Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/345

 . The treatise is a model of careful exposition, and reminds one of the ‘Algebra’ which Euler dictated after having been overtaken by blindness. It contains an account of Euclid's doctrine of proportion, a good deal of what we now call mensuration, a consideration of Diophantine problems, and of magic squares, and it finishes with the solution of biquadratic equations. Some of Saunderson's manuscripts were printed in 1751, under the title ‘The Method of Fluxions applied to a Select Number of Useful Problems, together with the Demonstration of Mr. Cotes's forms of Fluents in the second part of his Logometria, the Analysis of the Problems in his Scholium Generale, and an Explanation of the Principal Propositions of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy,’ London, 8vo. This is an interesting manual of elementary mathematical physics. In 1761 ‘Select Parts of Professor Saunderson's Elements of Algebra for Students at the Universities’ was published anonymously, London, 8vo.



SAUNFORD. [See .]

SAURIN, WILLIAM (1757?–1839), attorney-general for Ireland, the second son of James Saurin, vicar of Belfast, was born in that town in 1757 or 1758. His grandfather, or, according to Agnew (ii. 425), his great-grandfather, Louis Saurin, D.D., a younger brother of the celebrated French preacher, Jacques Saurin, came of a good Languedoc family (, La France Protestante, ed. 1858, ix. 177), noted for its attachment to the reformed church. But being, in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, compelled to leave France, he was for some time minister of the French church in the Savoy; but, proceeding to Ireland about 1727, he was on 22 March presented to the deanery of Ardagh, and on 3 June 1736 installed archdeacon of Derry. He married, in 1714, Henriette Cornel de la Bretonnière, and, dying in September 1749, was buried at St. Anne's, Dublin. James Saurin, his son, succeeded Richard Stewart as vicar of Belfast in 1747; he married, about 1754, Mrs. Duff, the widow, it is presumed, of John Duff, who had been four times sovereign of Belfast, and died in office in 1753; he was much respected in Belfast, where he died about 1774, leaving four sons: Louis, William, James, and Mark Anthony.

William, after receiving a fair education at Saumarez Dubourdien's school at Lisburn, entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a fellow-commoner in 1775, and graduated B.A. in 1777. Proceeding to London, he entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Irish bar in 1780. He was noted as a diligent student, but did not rise rapidly in his profession. On 21 Jan. 1786 he married Mary, widow of Sir [q. v.], daughter of Edward O'Brien and sister of the second and third marquises of Thomond [see, third ], by whom he had a large family. The able manner, however, in which he acted as agent to the Hon. E. Ward in 1790 in contesting the representation of co. Down with Robert Stewart (afterwards Viscount Castlereagh), attracted attention to him, and from that time his business steadily increased. He was retained for the defendant in the case of Curran v. Sandys on 16 Feb. 1795, and his speech as junior counsel on that occasion has been highly commended. In 1796 the Irish bar conferred on him the honour of electing him captain-commandant of their corps of yeomanry, and on 6 July 1798 he was granted a patent of precedence immediately after the prime serjeant, attorney and solicitor general. He served the government that year in some of the trials arising out of the rebellion, notably in that of the brothers Sheares, William Michael Byrne, and Oliver Bond. He was offered the post of solicitor-general, vacant through the elevation of (afterwards first Earl of Norbury) [q. v.] to the attorney-generalship; but, notwithstanding the pressure brought to bear upon him, he resolutely refused to accept it in consequence of having made up his mind to oppose the government on their union scheme. At a meeting of the bar on 9 Sept. he moved a resolution to the effect that a union was an innovation dangerous and improper to propose at that time (, Collectanea Politica, iii. 475); but, according to under-secretary Cooke, neither he nor the gentleman who seconded him spoke very forcibly (Castlereagh Corresp. i. 343), and his opinion was confirmed by Sir Jonah Barrington (Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, ed. 1853, p. 317). Not content, however, with offering a constitutional opposition to the measure, he tried to involve the bar as a body in his opposition. But the order he issued to the corps to assemble ‘to take into their consideration a question of the greatest national importance’ was disapproved by many of the bar, and was