314 OBSERVATIONS ON MURIATIC ACID, 
union it forms nitric acid, a compound more permanent, and 
of energetic action. 
Carbon with hydrogen forms compounds which retain in- 
flammability without any acid quality; with oxygen it forms 
first an inflammable oxide, and with a larger proportion a weak 
acid. But, combined with both hydrogen and oxygen, in dif- 
ferent proportions, it forms in the vegetable acids compounds 
having a high acidity. These acids, therefore, are not to be re- 
garded, according to the theory of Lavoisizr, as composed of a 
compound base of carbon and hydrogen, acidified by oxygen, 
but of a simple base, carbon, acidified by the joint action of 
oxygen and hydrogen. 
Mnuriatic acid itself presents the same result. Oxymuriatic: 
acid must be considered, according to this doctrine, as a com- 
pound of an unknown radical, (Murion, if the term may be al- 
lowed), with oxygen, analogous in this respect to sulphurous 
acid, except that in the latter there is an excess of base, in the 
former an excess of oxygen: And oxymuriatic acid, with the 
addition of hydrogen, forms the ternary compound muriatic 
acid, as sulphurous acid with the same addition forms hydro- 
sulphuric acid, with a deposition of the excess of sulphur. There 
is, accordingly, the strictest analogy between muriatic acid and 
those other acids, the sulphuric, nitric, &c. which contain both 
oxygen and hydrogen; while there is none, as Berzetius re- 
marked, between it and those, such as the prussic acid or sul- 
phuretted hydrogen, which contain merely hydrogen. This prin- 
ciple solves the difficulty which has always presented itself in 
the relation of muriatic and oxymuriatic acids on LavoisrEr’s 
theory of acidity,—that the latter, though it has received an 
addition of oxygen, is inferior in acid power to the former. 
It is so precisely as the binary sulphurous acid is one of less 
energy of action than the ternary hydro-sulphuric acid, or as 
the carbonic is less powerful than the oxalic acid. The pro- 
per 
