William Frend (social Reformer) - Works

Works

Frend's works dealt with many subjects. His publications were:

• An Address to the Inhabitants of Cambridge and its Neighbourhood ... to turn from the false Worship of Three Persons to the Worship of the One True God, St. Ives, 1788. The second edition was entitled An Address to the Members of the Church of England and to Protestant Trinitarians in General, and it was followed by A Second Address to the Members of the Church of England. These were reprinted in Six Tracts in Vindication of the Worship of One God, and in other unitarian publications, and were answered by the Rev. Henry William Coulthurst, by George Townsend of Ramsgate in two tracts in 1789, and by Alexander Pirie in a volume issued at Perth in 1792. Frend responded in Thoughts on Subscription to religious tests ... in a letter to the Rev. H. W. Coulthurst, and in Mr. Coulthurst's blunders exposed, or a review of his several texts. For these pamphlets Frend was expelled from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (An Account of some late Proceedings of the Society, 1789).
• Peace and Union recommended, &c., 1793; 2nd ed. 1793, in which he described the evils of the then parliamentary system and of the game and poor laws, and explained the necessity for numerous reforms. The offending passages are set out in the second edition in single inverted commas.
• Scarcity of Bread: a plan for reducing its high price, 1795, two editions. He urged subscriptions by the rich for the relief of the poor.
• Principles of Algebra, 1796 (with a very long appendix by Francis Maseres); pt. ii. 1799. Frend rejected the use of negative quantities.
• A Letter to the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge, by Wm. Frend, candidate for the Lucasian Professorship, 1798.
• Principles of Taxation, 1799, advocating a graduated system of income-tax.
• Animadversions on Bishop Pretyman's Elements of Christian Theology, 1800; to which Joshua Toulmin replied in a preface to his Four Discourses on Baptism.
• The Effect of Paper Money on the Price of Provisions, 1801, which was provoked by the controversy between Sir Francis Baring and Walter Boyd.
• The Gentleman's Monthly Miscellany, which lived for a few months of 1803, and was edited in whole or in part by Frend.
• Evening Amusements, or the Beauty of the Heavens Displayed. It lasted from 1804 to 1822, "an astronomical elementary work of a new character, which had great success; the earlier numbers went through several editions".
• Patriotism: an Essay dedicated to the Volunteers, 1804.
• Tangible Arithmetic, or the Art of Numbering made Easy by means of an Arithmetical Toy, 1805.
• A Letter on the Slave Trade, 1816.
• The National Debt in its True Colours, 1817. Reprinted in the Pamphleteer, ix. 415-32. He advocated its extinction by an annual sinking fund.
• Memoirs of a Goldfinch, a poem, with notes and illustrations on natural history and natural philosophy (anon.), 1819.
• Is it Impossible to Free the Atmosphere of London in a very considerable degree from Smoke? 1819. A few copies only for friends, but it was reproduced in the Pamphleteer, xv. 61-5.
• A Plan of Universal Education, 1832. A fragment of a volume, Letters on a hitherto Undescribed Country, "written some years before but never published".

Frend, besides contributing two articles to Tracts on the Resolution of Affected Algebraick Equations, edited by Francis Maseres in 1800, and one tract to the same editor's Scriptores Logarithmici, vol. vi. 1807, suggested other matters to him in the same publications. Maseres in his Tracts on the Resolution of Cubick and Biquadratick Equations, published supplements to his appendix to Frend's Principles of Algebra.