Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/440

 ing, besides a considerable fortune, an unsurpassed reputation for integrity and intelligence. His complete identification with his profession was shown in a pamphlet defending its rights against the encroachments of the city of London in 1806, as well as by the active part taken by him in the exposure of the Berenger fraud in 1814. To his sagacity in preparing the evidence the success of the prosecution was considered to be in great measure, if not wholly, due; and the three reports (printed 1814–15) of the committee appointed by the Stock Exchange to investigate the subject were drawn up by him. A series of remarkable publications meanwhile attested his varied powers. The first of these was entitled ‘Tables for the Purchasing and Renewing of Leases’ (1802, 2nd ed. 1807, 3rd 1812). Its success encouraged him to pursue the subject in two works of standard authority, the ‘Doctrine of Interest and Annuities analytically investigated and explained’ (1808), and the ‘Doctrine of Life-Annuities and Assurances analytically investigated and practically explained’ (1810). The fourteenth chapter of the latter, separately reprinted with the title ‘An Account of the several Life-Assurance Companies established in London, containing a View of their respective Merits and Advantages,’ was greedily bought up in two editions (1810 and 1811), and the treatise itself was translated into French under the auspices of the ‘Compagnie d'Assurances Générales sur la Vie’ (1836). In this country the demand was such that copies sold for 4l. and 5l., and the price of an appendix to the second issue (1813), containing an exposition of Barrett's mode of computing life-tables, alone rose to a guinea. This scarcity induced a fraudulent reprint, succeeded by an avowed republication in 1864 (with omission of the fourteenth chapter and appendix), under the care of Mr. Filipowski. Baily's merits as a writer on life-contingencies were undoubtedly very great. The subject was by him first presented in a symmetrical form; a uniform system of notation was introduced; and to a perspicuous and comprehensive view of the labours of his predecessors the results of much original research were added.

His divergence into a new field was marked by the publication, in 1812, of ‘A New Chart of History,’ accompanied by a ‘Description’—of which five editions were sold in three years—exhibiting the chief revolutions of empire during the historical period. The preparation of chronological tables for an ‘Epitome of Universal History’ (published 1813 in 2 vols. 8vo) led to his first essay in astronomy. A paper ‘On the Solar Eclipse which is said to have been predicted by Thales,’ read before the Royal Society 14 March 1811 (Phil. Trans. ci. 220), proved him a skilled computist; but the date assigned, 30 Sept. 610 B.C., was shown by his own appended investigation of the eclipse of Agathocles (15 Aug. 310 B.C.) to be insecure, and was corrected by Sir George Airy, with the aid of improved lunar tables, to 28 May 585 (Phil. Trans. cxliii. 193; Mem. R.A.S. xxvi. 139).

His interest in astronomical subjects henceforth grew and developed. He wrote a pamphlet in 1818 summoning attention to the annular eclipse of 7 Sept. 1820, which he himself observed at Kentish Town (Mem. R.A.S. i. 135), translated in 1819 Cagnoli's ‘Method of ascertaining the Figure of the Earth by means of Occultations of the Fixed Stars,’ and powerfully helped to quicken astronomical progress in England by his frequent notices, in the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ of foreign improvements and publications. But the establishment of the Astronomical Society formed, in Sir John Herschel's words, ‘a chief and deciding epoch in his life.’ He was one of the fourteen who met at the Freemasons' Tavern 12 Jan. 1820, and constituted themselves a corporate body with that title. And on Baily, as its acting secretary during the first three years of its existence, devolved the chief labour of its organisation. By him its rules were framed, the routine of its business fixed, its finances set in order. He was a member of every committee, regulated every undertaking, guided every negotiation, drew up nearly every report. By his judicious action the society was, in 1834, put in possession of spacious apartments in Somerset House, and on the death of George IV raised to an equal footing with the Royal Society on the visiting board of the Royal Observatory. He was four times elected its president (for terms of two years), eleven times vice-president, and invariably sat on the council.

In 1825 Baily retired from business, purchased a house and sycamore-shaded garden at 37 Tavistock Place, and devoted himself wholly to astronomy. He was then fifty-one; but in the nineteen years remaining to him he executed labours the extent and value of which it is difficult, in a brief summary, adequately to describe. Although not himself an habitual observer, the scope of his efforts was directed to imparting a higher value to the observations of others, both by connecting them with the past and by assuring them for the future. His revision of star-catalogues alone entitled him, in Sir John Herschel's opinion, to rank amongst