504.  From numerous experiments, I am led to believe the following general expression to be correct; but I purpose examining it much further, and would therefore wish not to be considered at present as pledged to its accuracy.  The sum of chemical decomposition is constant for any section taken across a decomposing conductor, uniform in its nature, at whatever distance the poles may be from each other or from the section; or however that section may intersect the currents, whether directly across them, or so oblique as to reach almost from pole to pole, or whether it be plane, or curved, or irregular in the utmost degree; provided the current of electricity be retained constant in quantity (377.), and that the section passes through every part of the current through the decomposing conductor.

505.  I have reason to believe that the statement might be made still more general, and expressed thus:  That for a constant quantity of electricity, whatever the decomposing conductor may be, whether water, saline solutions, acids, fused bodies, &c., the amount of electro-chemical action is also a constant quantity, i.e. would always be equivalent to a standard chemical effect founded upon ordinary chemical affinity.  I have this investigation in hand, with several others, and shall be prepared to give it in the next series but one of these Researches.

506.  Many other arguments might be adduced against the hypotheses of the attraction of the poles being the cause of electro-chemical decomposition; but I would rather pass on to the view I have thought more consistent with facts, with this single remark; that if decomposition by the voltaic battery depended upon the attraction of the poles, or the parts about them, being stronger than the mutual attraction of the particles separated, it would follow that the weakest electrical attraction was stronger than, if not the strongest, yet very strong chemical attraction, namely, such as exists between oxygen and hydrogen, potassium and oxygen, chlorine and sodium, acid and alkali, &c., a consequence which, although perhaps not impossible, seems in the present state of the subject very unlikely.

507.  The view which M. de la Rive has taken (489.), and also MM.  Riffault and Chompre (485.), of the manner in which electro-chemical decomposition is effected, is very different to that already considered, and is not affected by either the arguments or facts urged against the latter.  Considering it as stated by the former philosopher, it appears to me to be incompetent to account for the experiments of decomposition against surfaces of air (462. 469.) and water (495.), which I have described; for if the physical differences between metals and humid conductors, which M. de la Rive supposes to account for the transmission of the compound of matter and electricity in the latter, and the transmission of the electricity only with the rejection of the matter in the former, be allowed