CORRESPONDENCE, 1846-55. 201 



signs give plus, unlike minus. Common a fortiori reasoning will 1840, 

 take its place in a class of distinct syllogisms. 

 I remain, dear sir, 



Yours very truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To Sir Rowland Hill. 



Camden Street, Cainden Town, 



May 5, 1848. 



MY DEAR SIR, I am much obliged to you for the notice. 1848, 

 I believe you when you say there are difficulties, because you 

 get over them. Still, to my untutored mind, it is wonderful the 

 Post Office should imagine that anybody would write in a book 

 at 6d. a pound to save postage. 



I hope that the end of it will be that anybody may write 

 anything, and I have reason as follows : 



There is an old book I want ; for example, the first edition 

 of Wingate's Arithmetic, 1630. If one of my country friends 

 finds it, what will be in the inside of an old Arithmetic ? A 

 hundred to one, something like 



Ann Price, her booke, 



God give her grace therein to looke, 1 



scrawled over the inside of the cover and the fly-leaf that is, 

 over more than one page. Now it does not consist with the fit- 

 ness of things that Ann Price's aspirations after Arithmetic in 

 the seventeenth century should prevent a professor of Mathematics 

 in the nineteenth from ascertaining the exact share of Wingate 

 in the invention of decimal fractions. 



You stop the circulation of old books. However, as I said, 

 if you say it can't be, I will believe you, provided the impossi- 

 bility may be interpreted as temporary. 



But for the love of order, and the Constitution, and the other 

 things that were dusted on the 10th ult., don't compel all the 

 old-book people to stand up for equal rights and against class 

 privileges. You'll make Chartists of Sir H. Ellis, and Hallam, 

 &c., &c., to say nothing of, 



Yours truly, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



1 Ann Price's (probable) handwriting imitated. S. E. 



