XV 



"Catholic State Waggon," he continued to write at the rate of three or 

 four articles per number, making upwards of a hundred in all, till the 

 Review was transferred in 1836. In 1825 he wrote, to serve the Greek 

 cause, two pamphlets in modern Greek and French on the service of 

 outposts, and on a system of telegraphing for field service. In the follow- 

 ing year he published the 'True Theory of Rent/ in support of Adam 

 Smith against Ricardo and others ; in which view he was borne out by 

 Say. And in 1827, eleven years before the Anti-Corn Law League was 

 formed, and when he was only a Major in a marching regiment, he pub- 

 lished his celebrated ' Catechism on the Corn Laws,' a work which went 

 through many editions, and to which Mr. Cobden always acknowledged 

 the obligations of the Free Trade cause. " For breadth of principle," says 

 a generous political opponent, "humorous and telling illustration, a 

 strong racy Saxon style, there is nothing in Cobbett superior to this little 

 pamphlet." 



He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1828. The following 

 year he wrote " Instructions to my Daughter for Playing on the Enhar- 

 monic Guitar ; being an attempt to effect the execution of correct har- 

 mony, on principles analogous to those of the ancient Enharmonic." He 

 followed this up by the construction on the same principle of an Enhar- 

 monic Organ, which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and 

 " honourably mentioned " in the Reports of the Juries. In 1830 he pub- 

 lished ' Geometry without Axioms/ being an endeavour to get rid of 

 Axioms, and particularly to establish the Theory of Parallel Lines without 

 recourse to any principle not founded on previous demonstration. The 

 work went through several editions, with successive amendments, but at- 

 tracted more attention in France than here ; and an accurate translation 

 was published by M. Van Tenac, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal 

 Establishment at Rochefort, and subsequently attached to the Ministry of 

 Marine at Paris. In 1830 he also published a pamphlet on the ' Adjust- 

 ment of the House of Peers/ which obtained the remarkable compliment 

 of being republished in Cobbett' s Register. The same year, at the in- 

 vitation of Jeremy Bentham, he edited the Tenth Chapter (on military 

 establishments) of his " Constitutional Code," and wrote the notes and 

 " Subsidiary Observations " at the end. In 1834 he published at Paris, 

 in answer to the Enquete, or Commercial Inquiry then carried on by the 

 French Government, the " Contre-Enquete ; par l'Homme aux Quarante 

 Ecus ;" in which the principles of commercial freedom were developed 

 under a familiar form. In 1842 he collected all his writings in six closely 

 printed volumes, under the title of " Exercises, Political, and others," — a 

 mine of literary, political, military, mathematical, and musical informa- 

 tion. This was followed, in 1848, by his ' Catechism on the Currency/ 

 the object of which is to show that the best currency is one of paper, in- 

 convertible, but limited. The views set forth in this publication are em- 

 bodied in a motion of which Colonel Thompson gave notice in the House 



