Thurlby Hall, Newark - EB returns George Green's memoir - 'altered and freely cut down, as yourself and Mr Murphy were so obliging as to suggest'. EB considers WW 'our sole calm examiner' on Political Economy, but 'was disheartened by 'Definitions come last', yet this is merely to say, that analysis precedes synthesis'. Under the title of 'Heresies' EB gives two kinds of Rent - 1. Of consumption and 2. Rent from capital invested: 'The equation has two roots, like the two spheroids of equilibrium, one the active speculating Rent of high let land, and the other the passive slovenly Rent of land underlet - the conditions of the Labouring Class depends on the number of farms sufficiently large to employ labourers. Parishes split into pieces are always at war with the poor, as each man is sufficient to labour his own land, and does not employ a labourer without compulsion'. EB claims that the word capital should be replaced with 'Productive Power, land, labour, machinery, money etc, all having distinct 'Laws' - It is incorrect to think labour alone productive'.
Thurlby Hall, Newark - George Green is very grateful to WW for all the 'presswork' he carried out for GG's maiden memoir. Another memoir is ready - could WW say whether it would be favourably received? EB Thanks WW for his pamphlet which he read twice 'and consider the most decisive thing of the kind, that I ever met with - We want the whole of Logic thoroughly sifted in the same manner'. EB commends WW's warnings about premature definitions - the best illustration is found in Botany where Linnaeus refused to define his natural families prematurely. Even in mathematics definition follows knowledge.
George Green and EB are grateful to WW for all his help with the printing and distribution of GG's memoir. Sends WW another memoir to WW by GG: 'the Cambridge Transactions ought to lead all others in mathematics. I am convinced that the want of them is deemed an affectation - You are right about practical analysis - the age of the Warings, the Quixotic Chivalry of science is gone for ever'. George Peacock's algebra - '(to use a comparison) he still begins the Differential Calculus from Velocities'. Richard Jones 'is certainly a very able man - his idea of the labouring Classes gradually coming under the domain of Capitalists, is striking and true'. The 'moral machinery' of industrialisation 'has not kept pace with the population'. WW's Bridgewater Treatise 'is very striking - It certainly places the whole affair on a new and solid foundation'. For EB 'the Belief of a Deity from a view of nature is a matter of impression - what brings direct conviction to my own mind would appear absurd to another, and I never could announce it without hesitating'.
Lincoln - Thanks WW for his kindness towards his Botanical Papers and would like them returned. EB has read WW's new work [probably The History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Times, 3 vols., 1837]: 'there is a quiet beneficent tone about it which I like much'. EB has a problem with WW's philosophy of induction in classification: 'What Characters are to be deemed Physiological? No doubt large natural assemblages will be found to have important unities of structure, and the larger the more important - but this importance cannot be estimated a priori - Why is not the Root important?'
Thurlby Hall, Newark - Letter of introduction for the Rev. Dr. Wayland [Francis Wayland], Professor of Moral Philosophy at Brown University, on a mission to study academical institutions in Europe.
Richards's Coffee house, Temple Bar - Thanks WW for his letter which contains many excellent schemes. EB has been with Babbage and Herschel: 'we have had a kind of committee of notation' and 'have agreed also upon a Digest, of which you must take part. It consists of a collection of all known algebraic results, arranged in the order of Deduction'.
Trinity College - WW offering a better word for catallactics [see WW to RJ, 25 Jan. 1832]. He hopes RJ goes 'on prosperously with your exhortation to his grace. I thought you seemed to be in a good vein in most of your criticism: the main danger which I saw, and which might be an imagination of my own, was that you might get into a wrangle about logic and induction'. WW will give him Cesalpinus's 'say about definitions it is good and remarkable but mixed up with a coordinate reference to induction which though very important for the subject will I think take too much developing for your review. The first question of his first book is - How we are to understand that we must proceed from universals to particulars (as Aristotle directs) seeing that parts alone are better known - and his answer is that we know the whole completely before we know the parts - we learn universals from particulars by induction - there are these shifts of our progress Induction, Division, Definition'. WW has found, among some of his papers, a packet from Edward Bromhead 'containing among other matters a sheet of observations on my First Principles of Mechanics, and another of notes on Political Economy, in which he expresses himself much disturbed at my having said in a previous letter that Definitions must come last - you see how hard a battle you or we have to fight'.
Thurlby Hall, near Lincoln - EB heard from his brother who intends to return to College immediately and probably reside permanently in College. EB does not think a College life 'prudent or beneficial' for his brother. EB looks forward to the new Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society especially if there is a memoir on the mathematics of Political Economy.
Thurlby Hall, near Lincoln - Thanks WW for his attention to George Green's memoir. GG is keen to meet WW's 'views in every particular', and if thought necessary to come to Cambridge: 'Would it be too great a favour to request that you would become gardner in this pruning'. EB read the 'little book' WW sent him: 'The book is exactly what I have long wished to see - It set me musing, and I was struck with the parallel state of the progress of scientific Political Economy. There is room for Galileos. The key to progress seems by comparison to consist in giving technical names to complex ideas capable of mathematical definition'.