GEORGE BENTHAM. 531 



upon the mode of preparing such catalogues in order to their 

 greatest utility, — remarks which already evince the wisdom for 

 which he was distinguished in after years. lie also reformed and 

 re-elaborated four difficult genera of the district, Cerastium, Oro- 

 banche, Helianthemum, and Medicago. His next work was an article 

 upon codification, — wholly disagreeing with his uncle, — which at- 

 tracted the attention of Brougham, Hume, and O'Connell. It was 

 followed by one upon the laws affecting larceny, which Sir Robert 

 Peel comjjlimented and made use of, and by another on the law of 

 real* pi'operty. 



But his most considerable work of the period received scant atten- 

 tion at the time from those most interested in the subject, and passed 

 from its birth into oblivion, from which only in these later years has 

 it been rescued, yet without word or sign from its author. This work 

 (of 287 octavo pages) was published in London in 1827, under the 

 title of "Outline of a New System of Logic, with a Critical Examina- 

 tion of Dr. Whately's Elements of Logic." It was in this book that 

 the quantification of the predicate was first systematically applied, in 

 such wise that Stanley-Jevons * declares it to be " undoubtedly the 

 most fruitful discovery made in abstract logical science since the time 

 of Aristotle." Before sixty copies of the book had been sold, the 

 publisher became bankrupt, and the whole impression of this work 

 of a young and unknown author was sold for waste paper. One of 

 the extant copies, however, came into the hands of the distinguished 

 philosopher. Sir William Hamilton, to whom the discovery of the 

 quantification of the predicate was credited, and who, in claiming it, 

 brought " an acrimonioits charge of plagiarism " against Professor 

 De Morgan upon this very subject. Yet this very book of Mr. 

 Bentham is one of the ten placed by title at the head of Sir William 

 Hamilton's article on Logic in the Edinburgh Keview for April, 1833; 

 is once or twice referred to in the article ; and, a dozen years later, 

 in the course of the controversy with De Morgan, Sir William alluded 

 to this article as containing the germs of his discovery. We may 

 imagine the avidity with which De Morgan, injuriously attacked, 

 would have seized upon Mr. Bentham's book if he had known of it. 

 It is not so easy to understand how Mr. Bentham — although now 

 absorbed in botanical researches — could have overlooked this con- 

 troversy in the Athena-um, or how, if he knew of it, he could have 

 kept silence. It was only at the close of the year 1850 that Mr. 



* In Contemporary Review, xxi., 1873, p. 823. 



