GEORGE BENTHAM. 455 



torial work upon his father's papers relating to the manage- 

 ment of the navy and the administration of the national dock- 

 yards. 



The first publication was botanical, and was published in 

 Paris, in the year 1826, — his " Catalogue des Plantes Indi- 

 genes des Pyrenees et du Bas Languedoc." To this is pre- 

 fixed an interesting narrative of a botanical tour in the Pyre- 

 nees, and some remarks upon the mode of preparing such 

 catalogues in order to bring out their greatest utility, — 

 remarks which already evince the wisdom for which he was 

 distinguished in after years. He also reformed and reelab- 

 orated our difficult genera of the district, — Cerastium, Oro- 

 banche, Helianthemum, and Medicago. The next, perhaps, 

 was an article upon codification — wholly disagreeing with 

 his uncle — which attracted the attention of Brougham, 

 Hume, and O'Connell; also one upon the laws affecting lar- 

 ceny, which Sir Robert Peel complemented and made use of, 

 and another on the law of real property. 



But his most considerable work of the period received scant 

 attention at the time from those most interested in the subject, 

 and passed from its birth into oblivion, from which only in 

 these later years it has been rescued, yet without word or sign 

 from its author. This work (of 287 octavo pages) was pub- 

 lished in London in 1827, under the title of " Outline of a 

 New System of Logic, with a critical examination 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 1 declares it to be " undoubt- 

 edly the most fruitful discovery made in abstract logical sci- 

 ence 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 quantifica- 

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

 brought " an acrimonious charge of plagiarism " against Pro- 

 1 In " Contemporary Review," xxi., 1873, p. 823. 



