 
 his narrative of events," ends with this astounding as- 
 sertion, " qu'il possede dans un si haut degre la veri- 
 table eloquence, le talent de dire simplement de grandes 
 choses." (CEuv. vii., 23.) I own that when I first 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 455 
 
 read this passage I looked to see if there might not 
 have been omitted, by an error of the press, the words 
 " quoique" and " ne pas." It is hardly credible that 
 any one should have singled out for commendation in 
 Tacitus the very quality which he notoriously possesses 
 not. We find the same enthusiastic admiration break- 
 ing out in his correspondence : " Quel homme que ce 
 Tacite !" (Cor. Part., (Euv. xiv., 332.) We find him, 
 too, consoling his afflictions with the writings of that 
 historian, whom he quotes in both the letters addressed 
 to Diderot on Mde. Geonrin's death. (Cor. Part., 
 (Euv. xiv., 251, 261.) 
 
 But it is not only from defective taste and insufficient 
 knowledge, that D'Alembert's literary works fall so 
 immeasurably below his scientific. They are in gen- 
 eral, extremely slight and superficial. His capacity 
 of deep thought no where appears. There is sufficient 
 calmness in the tone of the remarks ; the discussions, 
 when he does discuss, are conducted with commendable 
 impartiality, and the sentiments are generally those of 
 a liberal, enlightened and unprejudiced mind ; but no 
 force is put forth; no difficulty is grappled with; no- 
 thing original or striking appears in the views taken ; 
 nothing very felicitous in the illustrations ; nothing 
 profound in the argument. The u great facility," or 
 quickness, which has been already noted as charac- 
 terizing his geometrical capacity, had a fatal effect 
 when he deviated into lighter studies; it lulled his 
 attention asleep and prevented the severe labour which 
 great works in the belles-lettres demand, as in every 
 other department of human exertion. All his writings 
 are more or less slight and insufficient. By far the 
 most elaborate are, the Discourse in the ' Encyclopedic' 
 and the ' Elements of Philosophy ;' but the first of these 
 must be confessed to fail from the radical defect of its 
 fundamental principles ; and the second, though supe- 
 rior, does not rise much above mediocrity, nor leave 
 on the mind any lively or lasting impression. 
 
456 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 Of the style in which all his writings are composed, 
 the great merit must at once be admitted. It has the 
 good quality of perfect clearness and of undeviating 
 simplicity. The taste which it displays is very far 
 superior to what could have been expected from so 
 warm an admirer of Tacitus. It seems as if his other 
 passion, that which devoted him to Voltaire, together 
 with his keen sense of ridicule, had effectually saved 
 him from the rock upon which the admirers of Tacitus 
 have so generally made shipwreck, and had purged his 
 diction of those false ornaments in which men of science 
 are so very apt to indulge when they quit their proper 
 haunts and descend into the low but perilous sphere of 
 fine writing. Would that our physical, ay, and even 
 our geometrical writers would always keep the great 
 example of D'Alembert before their eyes not only 
 when they deviate from their proper orbit into general 
 speculation, but even when they are confined to their 
 own subjects ! How much vile figure and inaccurate 
 trope ; how many jumbled metaphors, disjointed de- 
 clamations, and misplaced quotations, should we then 
 be spared ! His own character of his style is not at all 
 too favourable, exemplifying what it describes : " Son 
 style serre, clair et precis, ordinairement facile, sans 
 pretension quoique chatie, quelquefois un peu sec, 
 mais jamais de mauvais gout, a plus d'energie que de 
 chaleur, plus de justesse que d'im agination, plus de 
 noblesse que de grace."* 
 
 We have now surveyed this illustrious life in its 
 various phases, and observed its merits reduced to their 
 real, but still magnificent dimensions. The events by 
 which it was diversified were necessarily few. The 
 kind of existence which D'Alembert enjoyed in his 
 study and the society of Paris has been described. 
 From those habits he seldom deviated, unless in so far 
 as his whole literary occupations may be considered 
 
 * Portrait de lui-meme. (CEuv. i. xlv.) 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 457 
 
 to have been, what indeed they were, a deviation. 
 His intercourse with Voltaire and with Frederick II. 
 have been mentioned, and it was nearly all that can 
 be said to have variegated the tranquil and uniform 
 tenor of his way. 
 
 To Voltaire at Ferney he paid a visit in the autumn 
 of 1756 ; and it is plain from all Voltaire's letters that 
 this occurrence gave the greatest satisfaction to " the 
 Patriarch." The tenor of their correspondence was 
 one of uninterrupted confidence and mutual esteem. 
 That D'Alembert occasionally sacrificed somewhat of 
 his wonted independence to his profound admiration 
 of his friend, is certain. A mathematician like him 
 should never have given to Voltaire's ignorant and 
 ridiculous assertion that Leibnitz and Descartes were 
 two charlatans (' Corr. Vol.' CEuv., XVI. 77) so tame 
 a reply as merely to say, that he had not read the 
 collection of Leibnitz' works, but readily believed it 
 to be " un fatras oil il y a bien peu de choses a ap- 
 prendre" (Ib., 80). Though Voltaire may only have 
 spoken of that great man's universality, an objection 
 which it little becomeseither himself or his correspondent 
 to make, yet the first geometrician of the age ought 
 never to have left the subject without a protest in 
 favour of the founder of modern Analysis. There is, 
 however, something very touching in the ease with 
 which D'Alembert bowed before the errors and the 
 ignorance of genius, contrasted with the sturdiness of 
 his resistance to all the attempts of mere station or 
 private friendship to influence his opinion. Mdme. 
 du Deffand, then the patroness of his mistress and his 
 own, in vain besought him to slide in a word on behalf 
 of her friend the President Renault when the * Dis- 
 cours' was preparing. D'Alembert peremptorily re- 
 fused to say one syllable of that feeble and correct 
 chronologer in the ' Discours,' and would only, under 
 the head of " Chronology," go so far as to say, that 
 he had written one of the three chronological abridg- 
 
458 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 merits which were useful, but not the best of them 
 (' CEuv.,' XIV., 322, 343). 
 
 The correspondence with Frederick II. was con- 
 tinued for thirty years, during three-and-twenty of 
 which it was constant and regular. There is, perhaps, 
 as much independence in it on the philosopher's part 
 as can well be expected in such circumstances ; yet, 
 certainly, a very considerable portion is filled with 
 constantly -repeated expressions of respect, devotion, 
 gratitude, and of admiration for the royal qualities and 
 station. The letters written on any days that happened 
 to be anniversaries of Frederick's victories, are always 
 dated "Anniversary of such and such a battle" (see 
 XVII., 16, 422, &c. &c.) A Frenchman, whose 
 country was at war with Frederick, expresses his joy 
 at all that prince's victories for six years, except only 
 the one over the French army at Rosbach (XVII. 7.) 
 A scornful opinion of his intimate friend Diderot's 
 works, and a report as contemptuous of his personal 
 qualities (XVII. 381), is only met with a prediction 
 that, should his Majesty see Diderot, he would judge 
 more favourably of him than he had done of his works 
 (Ib., 383.) Flattery, of course, is lavished unsparingly. 
 Not only is Frederick the Caesar of the age, which he 
 certainly might fairly be termed, but he is raised to a 
 divine rank, being commemorated as both Mars and 
 Apollo (Ib., 259, 389.) Nor is any clear expression 
 of opinion given, when after committing the greatest 
 public crime in modern times the partition of Poland 
 Frederick sent the philosopher his Polish Medal, 
 with the false motto, " Regno reintegrate." He coolly 
 takes it as a proof that the King had only taken the 
 step of re-entering into the possession of his own old 
 dominions (XVII. 329) ; and after the lapse of eight 
 years had left no possible doubt on the nature of the 
 transaction, we find him introducing Ruhlieres to the 
 King as desirous of writing Polish History under his 
 patronage, and expressing " his great admiration of his 
 
459 
 
 Majesty." But the wary King-partitioner had the 
 sense to see what might follow from hence, and told his 
 correspondent that the event was too recent to be the 
 fit subject of an historical work (XVII. 235, 6. 240.) 
 
 In the course of this correspondence D'Alembert 
 went twice to visit Frederick, once in 1755, when 
 the latter was at Wesel on the Rhine ; and again in 
 1763, when he passed two months with the king at 
 Potsdam. The impression left on the royal mind by 
 both these visits was highly favourable to D'Alembert, 
 as might well be expected from his modest, ingenuous 
 nature, and excellent social habits. 
 
 Towards his sixty-fourth year his health which had 
 never been robust, though his life was eminently tem- 
 perate, and always with an entire abstinence from 
 fermented liquors began to decline. A feeble diges- 
 tion and constant difficulty of sleeping, had long been 
 the bane of his bodily comfort. To these ailments 
 was now added an affection of the bladder, which his 
 medical friends found to be beyond the reach of their 
 art. He suffered exceedingly for the last three years 
 of his life, and suffered with an exemplary calmness 
 and even cheerfulness : at length, exhausted with pain, 
 with irritation more than pain, with sleeplessness, with 
 indigestion, and its consequent weakness, he expired 
 on the twenty ninth of October, 1783, in the sixty- 
 seventh year of his age. His most intimate friend, 
 Diderot, died of dropsy nearly about the same time. 
 It is emphatically stated by Grimm, whose intimacy 
 with Diderot gave him means of knowing the truth of 
 the assertion, that D'Alembert might have prolonged 
 his life had he not refused submitting to a surgical 
 operation. Be that as it may, during his long and 
 painful illness his mind appeared exhausted like his 
 body, but the mental feebleness was only apparent; 
 for the intervals of ease which he had were occupied 
 with mathematical investigations, and with other sub- 
 jects that interested him. His sick chamber was 
 
460 
 
 attended by numerous friends, among whom he alone 
 retained his gaiety, enlivening the conversation with 
 sallies of pleasantry, in which their feelings would 
 hardly let them participate. Condorcet was, he knew, 
 to write his eloge for both Academies. A day or two 
 before his death he said to him, " Mon ami, vous ferez 
 mon eloge dans les deux Academies, vous n'avez pas 
 de terns a perdre pour cette double besogne." ('Grim. 
 Corr.') Yet sometimes the torment he endured over- 
 powered him ; and his unostentatious dislike of all 
 pretence, all acting, prevented him from concealing 
 his agony. "Nature," said he, "has left a suffering 
 being the relief of complaining." And if he ever 
 accused himself of importunately afflicting his friends 
 by his sufferings, he would say that he could hardly 
 " conceive how so feeble a creature was able to endure 
 so much without dying." The certainty of his end 
 approaching was announced to him, and he received 
 the tidings with the most absolute tranquillity. His 
 cheerfulness remained unbroken ; and the last words 
 he uttered were to a friend who attended his death- 
 bed : " Do you hear how my chest is filling ?" M. 
 Pouque, member of the Institute, communicated this 
 interesting anecdote to La Harpe. The words were 
 addressed to him. 
 
 The fame which D'Alembert for a long course of 
 years enjoyed all over Europe, was certainly greater 
 than that of any other man of science in any age. 
 Voltaire's was little or nothing among philosophers ; 
 and prodigious though the reputation always was of 
 the poet and literary man, his opinions upon religious 
 subjects were so generally known, indeed so openly 
 declared, that his reputation, how great soever, was to 
 a certain degree of a party caste. D'Alembert, the 
 first philosopher of the age, was likewise advantage- 
 ously known among literary men, and estimated above 
 his deserts in letters on account of his admitted superi- 
 ority in science. During his life, too, though attached 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 461 
 
 to the party of the Free Thinkers by his habits in so- 
 ciety, he had never made himself obnoxious by any 
 public declaration of his opinions ; and was indeed 
 never publicly known to be an infidel till his corres- 
 pondence with Voltaire appeared after his death. 
 There was no name, therefore which carried such 
 weight among men as his ; and while he lived, though 
 cabals among politicians now and then interfered 
 against him, as when his academical pension was de- 
 layed, because, in a letter opened at the post-office, he 
 was found to have called the Due de Choiseul, Vol- 
 taire's protege rather than his protector ; yet in gene- 
 ral, full justice was done to his transcendent merits, 
 and his name was everywhere amply honoured. A 
 letter of Abbe Galliani may be cited as showing the 
 estimation he was held in even at Naples, where one 
 might have expected merit, such as his, would be slow 
 to penetrate. The Abbe thus gaily refers to a letter 
 some one had brought from the great man : " Elle 
 m'est si chere, me cause tant de plaisir, me rend 
 si glorieux, que c'est le meilleur present que j'eusse 
 pu recevoir de Paris. Si vous voyiez comme je me 
 rengorge endisant dans la compagnie, * Je viens de 
 recevoir une lettre de D'AlembertJ que je tire kmoitie 
 de ma poche, et que j'y laisse tomber sans en faire la 
 lecture a cause d'un certain petit bricole qu'il y a 
 dedans, qui n'est pas pour tout le monde." I cannot 
 refrain from continuing the quotation of this truly witty 
 letter : " Sur cela grands discours sur D'Alembert ; 
 grand etonnement lorsque je dis qu'il est petit de taille, 
 pantomime et polisson au possible. On veut partout 
 que vous soyez grand comme St. Christophe, et serieux 
 et barbeux comme le Mo'ise de Michel Ange.* On 
 finit par me demander tous a la fois, 'L'avez vous-vu?' 
 comme on demandait a Pape Panurge dans 1'Ile des 
 Papegais et des Papefigues. Non, en verite, un Mes- 
 
 * I have corrected the manifest error of the books which make it 
 " Moine." 
 
462 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 sinois n'est pas si vain de sa lettre de la Madonne que 
 je le suis de la votre." (CEuv., XIV., 399.) Such is 
 the style of one who himself stood at the very head of 
 the most witty and agreeable society of the times ; and 
 was more run after than any one of its members. And 
 it may safely be affirmed that no man in any circle of 
 Europe, would in those days (1773) have received a 
 letter from D'Alembert with different emotions.* 
 
 The neutrality which he had always during his life 
 maintained upon sacred subjects, was unfortunately con- 
 fined to his published writings; and a few years only 
 elapsed after his decease, before the real state of his re- 
 ligious opinions became well known by the publication 
 of Voltaire's correspondence and Frederick II.'s The 
 fame which his reputation had hitherto enjoyed, caused 
 a great and general reaction among the zealous friends 
 of the Church, a reaction proportioned to the tolerance 
 previously exercised towards him, while men were in 
 the dark respecting his opinions. Nevertheless nothing 
 could be more unjust or unreflecting than the indigna- 
 tion which thus broke forth. He had studiously 
 avoided all offence, whatever opportunity he might have 
 had of giving it. A very pious and even zealous 
 writer, while giving vent to his strong feelings on re- 
 ligion, has the candour to condemn the want of charity 
 shown towards D'Alembert on this subject, declaring 
 that his infidelity was only " a fault God-ward, and 
 which men had no right to visit with censure, because 
 
 he never published one phrase of an irreligious ten- 
 
 1-1 i 
 
 dency, while nis writings contain many warm expres- 
 sions in favour of Christianity and its professors." 
 (Portrait de D'Alembert, CEuv. I. Ixvii.) This testi- 
 
 * This letter is one of the most charming for its light gay wit, that is 
 any where to be found ; nothing can give a higher idea of the Abbe's 
 powers. The profound sense of it is on a par with the wit. Thus: "La 
 crainte et 1'avidite sont et seront toujours les causes de la cruaute :" which 
 he proceeds to illustrate by a most picturesque allusion to the conduct of 
 the most cruel of men the Spaniards in America. 
 
D'ALEMBEET. 463 
 
 mony from a writer who cries out against the ' Ency- 
 clopedic.' as " an arsenal of irreligion," dispenses with 
 the necessity of adding proofs to show how fairly and 
 even kindly D'Alembert ever talked of Christianity in 
 public. But another and a more reverend authority 
 may be cited to the same effect. M. Coetloquest, 
 Bishop of Limoges, said that he had never seen him, 
 but that he had always heard that his morals were above 
 reproach ; and his Lordship added, " Quant & ses ouv- 
 rages je les lis souvent, et je n'y trouve que beaucoup 
 d'esprit, de grandes lumieres, et une bonne morale. 
 S'il ne pense pas aussi bien qu'il ecrit, il faudroit le 
 plaindre ; mais personne n'est en droit d'interroger sa 
 conscience." The detestation which D'Alembert ex- 
 
 Eresses, even in his private letters, of the ' Systeme de 
 i Nature,' (XLI. 371. XVII. 225,) may be cited with 
 the same view, as may the horror of Atheism which he 
 repeatedly testifies.* And if in reality he was a zeal- 
 ous adversary of religion, it has been justly observed 
 by La Harpe, that his hostility was far more directed 
 against its ministers than against the system itself* 
 Nor ought we even to express our condemnation of 
 such conduct, or our regret for its injustice,' which view 
 soever we may take of this subject, without consider- 
 ing the extreme provocation which the French philo- 
 sophers of that age had to endure. Galas, old and in- 
 firm, broken on the wheel as the murderer of his son, 
 a robust young man, in the presence of many of his 
 family, to prevent him from abjuring Catholicism ; La 
 Barre condemned to have his tongue cut out, and dying 
 in agony, because while a boy he made faces at the 
 procession of the priests ; a poor creature condemned 
 to the galleys and pillory, and dying of the fright the 
 
 * See especially in the Hist, de la Destruction des Jesuites, CEuv. v. 
 134. " Ce malheureux (1'athee) tres-coupable aux yeux de Dieu et de 
 raison, n'est nuisible qu'a lui-meme." It is clear from all he says of the 
 ' Systeme de la Nature,' that he never could have believed Diderot to be 
 the axxthor; perhaps not even D'Holbach. 
 
464 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 day after the sentence, for having offered a bookseller 
 a book which he knew nothing of and had received in 
 payment of a debt: these were the scenes that passed 
 before the eyes of D'Alembert and Voltaire ; nor let 
 us, who have no such excuse for hating the establish- 
 ment, visit too severely the sentiments which scenes 
 like these not unnaturally raised in generous minds, 
 how much soever we may be disposed to admit that 
 they carried their indignation beyond just bounds when 
 they confounded the use with the abuse, and made 
 religion answerable for the faults of its professors.* 
 
 * The character given of D'Alembert by Grimm, is certainly more 
 remarkable for its epigrammatic composition than its truth ; though it may 
 contain an approximation to some features. " Les personnes qui ont vecu 
 le plus avec D'Alembert le trouvaient bon sans bonte, sensible sans sensi- 
 bilite, vain sans orgueil, chagrin sans tristesse ;" all this he explains by 
 ascribing to him a combination of " roideur, faiblesse, et activite." He 
 allows his conversation to have been admirable, that he could lend attrac- 
 tion to the most dry and forbidding subjects, and gave his sallies with a 
 grace and a readiness not easily surpassed. 
 
465 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 NOTE ON D'ALEMBEET'S PRINCIPLE, 
 
 Professor Playfair (' Ed. Eev.' xi., 253) has by no means 
 been nappy in his enunciation of the Principle. " If the 
 motions which the particles of a moving or a system of 
 moving bodies have at any instant be resolved into each two, 
 one of which is the motion which the particle had in the pre- 
 ceding instant, then the sum of all these third motions must 
 be such that they are in equilibrium with one another." 
 
 The following are the observations referred to in p. 396, note. 
 
 The great utility of this principle proceeds from the uni- 
 versality of its operation, and from its supplying the place 
 of the detached artifices and ingenious assumptions by which 
 dynamical problems had hitherto been treated, by a rule 
 directly applicable to the circumstances of the motion of 
 one or more bodies whose motions were any other than those 
 immediately proceeding from the direct and unfettered action 
 of the motive force. 
 
 The principle applies equally to the most elementary and 
 the most difficult problems to the motion of a body down 
 an inclined plane the vibrations of a simple pendulum or 
 to the theory of the radiation of heat the vibrations of a 
 chord : two subjects previously of insuperable difficulty, to 
 which the illustrious author applied his new method, and 
 which became remarkable in his hands, not only for the 
 solutions which he obtained, but also for the manner of 
 them for it was his singular good fortune, by a further 
 invention, to overcome the analytical difficulties into which 
 the fecundity of his dynamical principle had led him. 
 
 The great utility of this principle wiU not appear from 
 the comparison of the solutions of any one problem obtained 
 by its means, with the detached artifices previously employed; 
 2 H 
 
-166 D'ALEMBERT. 
 
 these were all private paths to one solution, whilst that is a 
 high road to all. The solution of every problem is obtained 
 from an equation involving some principle to which the mo- 
 tions of the system are subject the advantage of D'Alem- 
 bert's step lay in this, that it was the same principle which 
 he applied to each particular case. 
 
 Note to p. 396, line 19, by the author mentioned p. 396, note. 
 
 Since these last forces mutually destroy each other, and 
 that the forces actually impressed were compounded of them 
 and of those (usually called effective) which act in the direc- 
 tion the bodies really move in, so that the force originally 
 applied (usually called the impressed force) is the result of 
 these two forces, it follows that the effective forces would, if 
 they acted in the contrary direction, exactly balance the 
 impressed forces. Problems of dynamics are thus reduced to 
 a general equation of equilibrium and become statical. 
 
 II. 
 
 That Euler, in the Memoir published in 1734, solved an 
 equation of Partial Differences is quite incontestable, though 
 he laid down no general method ; which, indeed, D'Alembert 
 himself never did, nor any geometrician before the publica- 
 tion of Euler 's third vol. of the ' Institutions of the Integral 
 and Differential Calculus.' The problem, as given in the 
 * Mem. Acad. Petersb.' vol. vii., was this ; We have the 
 equation dz = P dx-\- Qda, z being a function of x and a; 
 and the problem is to find the most general value of P arid 
 Q, which will satisfy the equation. QrzrF^-fPE, P 
 being a function of a, and E- a function of a and x, Euler 
 seeks for the factor which will make d x -f- R d a integrable. 
 Call this factor S, and make S d x -f S R d a = d T, and 
 
 make fFda = log, B. 
 
 He finds for the values required 
 
 P = BS/' : T, Q = 1?L? + BES/:T 
 
D'ALEMBERT. 467 
 
 and from thence he deduces 
 
 dz = KS(dx-{-'Rd a)f : T + * ^ = 
 
 = Bd/:T -M^-? and 
 consequently z = B/: T. 
 
 It is thus clear, that Euler had, in or before 1734, in- 
 tegrated an equation of Partial Differences ; and it must 
 further be remarked, that D'Alembert, in his paper on the 
 Winds, the first application of the calculus, quotes Euler's 
 paper of 1734. D'Alembert always differed with Euler re- 
 specting the extent to which this calculus can be applied, 
 holding, contrary to Euler's opinion, that it does not include 
 irregular and discontinuous arbitrary functions.* 
 
 III. 
 
 The Vitriere's house, in which D'Alembert was brought 
 up and lived afterwards for so many years, can no longer be 
 ascertained. I have examined this matter with some care 
 in the street in which it stood, Rue Michel-le-Comte. That 
 street is very narrow, in no place above eighteen or nineteen 
 feet wide, and the houses on both sides are lofty. D'Alem- 
 bert, therefore, did not exaggerate when, in his letter to 
 Voltaire, he said he could only see a yard or two of the sky 
 from his room, The street is near the Rue St. Martin, at 
 some distance north of the H6tel-de-Ville. The church of 
 St. Jean-le-Rond, at the gate of which he was exposed, and 
 from which he took his name, stood near the cathedral of 
 Notre Dame, and was pulled down in 1748. It was a bap- 
 tistery of Notre Dame, near the Foundling Hospital, and 
 touched the Cathedral Church. Of the Vitriere's house I 
 have inquired everywhere, not only in the Rue Michel-le- 
 Comte, but at the Prefecture (H6tel-de-Ville), and among 
 my brethren of the Institute ; I can discover no traces of 
 it. D'Alembert's Address given on his admission to the 
 Academy in 1741, only mentions the street without giving 
 any number. 
 
 * Cousin has mentioned the anticipation of Euler. ' Astronomie, Disc. 
 Prelim.' 
 
(468) 
 
 ADDITIONAL APPENDIX 
 
 TO THE LIVES OF 
 
 SIR JOSEPH BANKS AND ADAM SMITH. 
 
 CAPT. COOK TO ME. 
 
 ""WlLLS's COFFEE-HOUSE, CHARING CROSS, 
 
 " DEAE SlE, " Sunday Morning, [1768.] 
 
 " Your very obliging letter was the first messenger 
 that conveyed to me Lord Sandwich's intentions. Promo- 
 tion, unsolicited, to a man in my situation in life, must 
 convey a satisfaction to the mind that is better conceived 
 than described. I had this morning the honour to wait 
 upon his Lordship, who renewed his promises to me, and in 
 so obliging and polite a manner as convinced me he approved 
 of the voyage. The reputation I may have acquired on this 
 account, by which I shall receive promotion, calls to my 
 mind the very great assistance I received therein from you, 
 which will ever be remembered with most grateful acknow- 
 ledgments by, 
 
 "Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your most obliged humble servant, 
 " JAMES COOK." 
 
 CAPT. COOK TO ME. BA:N~KS. 
 
 " SHEERNESS, 2nd June, 1772. 
 " I received your letter by one of your people, acquaint- 
 ing me that you had ordered everything belonging to you 
 to be removed out of the ship, and desiring my assistance 
 therein. 
 
 " I hope, Sir, you will find this clone to your satisfaction, 
 and with that care the present hurry and confused state of 
 the ship required. Some few articles which were for the 
 
SIK JOSEPH BANKS. 469 
 
 mess I have kept, for which, together with the money I 
 have remaining in my hands, I shall account with you for, 
 when I come to Town. 
 
 " Taught by experience not to trust to the knowledge of 
 servants the whole of every necessary article wanting in such 
 a voyage, I had, independent of what I purchased for the 
 mess, laid in a stock of most articles, which will be now 
 quite sufficient for me, and is the reason why I have not 
 kept more of yours. 
 
 " The cook and two French-horn men are at liberty to go 
 whenever they please. Several of the casks your things are 
 in belong to the King, are charged to me, and for which I 
 must be accountable. I shall be much obliged to you to send 
 them to the Victualling-Office when they are emptied, but 
 desire that you will by no means put yourself to any ill- 
 con veniency on this head, as I shall not be called upon to 
 account for them until my return. 
 
 " If it should not be convenient to send down for what 
 may be still remaining in the ship of yours, they shall be 
 sent you by 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 " Your most obedient and very humble servant, 
 " JAMES COOK." 
 
 " My best respects to the Doctor ; and since I am not to 
 have your company in the ' Resolution,' I most sincerely 
 wish you success in all your exploring undertakings." 
 
 CAPT. COOK TO ME. BANKS. 
 
 " ' RESOLUTION,' CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, 
 
 '' DEAR SIB, " isth NOV., 1772. 
 
 " Some cross circumstances which happened at the 
 latter part of the equipment of the ' Resolution ' created, I 
 have reason to think, a coolness betwixt you and I ; but I 
 can by no means think it was sufficient to me to break 
 off all correspondence with a man I am under many obli- 
 gations to. 
 
 "I wish I had something interesting to communicate, 
 but our passage here has rather been barren on that head. 
 We touched at St. Jago, where we remained two days, and 
 Mr. Forster got some things there new in your way. Mr. 
 
470 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 
 
 Brand has got for you a fine collection, as I am told. I 
 depart from hence in a day or two well stored with every 
 necessary thing, but I am told the French from the Mauri- 
 tius have got the start of me. About eight months ago 
 two ships from that island discovered land in the latitude 
 of 48 degrees, and about the meridian of the Mauritius, 
 along which they sailed forty miles till they came to a bay, 
 into which they were about to enter, when they were sepa- 
 rated, and drove off the coast by a gale of wind. The one 
 got to the Mauritius soon after, and the other is since arrived 
 from Batavia with a cargo of arrack, as the report goes here ; 
 also, in March last, two frigates from the same island touched 
 here in their way to the South Sea, having on board the 
 man Bougainville brought from Otaheite, and who died 
 before the ships departed hence, a circumstance I am really 
 sorry for. These ships were to touch some where on the 
 coast of America, and afterwards to proceed round Cape 
 Horn. 
 
 " I am in your debt for the pickled and dried salmon 
 which you left on board, which a little time ago was most 
 excellent ; but the eight casks of pickled salted fish I kept 
 for myself proved so bad that even the hogs would not eat 
 it. These hints may be of use to you in providing for your 
 intended expedition, in which I wish you all the success you 
 can wish yourself; and am, with great esteem and respect, 
 
 "Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your most obliged humble servant, 
 "JAMES COOK." 
 
 CAPT. COOK TO ME. BANKS. 
 
 " DEAR SIB, " PLYMOUTH SOCJND, July 10th, 1776. 
 
 " As you was so obliging as to say you would give a 
 description of the New Zealand spruce tree, or any other 
 plant, the drawing of which might accompany my Journal, 
 I desired Mr. Strahan and Mr. Stuart, who have the charge 
 of the publication, to give you extracts out the manuscript 
 of such descriptions as I had given (if any), for you to cor- 
 rect or describe yourself, as may be most agreeable. I know 
 not what plates Mr. Forster may have got engraved of 
 natural history that will come into my books ; nor do I know 
 
ADAM SMITH. 471 
 
 of any that will be of use to it, but the spruce tree and tea 
 plant and scurvy grass ; and I know not if this last is en- 
 graved. The flax plant is engraved : but whether the pub- 
 lishing of this in my Journal will be of any use to seamen 
 I shall not determine. In short, whatever plates of this 
 kind falls to my share, I shall hope for your kind assistance 
 in giving some short account of them. On my arrival 
 here I gave Omai three guineas, which sent him on shore 
 in high spirits : indeed he could hardly be otherwise, for he 
 is very much caressed here by every person of note ; and, 
 upon the whole, I think he rejoices at the prospect of going 
 home. 
 
 " I now only wait for a wind to put to sea ; unless Capt. 
 Clarke makes good haste down, he will have to follow me. 
 Sir John Pringle writes me that the Council of the Koyal 
 Society have decreed me the Prize Medal of this year. I 
 am obliged to you and my other good friends for this un- 
 merited honour. 
 
 " Omai joins his best respects to you and Dr. Solander 
 with, 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your most obedient and very humble servant, 
 " JAMES COOK." 
 
 These letters are given out of their place, not having 
 come into my possession until after the Life of Sir J. Banks 
 was printed. They appeared sufficiently interesting to be 
 here inserted. The same reason must justify the inserting, 
 also out of its place, the following extract from a letter of 
 Dr. Black to Mr. Smith, on his ' Wealth of Nations.' The 
 rest of the letter regards Mr. Hume's health. It was writ- 
 ten apparently in August, 1776. Nothing can be more 
 interesting than to mark the sentiments of a great and 
 original genius respecting the exertions of another and con- 
 genial spirit in a different walk of science. 
 
 DR. BLACK TO ADAM SMITH. 
 
 " Though I sit down to write to you upon another ac- 
 count, I cannot help expressing the pleasure and satisfaction 
 
472 ADAM SMITH. 
 
 I frequently meet with in hearing the opinions of good 
 judges concerning your book. I most heartily rejoice in the 
 prospect of the additional credit and reputation which you 
 cannot miss to gain by it, and which must increase as long- 
 as you live ; for I have no doubt that the views you have 
 given of many parts of your subject will be found by ex- 
 perience to be as just as they are new and interesting. And 
 although it be admired immediately by discerning and im- 
 partial judges, it will require more time before others who 
 are not so quick-sighted, or whose minds are warped by pre- 
 judice or interest, can understand and relish such a compre- 
 hensive system, framed with such just and liberal senti- 
 ments." 
 
(473) 
 NOTE TO THE LIVES 
 
 OF 
 
 CAVENDISH, WATT, AND BLACK. 
 
 I HAD not read M. Cuvier's * Eloge de M. Cavendish ' when 
 these Lives were first published. That Eloge is contained 
 in the Memoirs of the Institute for 1811.* Its composi- 
 tion certainly justifies the title of Eloge ; for it is a very in- 
 discriminate, and not very accurate panegyric of an illustri- 
 ous man, whose memory was best preserved and honoured 
 by a correct statement of the facts. M. Cuvier makes no 
 mention whatever of Watt in connection with the discovery 
 of the composition of water. But he is not much more just 
 to Black himself on that of fixed air ; or, as he calls him, 
 Blake : clearly showing that he had never taken the trouble 
 even to look at any work of that great man. As to Mr. 
 Cavendish, he gives it for part of his Eulogy that he ex- 
 plained his doctrines " dans une maniere plus etonnante en- 
 core que leur decouverte meme," (p. cxxvi.) Now if M. 
 Cuvier had read the paper upon the combustion of inflam- 
 mable air, he certainly would have found that this remark 
 in no respect whatever applies to it, for the composition 
 of water is but darkly shadowed out in that celebrated 
 Memoir. 
 
 He proceeds to say, that in 1766 Mr. Cavendish under- 
 took, in his paper read before the Royal Society, to establish 
 propositions, " presqu'inouies jusque la ; 1'eau n'est pas un 
 element ; il existe plusieurs sortes d'airs, essentiellement 
 
 * Nothing can be more confused, more inconsistent, than the manner of 
 publishing the volumes of this great work. It is generally a year or two 
 and even three or four, after the real date of the papers ; thus this twelfth 
 volume of the new series is called ' Mem. annee 1811,' yet it contains only 
 two papers of 1810-11; all the rest were received in 1812-13. I have 
 remarked this more fully in the Lives of Lavoisier and D'Alembert. 
 
474 NOTES. 
 
 differentes." He then mentions Von Helm ont inaccurately- 
 as having ascertained that there were " permanently elastic 
 vapours other than atmospheric air ; " and Hales, still more 
 inaccurately, as having measured these permanently elastic 
 fluids : whereas Hales considered thera all as common air. 
 combined with impure exhalations, an opinion which pre- 
 vailed a century and a half after Yon Helmont, and was 
 adopted hy D'Alembert in his article "Air" in the Ency- 
 clopedic, 1751. Black's discovery of fixed air, he confines 
 solely to its explaining the causticity of the alkalis and 
 earths. No one, he says, before Cavendish had distinguished 
 it as a separate aeriform substance ; and though emanations 
 were said to proceed from bodies, no one knew in what they 
 consisted. Cavendish, he says, first settled in 1766 all these 
 questions, and showed that this air, whether from chalk or 
 fermentation, or mines, was one and the same fluid, " auquel 
 on a depuis reserve le nom d'air fixe." Finally he (Caven- 
 dish) discovered that it was the air evolved from burning 
 charcoal (p. cxxx). He then ascribes the application of in- 
 flammable air to raising balloons in the air to M. Charles's 
 application of Mr. Cavendish's experiments on the specific 
 gravity of that gas. 
 
 This is really somewhat astounding. That a person of 
 M. Cuvier's eminent attainments, filling the high office of 
 Secretaire Perpetuel, and charged with the delicate and im- 
 portant duty of recording the history of science yearly, 
 should not have deemed it worth his while to read either the 
 celebrated experiments on Magnesia Alba and Quicklime 
 published in 1755, or the Lectures published in 1803, before 
 assuming to write the history of chemical discovery, is 
 wholly beyond belief. Had he read the former work he 
 would have found that Dr. Black gave to the air which he 
 had discovered the name of fixed air ; and that he did so, 
 not because it was the same with, or any modification of, 
 atmospheric air, but simply because air was a known term 
 in common use to represent a permanently elastic fluid, and 
 because this kind of air was found fixed in combination with 
 bodies. Had he looked at the Lectures, he would have 
 found that two years after the publication of his capital dis- 
 covery, viz., in 1757, and nine years before Mr. Cavendish's 
 paper was received, Dr. Black discovered that fixed air is 
 
NOTES. 475 
 
 the gas evolved in fermentation, and that he found it to be 
 so by the very experiment now in use to show it, namely, 
 emptying half of a phial filled with lime water in the air of 
 a brewer's vat, when the remaining lime water becomes tur- 
 bid, the carbonate of lime being formed and precipitated ; 
 that he discovered on the same day the identity of fixed air 
 with that evolved from burning charcoal ; and finally, that 
 he also ascertained the air evolved from the lungs in re- 
 spiration to be fixed air, by breathing through a syphon 
 half filled with lime water. All this, which M. Cuvier 
 ascribes to Mr. Cavendish's discoveries, in 1766, had been 
 published by Dr. Black in 1755, and explained by the ex- 
 periments themselves being performed by his own hands, in 
 his public lectures, every year before nearly three hundred 
 persons, from the year 1757 to the time of Mr. Cavendish's 
 supposed discovery in 1766. Of these Lectures numberless 
 copies were taken, were in general circulation, and were sold 
 to the students attending the classes of the College in Edin- 
 burgh. It is, however, very possible that Mr. Cavendish 
 was not apprised of Dr. Black's experiment made before 
 1752 and published in 1755. But it is quite certain that 
 he never arrogated to himself the discovery of fixed air being 
 a peculiar body different from common air, for he expressly 
 says, " By fixed air I mean that peculiar species of factitious 
 air which is separated from alkaline substances by solution 
 in acids, or by calcination, and to which Dr. Black has given 
 that name in his Treatise on Quicklime." (' Phil. Trans.,' 
 LVL, p. 140.) Now this shows clearly that M. Cuvier never 
 had read Mr. Cavendish's paper, any more than he had read 
 Dr. Black's Treatise, and his Lectures. Another proof is his 
 asserting that Mr. Cavendish discovered the air evolved 
 from burning charcoal to be fixed air. His paper contains 
 not one word on that air as connected with burning char- 
 coal. Nay, so far is Mr. Cavendish from assuming to him- 
 self the discovery of its identity with the air evolved in fer- 
 mentation, that he expressly says Dr. Macbride had dis- 
 covered the evolving of fixed air in that process, and that he 
 himself only made his experiments to ascertain if any other 
 air was also evolved, when he found inflammable air also to 
 come away. Apparently he had not been aware of Dr. 
 Black's experiments in 1757. The Lectures would also 
 
476 NOTES. 
 
 have shown M. Cuvier that Dr. Black, as early as 1766, 
 showed his friends the ascent of a bladder filled with inflam- 
 mable air, long before the experiments of M. Charles, to 
 whom the earliest observation of this fact is by M. Cuvier 
 rashly ascribed. 
 
 M. Cuvier mentions Macquer as having first observed the 
 deposit of moisture when inflammable air is burnt. He says 
 nothing of Mr. Warltire's experiment, though Mr. Caven- 
 dish himself states expressly (' Phil. Trans.' 1784, p. 126) 
 that it was the deposit of dew observed by Warltire, which 
 set him on making his experiments. From this omission 
 of M. Cuvier, it is plain that he never took the trouble to 
 read the paper of Mr. Cavendish, which, as he refers to it 
 by volume and page, he may, therefore, have seen he never 
 could have read it. This also accounts for his singular as- 
 sertion, that Mr. Cavendish's discoveries were explained 
 with an evidence and a clearness more astonishing than the 
 discoveries themselves. 
 
 It is equally incorrect to affirm, as M. Cuvier appears to 
 do, p. cxxxiii., that the decomposition of water suggested by 
 M. de la Place, and performed by M. Lavoisier, became " la 
 clef de lavoute," for the analytical experiment is equivocal, 
 and the synthetical alone is precise. He says that M. 
 Monge had made the same experiments as Mr. Cavendish, 
 and had the same idea, " avoit eu la meme idee," probably 
 meaning that of a quantity of water being formed equal to 
 the quantity of airs burnt, and had communicated the result 
 to Lavoisier and La Place ; and Monge seems really to give 
 the first notion of water being composed of these airs, as La 
 Place's ; for he says, " Si la combustion de ces airs donne 
 de 1'eau, dit M. de la Place, c'est qu'ils resultent de sa de- 
 composition." Had M. Cuvier really read the work he so 
 often cites, the ' Philosophical Transactions,' he would have 
 found Mr. Watt's letter, and he could hardly have avoided 
 mentioning the first idea of the composition as his. 
 
 But truly it is to be lamented that the history of science 
 should be written with such remarkable carelessness, and 
 such manifest inattention to the facts. To find mistakes so 
 very gross in the works of ordinary writers might excite 
 little surprise ; but when they are embodied in the history 
 of the National Institute, and when they come to us under 
 
NOTES. 477 
 
 the name, among the very first in all sciences, of Cuvier, we 
 may at once wonder and mourn. 
 
 Since the Life of Watt was published, a very strange 
 attack on both M. Arago and myself, but more especially 
 on my illustrious colleague, has appeared in the ' Quarterly 
 Review.' The ingenious and (as far as this controversy is 
 concerned) not very learned critic appears to be led away 
 by the excess of his zeal for Mr. Cavendish. I leave him 
 in the hands of M. Arago, who will observe with some 
 wonder that he has been accused and judged and condemned 
 by a chemist so well versed in that science, and so reflecting, 
 as to announce the astonishing novelty, that the exhibition 
 of sulphur to sulphuric acid reduces that acid and restores 
 it to its primitive state of sulphur ! The writer had pro- 
 bably read somewhere that sulphuric acid is reduced to sul- 
 phurous by the process ; for he is assuredly the first that 
 had ever hit upon the acid's reduction by sulphur " to its 
 primitive state."* I have lying before me fifteen pages of 
 statements of chemical errors in the thirty-four pages of 
 the paper ; and as these are the work of a most experienced 
 and learned and practical chemist, whom I consulted on the 
 above and other parts of the paper, I have entire reliance 
 on his report and opinion. I must also add that he com- 
 pletely bears out, by the authority of his concurring opinion, 
 the statements (disputed by the critic) which I had ven- 
 tured to make respecting Dr. Black's discoveries, with the 
 single exception that he is not aware how far I am justified 
 in stating the greater specific gravity of fixed air as known 
 to him before Mr. Cavendish's experiments in 1766. My 
 reason for so stating was my distinct recollection of Dr. B. 
 having in his lectures shown us the experiment of pouring 
 fixed air out of a receiver on a candle, and his having given 
 this as a property originally known to himself when he dis- 
 covered the gas, though it is very true that the published 
 lectures do not decide either way the question of his early 
 knowledge. His not mentioning Mr. Cavendish or any one 
 
 * The process of reducing phosphoric acid to its primitive phosphorus, 
 had just been stated, and the writer adds, " A similar succession of pheno- 
 mena are presented by sulphur, &c. ;" and he enumerates sulphur as one of 
 the bodies which reduce the acid to its primitive state. 
 
478 NOTES. 
 
 else as having first taught it him is with me, who well knew 
 his scrupulous exactness in such matters, quite decisive of 
 his having himself observed it. 
 
 I shall only cite further my correspondent's note on the 
 Eeviewer's statement, " that I was wrong in ascribing to 
 Dr. Black 'the discovery that fixed air has acid properties." 
 (p. 110.)" The Reviewer adds that ' the acidity of fixed 
 air was indicated for the first time by Priestley and his 
 fellow-labourers, and only completely established by Lavoi- 
 sier, who showed fixed air to be carbonic acid, or a mixture 
 of carbon and oxygen.' His Lordship is quite right, and the 
 Reviewer doubly and egregiously wrong. Priestley did 
 not indicate for the first time the acidity of fixed air. 
 Wh ether he understood Black's views concerning it does 
 not appear, but he expressly disclaims the discovery as his 
 own. His words are, ' It is not improbable but that fixed 
 air itself may be of the nature of an acid, though of a weak 
 and peculiar sort. Mr. Bergman of Upsal, who honoured 
 me with a letter upon the subject, calls it the aerial acid ; 
 and among other experiments to prove it to be an acid, he 
 says that it changes the blue juice of tournesole into red. 
 (' Phil. Trans.' 1772, vol. Ixx., p. 153.) It does not appear 
 whether Black was aware of the reddening action of fixed 
 air on vegetable colours, but he was abundantly aware of 
 the functions of fixed air as an acid ; that is, of its power to 
 neutralize bases, and to form salts by combination with them. 
 Black's own words are, ' These considerations led me to con- 
 clude that the relation between fixed air and alkaline sub- 
 stances was somewhat similar to the relation between these 
 and acids ; that as the calcareous earths and alkalis attract 
 acids strongly, and can be saturated with them, so they also 
 attract fixed air, and are in their ordinary state saturated 
 with it.' (' Experiments upon Magnesia Alba,' &c., p. 50.) 
 The whole page might be quoted. Nothing could be more 
 satisfactory to a chemist than this statement. The modern 
 definition of an acid is ' a substance which neutralizes bases, 
 and by combination with them, forms salts.' Power to affect 
 vegetable colours, or sour taste, the vulgar attributes of an 
 acid, are wanting in many of the most powerful of them : 
 for example, in silicic acid. The Reviewer's reference to 
 Lavoisier is quite meaningless. The French chemist showed 
 
NOTES. 479 
 
 that fixed air was an oxide of carbon. Whether it was an 
 acid oxide or not, could not be determined by analysis. 
 That problem could be solved only by ascertaining whether 
 or not it formed salts by combining with bases. That is 
 the only method possible at the present day, and was the 
 one Black followed." 
 
 So very easy is it for ill-informed and inaccurate writers to 
 launch charges of ignorance and inaccuracy and carelessness 
 against others ! M. Arago will no doubt be fully sensible of 
 this truth, though he will furnish no example of it in his own 
 person or in his defence of himself. 
 
 As for the mysterious passage in p. 117, which states that 
 the critic had prepared a commentary on my account of 
 Mr. Cavendish's experiment regarding the density of the 
 earth, but that, possibly through pity towards a fellow crea- 
 ture, he suppressed it, giving, however, as the result, that 
 it would show " the most ingenious and entire distortion, 
 not merely of nearly every step in the process itself, but of 
 nearly every principle involved in it," I can only, with all 
 humility, but with all comfort, mention, that the passage is 
 none of my own, being taken very closely from the work of 
 a most profound mathematician, professor of the science in 
 one of our Universities ; and that, in borrowing it, I find 
 that I have avoided two errors in the original, one the mis- 
 print (apparently) of friction for torsion, the other the con- 
 fining the comparison to the time of the oscillation, whereas 
 I make it general, including therefore both the length and 
 the duration. I wrote the account at a distance from Mr. 
 Cavendish's paper, and therefore took it at second hand. 
 If friction is intended, and not torsion, in the account which 
 I copied, it is an omission certainly. How it can be called 
 a distortion, I cannot comprehend, nor can the learned 
 Professor himself, whom I have consulted. I say nothing 
 of a similar charge respecting the Torricellian experiment, 
 except to observe, that my reference to it is most studi- 
 ously framed to exclude the very construction put upon it 
 by the critic, as the sentence beginning " unless" must 
 plainly show to any candid reader. 
 
 Now I write with great and unfeigned personal respect 
 for the learned critic, who, had his work been given under 
 the sanction of his name, would have been more careful in 
 
480 NOTES. 
 
 all likelihood. But one discovery having been mentioned, 
 I must add, that he also has made another, a discovery 
 which, I think, would have surprised my friend Mr. Vernon 
 Harcourt himself, as much as it did his other readers, " that 
 there are very few amongst the most distinguished of 
 our countrymen superior to" that reverend and excellent 
 person, "either as a writer or as a man of science;" so 
 great a length will zeal for his friend and fellow polemic 
 carry a critic engaged in a controversy. 
 
 But this zeal is readily explained by the reflection that 
 fellow-combatants in any controversy which heats their 
 tempers, are blind to each other's deficiencies, and exagge- 
 rate each other's perfections ; they are also prone to exagge- 
 rate the services rendered by each other to the common 
 cause. " The unanswerable arguments of my noble, or my 
 honourable friend," is a very familiar expression on every 
 side in Parliamentary debates, which one thus finds are 
 conducted on both sides by combatants equally invincible, 
 and therefore ought always to prove drawn battles. So 
 the critic holds Mr. Vernon Harcourt's publication from 
 Mr. Cavendish's Journals, to be decisive in favour of his 
 contention ; whereas those extracts demonstrate, that Mr. 
 Cavendish never had, even privately, given the explanation 
 of his experiment until after Mr. Watt's theory was in the 
 hands of the Royal Society. I am very far from arguing 
 upon this important publication of Mr. Vernon Harcourt's, 
 that Mr. Cavendish borrowed the hint from Mr. Watt ; 
 but at least it demonstrates that Mr. Watt had reduced 
 his theory to writing before Mr. Cavendish, and could not 
 by possibility have borrowed it from him. 
 
 It must once more be repeated, that I never charged 
 or thought of charging Mr. Cavendish with having ob- 
 tained from Mr. Watt's paper his knowledge of the 
 composition t)f water, and having knowingly borrowed it, 
 however suspicious a case Mr. Harcourt's publication may 
 seem to make. Both those great men, in my opinion, 
 made the discovery apart from each other, and ignorant 
 each of the other's doctrine. Mr. Cavendish was a man of 
 the strictest integrity, and the most perfect sense of justice. 
 His feelings were very far inferior to his principles. He 
 was singularly callous to the ordinary calls of humanity, as 
 
NOTES. 481 
 
 there exist positive proofs sufficient to satisfy the polemical 
 writer upon whose paper I have been commenting if he has 
 any mind to see them. Nor do they rest on my assertion, 
 for I never had any intercourse with him except in society. 
 But the pursuits of a philosopher and the life of a recluse, 
 which had so entirely hardened his heart, had not in the 
 least degree impaired his sense of justice ; and my own 
 belief is, that he as entirely supposed himself to have alone 
 made the discovery in question, as Sir Isaac Newton 
 believed himself to be the sole discoverer of the nature of 
 light, and the theory of the solar system. 
 
 Mr. J. Watt and M. Arago may now safely be left to 
 carry on the controversy, whether with the reverend author, 
 or with his able and ingenious, though somewhat over-zealous 
 critic. The subject left in their hands is safe, and the truth 
 is sure to prevail. In these circumstances I am far from 
 feeling any anxiety as to the result, or any desire to anti- 
 cipate the arguments and the statements which must so soon 
 be brought forward. But as I have been freely and most 
 rashly charged with inaccuracy, with inattention to facts, 
 even with having omitted to read the original papers on 
 which the question turns, and charged, in company with my 
 friends M. Arago and Mr. J. Watt, (one of the most careful, 
 laborious, and scrupulously exact of men,) I may simply 
 assert, that as regards myself no imputation can well be 
 more groundless ; for there is not a single one of the whole 
 papers which I have not repeatedly and sedulously examined, 
 both alone and in company with others who took an interest 
 in the controversy. I might add, that never was a charge 
 made with a worse grace than this by the ingenious, and 
 most careless, and very moderately -informed critic who has 
 mixed in the discussion ; for assuredly he has not taken the 
 trouble to read the papers, or to make himself acquainted 
 with the works which every chemist, even every student 
 of chemistry familiarty knows. What shall we say of a 
 writer who undertakes to discuss this question, with no 
 better provision for handling it, than is betokened by his 
 broadly affirming that Mr. Watt himself never preferred 
 the disputed claim, when there exists his own paper of 
 1784 in the ' Philosophical Transactions,' referring to and 
 indeed containing his letter of April, 1783 ? Nay, what 
 9 T 
 
482 NOTES. 
 
 shall we again say of the same critic as broadly asserting, 
 that no one ever in Mr. Cavendish's lifetime brought it 
 forward, when Professor Robison in the Encyclopaedia, 
 Dr. John Thomson in his celebated Translation of Four- 
 croy, Dr. Thomas Thomson and Mr. Murray, each in their 
 ' Elements of Chemistry,' and Mr. W. Nicholson in both his 
 ' Dictionary' and his other works, all state Mr. Watt's claim 
 in the very words in which M. Arago and myself now have 
 urged it, nay, Sir C. Blagden states it in his letter to Crell, 
 and all these long and long before Mr. Cavendish's death,* 
 to say nothing of others, as Dr. Thomson, in his * History 
 of the Royal Society,' published since ? As to Mr. Vernon 
 Harcourt's appealing boldly to Dr. Henry's authority, and 
 preserving a profound silence when I quoted his letter, 
 expressly negativing that confident statement,! say nothing; 
 because it is a matter not easily handled, consistently with 
 the respect and esteem in which I have ever held my rever- 
 end friend. 
 
 * Professor Robison in 1797; the Translation of Fourcroy earlier. 
 
(483) 
 
 NOTE TO THE LIFE OF SIMSON. 
 
 The remarkable circumstance of the case of the comet's 
 motion, for which Sir I. Newton's solution was intended, 
 proving to be the porismatic case of the construction, has 
 been mentioned in the text. It has been sometimes con- 
 sidered as singular, that this did not occur to himself, the 
 more especially as he evidently had observed two cases in 
 which the problem became indeterminate namely, when 
 the lines were parallel, and when they all met in one point, 
 for he excepts those cases in express terms (Prin. lib. 1. 
 Lem. xxvii.) It may be observed, that such oversights 
 could very rarely happen to the ancient geometers, because 
 they most carefully examined each variation in the data, 
 and so gave to their solutions such a fulness as exhausted 
 the subject. 
 
 The commentators on the Principia (Le Seur and Jac- 
 quier) make no mention of the omission. The circum- 
 stance of the Porismatic case was not discovered till ten 
 yea'rs after their publication, when F. Boscovich found it 
 out, in 1749. But it is very extraordinary that Montucla 
 appears to have been unaware of the matter, although the 
 first edition of his work did not appear till 1758. Nor is 
 the least reference made to it in the second edition, which 
 was published the year he died (1799.) There are other 
 omissions in both editions, and also in the continuation. 
 He appears well to have understood the ancient method, 
 and to have read and examined some of the most celebrated 
 works upon it. He had given due praise to Simson in his 
 first edition; and to Lord Stanhope, who sent him the 
 ' Opera Reliqua ;' and we find in the second edition a full 
 note upon the subject, II. 277. In the continuation 
 III. 11, and seq., we have further indications of the atten- 
 tion which he had bestowed upon the ancient geometry ; 
 
484 NOTES. 
 
 but it is remarkable that though Matthew Stewart's Tracts, 
 published in 1761, were known to him, he w r as wholly un- 
 acquainted with the ; Propositions Geometricse,' which 
 appeared soon after, and with the General Theorems which 
 had been published fifteen years before. Nor does he ap- 
 pear to have even seen Professor Play fair's admirable paper 
 upon Porisms in the Edinburgh Transactions, 1794, the 
 war having probably impeded the intercourse of the two 
 countries. Had he seen this, he must have been brought 
 acquainted with the history of the Porism relating to the 
 Comet's place, for it is there fully given. 
 
 It must be added, that Montucla's mathematical pur- 
 suits had for many years been interrupted by the duties of 
 the places which he held under the government, until the 
 Eevolution (Pref. Ill) ; and although the loss of those 
 employments restored him to his studies, it is probable that 
 he rather applied himself to the continuation of the History, 
 the bringing it down from the period to w r hich the first vo- 
 lume extended, than to supply omissions in those volumes, 
 considerable as are the additions which he made to them. 
 
 The third and fourth volumes were not published till 
 after his death, which happened when only a third part 
 of the former had been printed. Lalande undertook the 
 revision of the rest, and how great soever his merits may 
 have been as a practical astronomer, as an author, and a 
 teacher of astronomy, he had none of the mathematical 
 acquirements which could fit him for superintending the 
 publication of Montucla's work. He had some assistance 
 from a very eminent mathematician, Lacroix, and the notes 
 given by him are, as might be expected, excellent. But 
 we are not distinctly informed of the additions, if any, 
 which he made to the text, while there appears considerable 
 reason to suppose, that Lalande sometimes interfered with 
 it. Certain it is, that many things would have been sup- 
 pressed, and others added, had Montucla survived to finish 
 the work of correcting and publishing. There is no reason 
 to think that the eminent analyst referred to (Lacroix), 
 would have supplied Montucla's omissions regarding 
 the Poristic case in the Principia, or regarding the writers 
 on the ancient analysis ; for on this subject he was much 
 better informed, in all probability, than Lacroix, and the 
 
NOTES. 485 
 
 omission in the Principia comes less within the scope of 
 modern than ancient geometry. 
 
 In the following letter, Mr. Carrick Moore has some 
 doubt whether Mrs. M. was daughter of a brother or 
 nephew of Dr. Simson. I have always heard my brother- 
 in-law, the Admiral (Sir J. Moore) state, that his mother 
 was the professor's niece : 
 
 " PUTNEY VILLA, Sept. 28th, 1854. 
 " DEAR LOUD BEOTJGHAM, 
 
 " Some time ago you wrote to inquire from me if I 
 could recollect any particulars of Eobert Simson, the cele- 
 brated geometrician. My mother's name was Jane Simson, 
 niece or great-niece of Eobert Simson, noted for being a 
 very absent man. One day seeing her, he said, 'How 
 do you do, Miss Fraser ? ' misnaming his relative, which 
 proceeded from his knowing that the Simsons were ori- 
 ginally Frasers, being of that clan. It was known, that 
 the room in which Robert Simson lived was a den of 
 confusion, he suffering no one to enter it to put it in 
 order. My mother and another young lady had a violent 
 curiosity to see this apartment, which he kept locked, 
 and never opened but on hearing two Latin words pro- 
 nounced : the ladies learned these words, and knocked 
 at his door in the College 'Who's there?' was cried 
 from the interior ; the Latin words were spoken, and the 
 door was slowly opened, when my mother's companion put 
 in her arm, to prevent the professor shutting them out ; 
 so they got in, he being amused with the stratagem. 
 They saw the room filled with books, papers, mathematical 
 and carpenter's tools, in inextricable confusion ; but the 
 professor got them at last a couple of chairs, from which he 
 swept off the dust, and they sat down and chatted with 
 him. The visit ended gaily. 
 
 " Another anecdote I recollect. After a dinner given by 
 one of the professors, amongst whom Eobert Simson was a 
 guest, the ladies and gentlemen went to walk in the College 
 garden. It happened that a pigeon pursued by a hawk 
 flew into Mr. Simson's bosom, who caught it ; a gentleman 
 seeing this cried, ' Throw the bird to the hawk,' jestingly, 
 
486 NOTES. 
 
 on which Mr. Sim son struck him to the ground by a blow 
 of his fist, for he knew no use of language but to speak 
 truth. But when his error was explained to him, he ear- 
 nestly solicited pardon of the gentleman, and peace was 
 made between them. 
 
 " I can recollect nothing more from my mother, and am 
 now in the 92d year of my age, but still able to sign this. 
 " I am, my Lord, your humble servant, 
 
 " JAMES C. MOORE." 
 
 December 28, 185-1. " You may add to my former let- 
 ter the following anecdote, which was related to my son by 
 my sister. My grandfather, the Eev. Charles Moore, was 
 minister of Stirling, and resided in the Castle, and received 
 the celebrated geometrical professor on a visit ; and after 
 dinner the whole inhabitants of the Castle nocked round to 
 see the professor mount his horse, who thanked them all 
 for their kind leave-taking, and wished them all a pleasant 
 journey back to Glasgow. 
 
 " I have the honour to remain, truly yours, 
 
 " JAMES C. MOORE." 
 
 The indistinct, if not inaccurate details, in Traill's Life. 
 had occasioned the mistake, now corrected, of confounding 
 the Dr. Williamson who in 1758 was appointed assistant, 
 and in 1761 successor to the professor, with his favourite 
 pupil, Dr. Williamson, afterwards chaplain at Lisbon. This 
 was pointed out in a Note to the Caldwell papers, by Col. 
 Mure, to whose learned and enlightened labours the culti- 
 vators of Greek literature are under such obligations. The 
 fact of the professor's successor having held the office till 
 1796, well justified the supposition that he must have been 
 a different person from the chaplain, who died young ; and 
 Col. M. suggested (vol. I., pt. 2, p. xv.) the possibility of 
 there having been two persons of the same name, which 
 upon inquiry turns out to be the fact. The Caldwell papers 
 are one of the most important contributions to History, and 
 particularly to Literary History, that have ever been made ; 
 and I owe to the kindness of the accomplished editor of 
 this unpublished collection, the liberty of adding one or 
 
NOTES. 487 
 
 two particulars regarding both Simson and Hume, from 
 those papers, which he had presented to the Maitland Club 
 of Glasgow. 
 
 It appears that a difference arose as to the terms on 
 which the resignation in favour of Williamson had been 
 made, and the matter was left to the arbitration of Matthew 
 Stewart on Simson' s part, and Baron Mure (the colonel's 
 grandfather) on Williamson's. The correspondence through- 
 out shows that there was no great favour entertained for him 
 by the professor ; but it also shows that his anxiety respect- 
 ing the sum to be secured arose from the efforts he was 
 making to pay off what remained of his father's debts, 
 which as late as 1763 he had been unable to accomplish. 
 We find also from those letters, that the number of his 
 pupils had never been less than fifty, and often considerably 
 more. The arrangement as to assistant and successor was 
 universally practised in the Scotch Universities, but has 
 of late been very properly discontinued, as leading to great 
 abuse. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absentee tax, 259. 
 Agricultural system, 225. 
 
 system explained, 246. 
 
 peculiarities of, 223. 
 
 discouragements to, 225. 
 
 labour, 274. 
 
 America causes of prosperity, 241. 
 Amsterdam, Bank of, 230. 
 Analysis of the Greek Geometers de- 
 fined, 124. 
 Apprenticeships, 216. 
 
 Balance of trade, 229. 
 
 difficulty of ascertaining accu- 
 rately, 229. 
 Banks of deposit, 230. 
 Banks, Sir Joseph, birth, 336. 
 
 early pursuits, 337. 
 
 joins in a voyage to the South Seas, 
 
 arrival at Qtaheite, 346. 
 
 returns to England, 353. 
 
 expedition to Iceland, 356. 
 
 elected president of the Royal 
 Society, 357. 
 
 dissensions in the Society, 359. 
 
 created a baronet, 367. 
 
 generous labours in the cause of 
 science, 369. 
 
 chosen a member of the Insti- 
 tute, 370. 
 
 death, 372. 
 
 letter toGeneral Rose, 375. 
 
 letter toMr. Parkinson, 376. 
 
 letter to Lord Grenville, 379. 
 
 letter to M. Charettie, 380. 
 Barley, adaptation to soils, 235. 
 Bentham on usury, 223. 
 Black, Dr., birth and education, 2. 
 
 discovery of fixed air, 6. 
 latent heat, 12. 
 specific heat, 13. 
 
 considered as a teacher, 19. 
 
 death, 24. 
 
 letter to Adam Smith, 471. 
 
 Boulton, partner of Watt, 42. 
 Bounties, nature of, 232. 
 
 real and apparent, 232. 
 
 on com, 233. 
 
 to agriculture, 237. 
 Burke, bounty act and remarks, 238. 
 Butler, Bishop, characterized, 101. 
 
 Capital, 220, 272. 
 
 at interest, 222. 
 
 employed in four ways only, 223. 
 
 defined, 277. 
 Carrying trade, 236. 
 Cavendish, Henry, birth, 91. 
 
 early experiments, 92. 
 
 experiments on the composition of 
 water, 58, 94, 97. 
 
 discovers the composition of nitrous 
 acid, 99. 
 
 experiments on force of attrac- 
 tion, 101. 
 
 various researches, 102. 
 
 personal history and habits, 104. 
 
 death, 106. 
 Charettie, M., letter to Sir J. Banks, 
 
 381. 
 
 Coinage discussed, 239. 
 Colleges, restrictive aspect of, 216. 
 Colonial policy, author's work on, 245. 
 
 trade, benefits of, 244. 
 Colonies, history of, 239. 
 
 ancient, 240. 
 
 modern, 240. 
 
 causes of prosperity, 241. 
 
 benefits of, to Europe, 241. 
 
 evil of monopoly trade, 242. 
 Combustion, Lavoisier's theory of, 
 
 309. 
 
 Commercial treaties, 238. 
 Cook, Captain, sketch of, 343. 
 
 letters to Sir J. Banks, 374, 468, 
 
 469, 470. 
 Corn laws, 211. 
 
 interest of capitalist and working 
 classes in, 211. 
 
490 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Corn laws and trade with Poland, 236. 
 Corporations, restrictive aspect of, 
 
 216. 
 
 Currency in America, 232. 
 Cuvier's ' Eloge de M. Cavendish,' 
 
 D'Alembert, J., birth, 389. 
 
 kind disposition, 391. 
 
 publishes his ' Trait6 de Dyna- 
 mique,' 395. 
 
 review of this work, 398. 
 
 publishes his 'Resistance des 
 Fluides,' 399. 
 
 review of this work, 399. 
 
 various mathematical labours, 401. 
 
 papers on the integral calculus, 419. 
 
 contributions to the ' Encvclope- 
 die,' 421. 
 
 author of the 'preliminary dis- 
 course ' to do., 421. 
 
 review of this work, 422. 
 
 miscellaneous works of, 425. 
 
 attachment to Mdlle. de 1'Espi- 
 nasse, 432. 
 
 character and domestic habits, 438. 
 
 review of his miscellaneous wri- 
 tings, 442. 
 
 merits as a mathematician, 449. 
 
 estimation as a man of letters, 452. 
 
 death, 457. 
 
 opinions on religion, 462. 
 
 principle of D'Alembert, note on, 
 
 465. 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, birth, 107. 
 
 early pursuits, 109. 
 
 appointed professor of chemistry 
 in the Royal Institution, 109. 
 
 discovers true nature of galvanic 
 action, 111. 
 
 various experiments in electro-che- 
 mistry, 112. 
 
 discovers the metallic bases of the 
 alkalis, 118. 
 
 discovers composition of muriatic 
 acid, 118. 
 
 invents the safety lamp, 118. 
 
 created a baronet, 120. 
 
 chosen president of the Royal 
 Society, 121. 
 
 death and character, 122. 
 Debts, national, 261. 
 Defence, national, 247. 
 De Gournay, the political economist, 
 
 Division of Labour, 208. 
 
 Drawbacks, objections to, 232. 
 
 Economical science in England, 170 
 
 in Italy, 170. 
 
 in France, 171. 
 Economists, the, on capital, 220. 
 
 reviewed, 264. 
 Education, national, 249. 
 Electro-chemistry, rise of, 114. 
 Exceptions in favour of restrictions, 
 
 228. 
 
 Exchanges, by what regulated, 212. 
 Expedition to the South Seas, 345. 
 
 results of, 354. 
 Expenses, national, 247, 250. 
 
 Fisheries, bounties to, 233. 
 Fixed air discovered by Black, 6. 
 French Academy Memoirs of, irregu- 
 larity in publication, 295. 
 French Economists, the, 175. 
 French Society, character of, 437. 
 Friday Club, the, 56. 
 
 Galvanism, Davy's discoveries in, 112. 
 
 Gold and silver mere merchandise, 225. 
 
 export of, prohibited by mercantile 
 
 system, on the belief that the 
 
 precious metals only constitute 
 
 wealth, 225. 
 
 Greek colonies, 240. 
 
 Home, John, letter to Adam Smith. 
 
 289. 
 
 Homer, F., on rent, 237. 
 House tax, 254. 
 Hume, David, on the payment of the 
 
 clergy, 250. 
 Hutcheson, Dr., characterized, 166. 
 
 Income tax, 254. 
 Institutions, national, 248. 
 Interest, definition of, 222. 
 Ireland, representation of, 262. 
 
 Labour, 
 
 source of all enjoyment and of pos- 
 session, 207. 
 
 measure of value, 209. 
 
 restrictions on, 216. 
 
 progress of, 224. 
 
 productive and unproductive, 264. 
 Land tax, 253. 
 
 in France, 253. 
 Landed interest very important, 234. 
 
 burdens on, 235. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 491 
 
 Latent heat discovered by Black, 12. 
 Lavoisier, S. L., birth, 292. 
 
 early labours, 293. 
 
 publishes his ' Opuscules Phy- 
 siques,' 298. 
 
 experiments with diamond, 300. 
 
 his claim to the discovery of oxy- 
 gen, 302. 
 
 researches on combustion, 309. 
 
 his claims to the discovery of the 
 composition of water, 312. 
 
 researches on respiration, 319. 
 
 labours in public affairs, 321. 
 
 accused and guillotined, 324. 
 
 summary of his discoveries, 326. 
 L'Espinasse, Mdlle., History of, 436. 
 Loans, national, 260. 
 Lotteries as a source of revenue, 251. 
 
 M'Culloch on corn, 237. 
 
 Malthus on corn, 237. 
 
 Malt tax, 235. 
 
 Mathematics, progress of, 123. 
 
 Mechanics' Institutes, rise of, 35. 
 
 Mercantile system, 225. 
 peculiarities of, 225. 
 by means of restrictions on exports 
 of these metals, as well as by 
 restraints on the imports of fo- 
 reign commodities which require 
 payments in gold, 226. 
 tends to increase foreign commerce 
 and to undervalue nome trade, 
 226 
 
 exchange of suitable products, 231, 
 aims at accumulations of gold and 
 silver, 236. 
 
 Metals, precious, restrictions on, 226. 
 
 Methuen treaty, 238. 
 
 Mexico, progress of, 241. 
 
 Money Prices what, 207. 
 
 Montesquieu's opinion of Black, 4. 
 
 Muriatic acid, composition of, disco- 
 vered by Davy, 118. 
 
 Newcomen's improvements on the 
 steam engine, 29. 
 
 Nitrogen gas discovered by Priestley, 
 75. 3 
 
 Nitrous acid, composition of, dis- 
 covered by Cavendish, 97. 
 
 North's, Sir David, discourses, 169. 
 
 Observation of the transit of Venus 
 
 at Otaheite, 347. 
 Oxygen gas discovered by Priestley,76 
 
 Paper money in America, 232. 
 Papin's improvements on the steam 
 
 engine, 28. 
 Pappus's mathematical collections, 
 
 127. 
 
 Pin-making, 208. 
 Poll tax, 257. 
 
 Porisms, investigations on, by Sim- 
 son, 147. 
 
 Portugal, treaty with, 238. 
 Post-office as a source of revenue, 
 
 251. 
 
 Potassium discovered by Davy, 116. 
 Priestley, Dr., birth, 69. 
 education, 70. 
 various writings, 73. 
 discovers nitrogen gas, 75. 
 
 oxgen gas, 70. 
 merits of, 78. 
 
 settles at Birmingham, 81. 
 engages in religious controversies, 
 
 82. 
 
 house destroyed by a mob, 83. 
 withdraws to America, 84. 
 death and character, 89. 
 letter to Sir J. Banks, 374. 
 Principle of D'Alembert, 396. 
 Problem of the three bodies, 411. 
 Prohibition of exportation of precious 
 
 metals, 226. 
 Property tax, 255. 
 objectional, 256. 
 
 Quesnay's, Dr., Works, 173. 
 reviewed, 264. 
 
 Rent, 
 
 theory of, 214, 217. 
 
 Anderson's theory of, 237. 
 Restriction and protection defined, 
 
 227. 
 Restrictions on labour, 216. 
 
 on trade, 226 
 Retaliation in trade justifiable, 228. 
 
 author's own counsels on, 229. 
 Roebuck, Dr., partner of Watt, 41. 
 Royal Society, dissensions in, 359. 
 
 Safety lamp invented by Davy, 118. 
 Seignorage discussed, 239. 
 Silver, prices of, 218. 
 Simson, Robert, birth, 130. 
 
 early pursuits, 131. 
 
 appointed professor of mathema- 
 tics at Glasgow, 134. 
 
 mathematical investigations, 136. 
 
492 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Simson, Robert, edits the ' Conies of 
 
 Apollonius,' 141. 
 
 edits the ' Elements of Euclid,' 144. 
 
 investigations on Porisms, 145. 
 
 domestic habits, 159. 
 
 death, 162. 
 
 summary of his labours, 163. 
 Smith, Adam, birth, 177. 
 
 education, 178. 
 
 elected professor of logic at Glas- 
 gow, 179. 
 
 publishes his ' Theory of Moral Sen- 
 timents,' 185. 
 
 resigns his professorship, 187. 
 
 visits France and Switzerland, 188. 
 
 returns to Kirkaldy, 189. 
 
 publishes his ' Wealth of Nations,' 
 189. 
 
 appointed commissioner of the cus- 
 toms, 191. 
 
 death, 192. 
 
 character and manners, 193. 
 
 Theory of Moral Sentiments re- 
 reviewed, 197 
 
 letter to Lord Hailes, 280. 
 
 letter to David Hume, 283. 
 
 letter on Rousseau, 283. 
 
 letter on destroying his papers, 286. 
 
 letter to John Home, 288. 
 Sodium discovered by Davy, 116. 
 Sovereign's expenses, 250. 
 
 Property of, 251. 
 
 Specific heat discovered by Black, 13. 
 State properties, 251. 
 Steam, power of, known to the an- 
 cients, 25. 
 
 Steam engine, Watt's first patent, 42. 
 
 Ditto extended, 43. 
 
 various improvements on, 30. 
 Stewart, Sir James, his work, 263. 
 Stock, profits of, 215. 
 
 and capital, 219. 
 Style of ' Wealth of Nations,' 26.']. 
 
 Taxes, 252. 
 
 principles of, 252. 
 
 on wages, 257. 
 
 on luxuries, 258. 
 Towns, rise of, 225. 
 Treaties, commercial, 238. 
 
 celebrated, 238. 
 
 W^ar how provided for, 261. 
 Water, composition of, discovered by 
 
 Watt, 48. 
 
 Watt, James, birth, 32. 
 early pursuits, 32. 
 experiments on Newcomen's en- 
 gine, 36. 
 
 improvements on the steam en- 
 gine, 38 to 41. 
 
 executes various public works, 42. 
 harassed by law-suit, 45. 
 various inventions of, 48. 
 discovers composition of water, 48. 
 death, 53. 
 
 character and attainments, 54. 
 Wealth of Nations, dissertation on, 
 
 205. 
 
 analytical view of, 207. 
 Worcester, Marquis of, Century of 
 Inventions, 26. 
 
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