466 Dr. Hare and Prof. Daniell on the Electrolysis of Salts 
I had much rather be so proved to be in the wrong than that 
any error which I may have committed should remain un- 
corrected, I shall proceed to prove that, owing to his over- 
looking one important result of the electrolysis, he is not in 
the right. 
It appears, then, to Dr. Hare, that in the electrolysis of sa- 
line solutions, the simultaneous appearance of the elements of 
water, and ofacid and alkali, at the electrodes may be accounted 
for simply by that electrolyzation of the soda (taking sulphate 
of soda as an illustration) which must be the natural conse- 
quence of the exposure of the sulphate of that base in the cir- 
cuit. I presume that by the term natural consequence is meant 
that such a result might have been, @ priori, expected: but 
there is nothing, I think, that I should have anticipated less 
than that a solution of sulphate of soda would be affected by 
the voltaic current precisely in the same way as a solution of 
caustic soda, or that the powerful affinities of the acid and the 
base should have no influence upon the result. 
The whole of Dr. Hare’s argument is founded upon the 
supposition that both in an aqueous solution of soda and of 
sulphate of soda, ‘the alkali is the primary object of attack, 
the decomposition of the water being a secondary result.” But 
he has neglected the important fact, that in neither case is it the 
sodium and the oxygen which alone ¢ravel in the circuit; but 
in the first case the water, and in the second case the acid ac- 
companies the oxygen to the anode. In my experiments with 
the diaphragm cells, by which the liquid products of the elec- 
trolysis may be kept sufficiently separate, I have proved this 
over and over again. Indeed I should have joined most 
heartily in the wonder of my friend at the failure of my own 
‘“‘sagacity,” if I had not established this point beyond the 
possibility of a doubt. It will be easy, I am sure, for Dr. 
Hare to convince himself by a few easy experiments that a 
solution of sulphate of soda submitted to electrolysis becomes 
acid in the zincode division of a diaphragm cell, not only by 
the abstraction of sodium from it, but by the accumulation of 
acid transferred from the platinode division; just as he will 
find an accumulation of soda in the latter arising from the 
secondary action of the sodium transferred from the former. 
The same oversight of the fact, that in these processes of 
the electrolysis of secondary compounds the acid necessarily 
accompanies the oxygen to the zincode while the metal travels 
to the platinode, has misled Dr. Hare in his consideration of 
the phzenomena observed by me when solutions of potassa and 
sulphate of copper, separated by a membrane, were made the 
medium of a voltaic circuit. It is this oversight alone which 
