On definite Proportions. 273 
therefore is a [negatively] and hydrogen a [positively] elec- 
trical substance. These two bodies distinguish themselves 
from all others by retaining their electricities so powerfully 
that they cannot be discharged; so that the gases once 
formed cannot unite again to constitute ammonia. The 
nitrogen, when it has once assumed that character, always 
preserves the same aversion to all combinations with [po- 
sitive] substances, and can only be united to oxygen. 
Since the same electrical discharge resolves ammonia into 
nitrogen and hydrogen, and water into oxygen and hydrogen, 
the hydrogen in both cases must require the same quantity of 
negative electricity in the conductor on the one side, and 
consequently the same quantity of positive electricity at the 
opposite pole; so that §1°525 parts of nitrogen must re- 
quire the same expense of electrical power for its formation 
as would form water from oxygen with 18-475 of hydrogen, 
or would form a corresponding portion of oxygen from 
water. Hence it may not be impossible, at some future 
time, to obtain a numcrical expression of the properties of 
bodies with respect to chemical electricity, The quantity 
of electricity which saturates in nitrogen the opposite elec- 
tricity of its basis, and besides renders the nitrogen [nega- 
tive], is to that which is saturated in the oxygen during the 
formation of water, in the inverse proportion of the quan- 
tities of nitrogen and oxygen which saturate the same 
quantity of hydrogen, that is, as 3 to 2, or lL tol. The 
quantity of electricity appears therefore to be subject-to the 
same laws as the quantity of ponderable substances in 
chemical combinations, as might indeed he concluded @ 
priori. The great quantity of [negative] electricity in ni- 
trogen is kept in a state of saturation by the [positive] elec- 
tricity of the base; and nitrogen can therefore only be de- 
composed by a substance much more strongly [positive] 
than ammonium. 
I must here observe, that there is a very material difference 
between the capacity of saturation of a substance, and its 
power of neutralizing more or less the electrical condition 
of another body, with which it combines. This power 
agrees with the force of affinity, the degree of which may 
possibly be determined by it, while the capacity of satura- 
tion appears, according to the important views and experi- 
ments of Dalton and Gay-Lussac, to depend on mechanical 
causes, connected with the volume only. Potassium, for 
example, saturates but little oxygen, in comparison with 
hydrogen and nitrogen; but it overcomes the [negative] 
nature of the oxygen so completely, that the potass which 
Vol, 42. No, 186. Oct. 1813. S ext 
