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VII. On a point connected with the dispute between Keil and Leibnitz about the 
invention of Fluxions. Bp A. De Morgan, Esq., F.R.A.S., Sfc. Communicated 
by S. Hunter Christie, Esq., Sec. R.S., fyc. 
Received November 27, 1845, — Read January 29, 1846. 
THOSE who have consulted the records of the Society for purposes of history, 
have omitted to find, or at least to notice, an addition made to the Committee ap- 
pointed to decide between Keil and Leibnitz, between the commencement of its 
labours and the presentation of its report. Singularly enough this omission makes 
Newton appear to assert a positive falsehood, in a matter of which he must have 
had accurate knowledge, and as to which the position of President gave him every 
opportunity of refreshing his memory. 
The real facts are, that on the 6th of March 1711-12, a Committee was appointed 
to inspect the Archives, consisting of Arbuthnot, Hill, Halley, Jones, Machin, 
and Burnet: and that further, Robarts, a contributor to the Transactions, was 
added on the 20th, Bonet, the Prussian minister, on the 27th, and De Moivre, 
Aston, and Brook Taylor on the 17th of April. Of these newly-added members, 
Bonet and De Moivre were aliens. All the historical writers who enumerate the 
Members of the Committee, say nothing about the additions, but confine their list to 
the six gentlemen first named, that is, to the original Committee. 
Now Newton, in his letter to Conti of February 26, 1715-16, first published at 
the end of the English edition of Raphson’s History of Fluxions, asserts that the 
materials of the Commercium Epistolicum were “ collected and published by a numerous 
Committee of gentlemen of different nations, appointed by the Royal Society for that 
purpose.” 
Whether a Committee of six is properly called numerous may be a question ; but 
there can be no doubt that knowingly to have styled Arbuthnot, Hill, Halley, 
Jones, Machin, and Burnet, a committee of gentlemen of different nations, would 
have been, if not a direct falsehood, at least the pitiful evasion of treating the four races 
of the United Kingdom as four different nations with reference to a dispute between 
an Englishman and a German. As to this, it is material to remember that the names 
of the Committee had never been published, nor does Newton give them in the place 
cited. If any one should say that Machin’ s name might have looked rather French 
to an Englishman, it might be answered that Newton must have known John Ma- 
chin of Gresham College, whom he was constantly in the habit of seeing, to have 
been as much a Briton as himself. And in fact, Machin looks so little like a French 
