629 



DECIUS CAIUS. 



DECKER, SIR MATTHEW. 



630 



but did not obtain great popularity among our countrymen, whose 

 taste in geometry continued, till recently, to partake strongly of the 

 pure severity of the aucitnt Greek writers. 



Dechales was however an accurate and elegant writer on the subjects 

 which he treated ; and there are interspersed through his works many 

 marks of considerable invention, as well as of a happy power of 

 adaptation of the knowledge of his predecessors and contemporaries. 

 Still he was not one of those men who had the power greatly to 

 extend the boundaries of science ; it was his province rather to place 

 it in such a light as to facilitate its acquisition by others. 



He was appointed professor of mathematics in the college of Cler- 

 mont, the chair of which he appears to have filled for about four 

 years ; and thence he removed to Marseille, where he taught navi- 

 gation, military engineering, and the applications of mathematics to 

 practical science. From Marseille he went to Turin, where he was 

 appointed professor of mathematics in the university, and died in that 

 city in 1678, being sixty-seven years of age. 



As a teacher, Dechales was remarkable for his urbanity, and for the 

 adaptation of his instruction to the previous acquirements of his 

 : and as a man, his probity and amiable spirit gained for him 

 miration and love of all witli whom he was associated. 



The works of Dechales were published at Lyon in 1690, in four 

 folio volumes, tinder the title of Mundus Mathematical A former 

 edition of these was also published in three volumes; but this edition 

 is far less complete than that of 1690. 



DECIUS CAIUS MKSS1US QUINTUS TRAJANUS, the Roman 

 emjieror, succeeded Philip, and chiefly distinguished himself for his 

 violent persecution of the Christians. He and his son fell in an expe- 

 dition against the Goths, about A.D. 251. 



Coin of Decius Trajanus. 

 British Mtueum. Actual <ize. Copper. Weight 303} grain". 



DE'CIUS MUS, a Roman who distinguished himself by many war- 

 like exploit*, and received many honours. In a battle against the 

 I, i tins he voluntarily devoted himself to the Dii Manes. He had made 

 an agreement with his colleague, Manlius Torquatue, that the consul 

 whose wing first gave way should devote himself to death. The cere- 

 mony of consecration was performed with great solemnity, and having 

 directed the lictors to acquaint the other consul that he had given 

 himself up for the safety of the army, he rode into the thick of the 

 enemy, and was soon overpowered by a shower of darts, about B.C. 338. 

 His son Decius Mus followed his heroic example in a war against the 

 (Jaulu, B.C. 295, as well as his grandson in the war with Pyrrhus, 

 n.c. 280. 



DECKER, JEREMIAS DE, one of the most esteemed Dutch 

 poets of the 17th century, was born at Dordrecht about 1610. His 

 father Abraham de Decker, who had embraced the reformed religion, 

 was, although of good family, in very moderate circumstances, first 

 M a tradesman, afterwards as a public broker. Aided merely by such 

 instruction as his father could give him, and his own natural aptitude 

 for learning, which was seconded by an excellent memory, young 

 De Decker made so great proficiency that while yet a lad he acquired 

 the Latin, Italian, French, and English languages, notwithstanding ho 

 was even then obliged to assist his father in his business. At no time 

 of his life in fast can literature be said to have been his occupation, 

 yet that and poetical composition continued to the last to employ the 

 intervals of leisure allowed by his commercial pursuits. 



His earliest essays in poetry consisted of paraphrases from Jere- 

 miah, lie., and of translations and imitations from Horace, 1'rudcutius, 

 Buchanan, to which may be added his ' Good Friday,' a collection of 

 pieces breathing the most pure devotional feeling. Indeed a strong 

 vein of unaffected religious sentiment runs through all his compositions. 

 1 '. .II his ' I'untdichten ' are many of them of a religious, all of a moral 

 tendency, being for the most part so many condensed ethic lessons and 

 reflections rather than epigrams, except as to the ingenious turn ami 

 point, which frequently render them highly impressive, although their 

 ts may be familiar truths. The longest of all his productions 

 is Li ' Lof der Geldzuclit,' or ' Praise of Avarice,' a poem in which 

 that vice is satirised in a strain of amusing irony. It is replete with 

 learning, felicity of illustration, and a playfulness of tone which only 

 serves to render it all the more caustic ; no wonder therefore that it 

 1ms been greatly admired, and has earned for itself a place beside 

 Krasmus's celebrated ' Morias Kncomium.' This was almost the very 

 co he ever wrote, nor did be live to enjoy its reputation, for he 

 died while it waa in the press, in November 16U3. 



DECKER, SIR MATTHEW, BART., was bora at Amsterdam in 

 the latter part of the 17th century, of a Protestant family originally 

 from Flanders, where his ancestors had been engaged in conmeree till 

 they were driven out in the Spanish persecution under the Duke of 

 Alva, leaving their estates to their Catholic relations, some of whom 

 long continued to occupy eminent positions in the municipal govern- 

 ment at Brussels. Such was the account given by Sir Matthew him- 

 self to Collins, the genealogist, in 1727, as recorded by the latter in hia 

 ' English Baronetage,' iv. 185 (published in 1741). Decker came over 

 to England in 1702 ; and he was naturalised the following year by the 

 28th private Act of the 2nd of Anne. Having settled as a merchant 

 in London, he rose to great commercial eminence, was made a baronet 

 in 1716, and in 1719 was returned to Parliament for Bishop's Castle. 

 He only sat however in the House of Commons for four sessions, and 

 his name does not occur in the reported debates. He married Hen- 

 rietta, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Richard Watkins, rector of Wickford, 

 in Warwickshire; and he died March 18th, 1749, when the baronetcy 

 became extinct, and his estates devolved upon his three daughters. 

 It is said to have been in the gardens of Sir Matthew Decker's country- 

 seat at Richmond, in Surrey, that the pine-apple waa firat brought to 

 maturity in England. 



Decker is believed to bo the author of a little work first published 

 in 8vo at London, in 1743, and entitled in the fourth edition, which 

 appeared in the course of the following year, ' Serious Considerations 

 on the several high duties which the nation in general (as well as its 

 trade in particular) labours under ; with a proposal for preventing the 

 running of goods ; discharging the trade from any search, and raising 

 all the public supplies by one single tax. By a well-wisher to the 

 good people of Great Britain.' In the seventh edition, which appeared 

 iu the same form in 1756, the tract is stated on the title-page to be 

 ' By the late Sir Matthew Decker, Bart.' It consists in both these 

 editions of only 32 pages. The author explains his object in p. 15 : 

 "My proposal," he says, "in short, is this: that there be but one 

 single excise duty over all Great Britain, and that upon houses." He 

 would in this way raise an annual revenue of 6,000,000, being as 

 much as the ordinary expenses of the government then amounted to ; 

 with l,000,000i. over to form a sinking-fund for the discharge of the 

 debt. He calculates that in England, exclusive of Wales, there were 

 then 1,200,000 houses; but of these he would tax only 600,000, 

 counting off 500,000 as inhabited by the working and poorer classes, 

 and 100,000 as uninhabited. 



We do not know whether this scheme attracted much notice when 

 it was first proposed, but, from the frequency with which it was 

 reprinted, we may infer that it did. It was at any rate elaborately 

 answered, soon after its republication iu 1756, in a thick pamphlet of 

 120 pp., entitled ' The proposal commonly called Sir Matthew Decker's 

 scheme, for one general tax upon houses, laid open, and showed to be 

 a deep concerted project to traduce the wisdom of the Legislature, 

 disquiet the minds of the people, and ruin the trade aud manu- 

 factories [sic] of Great Britain ; most humbly submitted to the con- 

 sideration of Parliament,' 8vo, London, 1757. The author of this 

 attack is understood to be Mr. Joseph Massie, a fertile mercantile 

 writer of that day. It is, as might be expected from the title, very 

 angry, and even somewhat abusive. 



Decker has also been commonly supposed to be the author of 

 another more considerable work, first published in 4to at London, iu 

 1744, and reprinted in 12mo at Edinburgh, in 1756, both editions 

 without a name, under the title of ' An Essay on the Causes of the 

 Decline of the Foreign Trade, consequently of the Value of the Lauds 

 of Britain, and on the means to restore both.' Adam Smith notices 

 and comments upon this work as written by Decker, and designates 

 the scheme of taxation advocated in it as "the well-known proposal 

 of Sir Matthew Decker," in the fifth book of hia ' Wealth of Nations.' 

 It is very evident however that it cannot be by the author of the 

 'Serious Considerations,' for various reasons. As Mr. M'Culloch has 

 remarked in his ' Literature of Political Economy,' p. 328, " the 

 'irapot unique,' or singla tax, proposed by the author of the ' Essay ' 

 is quite different from that proposed in the ' Considerations ;' it is, 

 in his own words, ' one tax on the consumers of luxuries,' or, as Smith 

 has put it, ' that all commodities, even those of which the consumption 

 is either immediate or very speedy, should be taxed in this manner, 

 the dealer advancing nothing, but the consumer paying a certain 

 annual sum for the licence to consume certain goods.' " It may be 

 added, that the edition of the ' Essay ' published in 1756 is ushered 

 in by a preface, evidently by the author, in which he spcaka of this as 

 a second edition, jwhich he had been induced to prepare by the public 

 demand, aud in which he had taken an opportunity of correcting some 

 things iu the preceding impression. Decker, as we have seen, died 

 in 1749. Mr. M'Culloch states, that in a work by Francis Fauquier, 

 entitled ' An Esoay on Ways and Means for raising Money for the 

 support of the present War without increasing the Public Debts,' 

 third edition, 8vo, 1757, it is affirmed that the 'Essay on the Decline 

 of Foreign Trade ' was written by a Mr. Richardson. 



This ' Essay' is rather a remarkable work. Besides his main project 

 for a single tax, which occupies above 200 of the 228 pages of which 

 the volume (in the 12mo edition) consists, he advances the four fol- 

 lowing proposals : 1, to abolish all our monopolies, unite Ireland, 

 and put all our fellow-subjects on the sauio footing iu trade; 2, to 



