In September he thus wrote to Davies Gilbert:
I came from Ireland by the Western Road about a fortnight ago.
The Irish are a noble race degraded by slavery and bearing the insignia of persecution—extreme savageness or the lowest servility. Yet they are ingenious and active, and seem to me to possess all the elements of power and usefulness; but amongst the lower orders there is a most unfortunate equality, destructive of all great and efficient exertion, and amongst the higher classes the greatest degree of activity is awakened only by the desire of imitating the English, and that not so much in their virtues as in their luxuries and follies.
And to his friend Poole he wrote, October 9:
I have very much to say about Ireland. It is an island that might be made a new and a great country. It now boasts a fertile soil, an ingenious and robust peasantry, and a rich aristocracy, but the bane of the nation is the equality of poverty amongst the lower orders. All are slaves without the probability of becoming free. They are in the state of equality which the sans-culottes wished for in France, and until emulation and riches and the love of clothes and neat houses are introduced amongst them there will be no permanent improvement.
Changes in political institutions can at first do little towards serving them; it must be by altering their habits, by diffusing manufactures, by destroying middle men, by dividing farms, and by promoting industry, by making the pay proportioned to the work. But I ought not to attempt to say anything on the subject when my limits are so narrow.
Up to 1806 the lectures given by Davy had brought to him repute and to the Royal Institution success. To his high reputation as a lecturer he was now about to add that of a great original discoverer. As early as July 3, 1800, he wrote to Davies Gilbert, ‘We have been repeating the galvanic experiments with success.’ (See [p. 316].) These experiments led him to think that all chemical decompositions might be polar. He electrised different compounds at the different poles of the battery, but he made no great discovery for five years. The assertion that acid and alkali were generated by the action of the voltaic pile in the decomposition of water led him to undertake fresh galvanic experiments in 1806. Before long he was rewarded by his great discoveries regarding chemical electricity, the decomposition of the alkalies, and the composition of chlorine.
It appears from the Laboratory Books that in September he first made experiments on phosphorus with the galvanic spark, and in the last week of October he ‘tried to decompose phosphorus by the galvanic fluid.’ He fused the phosphorus into a tube through which a platinum wire passed. This was the form of the experiment which he made a year afterwards to compel potash to give up its oxygen.
On November 20 his first Bakerian lecture was given at the Royal Society. It had this long title: On the ‘Chemical Agencies of Electricity;’ on the ‘Changes Produced in Water by Electricity;’ on the ‘Agencies of Electricity;’ on the ‘Decomposition of various Compound Bodies;’ on the ‘Transfer of certain Constituent Parts of Bodies by the Action of Electricity;’ on the ‘Passage of Acids, Alkalies, and other Substances through various Attracting Chemical Menstrua by Means of Electricity;’ ‘Some General Observations on these Phenomena, and on the Mode of Decomposition and Transition;’ on the ‘General Principles of the Chemical Changes Produced by Electricity;’ on the ‘Relations between the Electrical Energies of Bodies and their Chemical Affinities;’ on the ‘Mode of Action of the Pile of Volta, with Experimental Elucidations;’ on ‘Some General Illustrations and Applications of the Foregoing Facts and Principles.’
This was the first dawn of light regarding the inseparable union between chemical and electrical motions. The two ends of the pile of metals gave in quantity and quality different chemical results, and the chemical products varied with the variations of the liquid into which the poles were put. The identity of chemical affinity and electricity was imagined, and a new division of elements was made into electro-positive and electro-negative, according as the one or other end of the pile attracted them. The kind of polarity of each matter was thought to determine the electrical and chemical actions shown by it.
Napoleon had founded a prize of 2,400l. for a discovery comparable to that of Franklin or Volta, and at the same time he founded with the interest a medal, of 120l. value yearly, for the best experiment on the galvanic fluid. This medal for the year 1807 was given to Davy for this paper, which was then printed. Davy wrote to Mr. Poole, ‘Some people say I ought not to accept this prize, and there have been foolish paragraphs in the papers to that effect; but if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would indeed be a civil war of the worst description; we should rather, through the instrumentality of men of science, soften the asperities of national hostility.’
On January 22, 1807, Davy was elected secretary of the Royal Society.