WW met Senior [Nassau Senior] at the Athenaeum Club, 'and asked him if he answered to his friend Whately's [Richard Whately] name of catallactician. He said that he did not mean to adopt it but that he thought it a proper account of the matter: and when I reminded him that more than half the wealth of the world is never exchanged, he declared very frankly, that in that case he had no business with it'.
Trinity College - Printed letter written by Joseph Romilly with the date for the election of a new University Registrary. Further to RJ possibly being offered the professorship in political economy at King's College [see WW to RJ, 16 March 1832]: 'It appears that some of the managers of the College were dissatisfied with some of Senior's [Nassau Senior] published opinions (I believe about Irish Bishops etc) and this I suppose has led to his resignation. If they offer it you it will be because they think your opinions will be such as they will better like, and because they still wish to have the eclat of a good professor on the subject'.
Re Tocqueville.
Including verse re the grave of his brother John headed 'John Sterling's grave at Bonchurch'.
Brasted - RJ wants WW to look at the third edition of Whately's [Richard Whately] 'Logic' [first published 1826] - 'turn to p.3 20 you will find some observations on terms by Senior [Nassau William Senior] beginning The foundations of political economy being a few general propositions deduced from observation or from consciousness and generally admitted as soon as stated[,] it might have been expected that there would be as little difference of opinion among political economists as among mathematicians and then read on'. RJ states 'that when he comes to rent he gets from consciousness and such observation as he deemed sufficient a notion that rent is always the secret of some advantage which enables unequal profits to be made and proposes to extend the term to all the gains made in consequence of any extraordinary powers of body or mind any processes in manufacture which are protected by secrecy or by law any peculiar advantages from situation or connexion a pretty hash he was likely to make of it'. RJ does not think there is much they should object to in the body of Whately's work, 'except a strange notion that the inference made by the mind when its inductive processes are completed is an inference which belongs to deductive reasoning and may be called logical ascending to his own strict definition of logic which I hold to be utterly wrong (the notion that is not the definition) see p.235 and another foolish sneer at those who think that inductive reasoning can ever be reduced to scientific form - page 243'. RJ had not seen 'Senior's nonsense till lately as I could hardly have kept my hands off him'. RJ has an idea 'that some popular views of inductive reasoning such as I shall sketch would be a good thing to publish, when you see them decide whether you will keep them and use them yourself or send them back for me to enlarge. If either of us do it it must not be with a reference to natural philosophy exclusively or I think mainly - But mind if you insist on german phraseology or any thing like it I wash my hands of the job'.
RJ will come to Cambridge to vote for Joseph Romilly on Thursday. RJ hopes WW is mistaken regarding the reasons Nassau Senior resigned the professorship at King's: 'D'Oyly assures me that Mr Senior resigns because he has been appointed to the commission on the poor laws which will take up all his time. He is appointed as the head of that commission with I understand a considerable salary and considering that he is too a conveyancer in full practice this reason seems sufficient. - Neither King's College or myself should get any credit by its being supposed I was put there as an ecclesiastical puppet to fight tithe haters - I need not tell you I would act no such part but I cannot pretend that I should be insensible to the charge of doing so, while at the same time my own views would necessarily lead me to oppose Whately [Richard Whately] and Senior's [Nassau Senior] projects about tithes if I was forced to grapple with the subject inasmuch as with the needless dogmatism which disfigures all they say or do they have got a new fangled system of their own ready cut and dried which they would like to force down the throats of England and Ireland on their authority and without the slightest regard to local difficulties reasonable modifications or any ones views or experience but their own'.