Item 85 - Letter from Thomas Edward Briarly

4 pp

14 Gt. Queen St., Westminster - TEB is pleased that WW agrees with his conjecture regarding Airy [see TEB to WW, 22 Feb. 1832: Airy's approbation of Lieut. Drummond's principle for working out the boundary changes in the 1832 Reform Bill]. Since the subject will be heard again in the House of Lords, TEB will calculate a list of 100 boroughs along his own plan. Lord John Russell believes that Airy and Herschel think nothing can be devised as good as Drummond's whole system. D's 'mistake is strengthened by another inapplicable principle that the whole is the sum of the parts. This is true of abstract qualities but not of the bulk occupied jointly and separately by real substances', which Drummond places in juxtaposition. He assumes a direct ratio of wealth and population. TEB tries to prove that this is wrong with an algebraic demonstration.