English mathematician and philanthropist, born in London, on the 15th of December 1731, of a French family, which settled in England on the revocation of the edict of Nantes; was educated at Kingston and Cambridge; called to the bar, and appointed attorney-general of Quebec. In 1811 he carried a bill through the House of Commons, enabling rate-payers of parishes to establish savings banks; but the bill was thrown out by the Lords as revolutionary. In 1813 he was made cursitor baron of the exchequer and agent to the Protestant settlers of Quebec. He urged the adoption of conciliatory measures toward the disaffected colonies in North America, and his deep interest in the laboring classes resulted in the publication of his Principles of the Doctrines of Life Annuities (1783). In addition to this work, and his mathematical writings, the most important of which is A Dissertation on the Negative Signs in Algebra (1758), he wrote much of a political and historical nature. He died at Reigate on the 19th of May 1824.
