SHAFTESBUBY 



359 



rejected that were designed to 1 purchase his sub- 

 mission, he ranged himself against Dauby as a 

 champion of toleration, but for Dissenters only, and 

 figured thenceforth as a defender of national 

 liberties, or rather, it may be, as an unscrupulous 

 demagogue. He opposed Danby's non-resistance 

 Test Bill (1675), and in February 1677, for his 

 daring protest against a fifteen months' proroga- 

 tion, was sent to the Tower, whence he was only 

 released a year later on making a full submission. 

 As early as 1674 he had feigned apprehensions of a 

 popish massacre ; and though the ' Popish Plot ' was 

 not of his forging, but Oates's, he it was that passed 

 the base coin, using that two years' terror ( 1678- 

 80) against his opponents with a ruthless dexterity 

 that must stamp him for ever with infamy. Not 

 even the Habeas Corpus Act (q. v. ), long known as 

 Shaftesbury's Act, is a set off against the judicial 

 murder of Lord Stafford, his personal enemy. 

 Still, for a while he seemed to nave completely 

 triumphed. The fall of his rival Danby was fol- 

 lowed by his own appointment as president of 

 Temple's new Privy-council of thirty iiiewlmrs 

 (April 1679), and James's dismissal to Holland by 

 An attempt to exclude him from the succession, in 

 favour, not of William and Mary, but of Shaftes- 

 burv's puppet, the bastard Monmouth. That 

 monstrous proposal gave Charles II. his chance, 

 and in October ' Little Sincerity ' ( aa he had nick- 

 named Shaf tesbury ) received his cong6 ; and 

 Shaftesbury from that time onward was driven 

 into extremer opposition, indicting Juines as a 

 recusant (1680), and bringing armed followers to 

 the Oxford parliament ( 1681 ). In the July of that 

 year he was again sent to the Tower, on a charge 

 tliis time of high-treason, and though the Middle- 

 sex Whig grand jury threw out the bill in Novem- 

 ber, and he was consequently released, arrest was 

 Again impending, with no such chance of escape. 

 Monmouth and Russell hung back from the open 

 rebellion to which he promised to furnish ' ten 

 thousand brisk Citv boys,' and, after some weeks' 

 hiding, he tied to Holland early in December 1682. 

 ' Delenda est Carthago ' he had quoted against 

 the republic ten years before; 'Carthago nondum 

 deleta' greeted him now when he landed. On 22d 

 January 1683 the ' fiery spirit ' passed away at 

 Amsterdam, whence the ' pigmy body ' was borne 

 home for burial in the place that had given him 

 birth. 



Transcendently clever, eloquent, and winning, 

 fairly void too of lust and venality when most men 

 were lustful and venal, Shaftesbury yet stands con- 

 demned by the many talents committed to him. 

 He, who might have done so much good, did so 

 little but what was evil. Whether for or against 

 monarchy, for or against republicanism, for or 

 Against France, for or against Holland, he was 

 always for himself self the dominant principle to 

 which alone he was true. At least, if that count 

 for praise, he was the author of party government, 

 ever ready to make capital out of religious ani- 

 mosities, 'atrocities,' perjuries, forgeries, any- 

 thing. After all that has been written, men seem 

 in doubt still whether Shaftesbnry was the ' pure,' 

 'high-minded,' and 'great statesman' that Mr 

 Christie would make him, or, what Charles pro- 

 nounced him, 'the wickedest dog in England.' 

 < ' I believe, Sir, I am, of a subject ' one remem- 

 bers his witty rejoinder.) Whether, again, was he 

 a deist ; and here again we have the well-known 

 tory, how one day fie said to a friend, ' Men of 

 sense are all of one religion.' 'And what religion 

 is that?' a lady broke in ; to whom, turning and 

 bowing, he answered, ' That, madam, men of sense 

 never tell.' 



See Dryden's Abtalom and Achitophel and Medal 

 (1681); part iii. of Butler's Hudibras (1678); the 



hostile History of Bnrnet, who is the chief authority for 

 Shaftesbury's ' dotage of astrology;' the able apologetic 

 Life by W. D. Christie (2 vols. 1871); the shorter, less 

 partial study by Mr H. D. Traill in the 'English Worthies' 

 series (1886) ; the article by Mr Osmond Airy in vol. xii. 

 of the Dictionary of National Biography ( 1887 ) ; and 

 other works cited at LOCKE and CHARLES II. 



ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, third Earl of 

 Shaftesbury, philosopher, was born at Exeter 

 House, London, February 26, 1671, the grandson 

 of the above, and son of that ' shapeless lump,' the 

 second earl (1652-99), by Lady Dorothy Manners, 

 daughter of the Earl of Rutland. Locke super- 

 intended his education at Clapham under a learned 

 governess, Mistress Elizabeth Birch, who taught 

 him to speak Greek and Latin fluently ; three 

 years at Winchester (1683-86) were not happy 

 ones, for his schoolfellows visited on him the sins 

 of his grandfather. With a tutor and two other 

 lads he then travelled for three years more in Italy, 

 Germany, and France, and on his return applied 

 himself to study. A zealous Whig, he sat for 

 Poole (1695-98), but ill-health compelled him to 

 turn from politics to literature ; and there is little 

 to record in his life beyond two visits of a twelve- 

 month each to Holland (1698-99, 1703-4), where 

 he lived with the Quaker, Benjamin Furly, and 

 formed friendships with Bayle and Le Clerc ; hia 

 accession to the earldom (1699); his marriage 

 ( 1 709 ) to Miss Jane Ewer of Lee, for ' the satisfac- 

 tion of his friends,' but to his own subsequent con- 

 tentment; his removal to Naples (1711) ; and his 

 death there on February 15 (4 o.s.), 1713. 



His somewhat superfine writings ( Lamb hits off 

 their style as 'genteel') were all, with a single 

 exception, published after 1708, and were mostly 

 collected as Characteristics of Men, Manners, 

 Opinions, Times (3 vols. 1711 ; 2d enlarged ed. 

 1714). Here the 'moral realist' expounds his 

 system, which Pope has immortalised in the Essay 

 on Man, and which Mr Hunt reduces to the three 

 main contentions, that ridicule is the test of truth, 

 that man possesses a moral sense, and that every- 

 thing in the world is for the best. An opponent of 

 Locke, and a disciple of the ' Cambridge Platonists,' 

 Shaftesbury found a follower in Hutcheson (q.v.), 

 the founder of the Scottish school of philosophy. 

 Still, like most prophets, he has had least honour 

 in his own country, for, while there he was more 

 attacked as a deist than praised as a philosopher, 

 on the Continent he has attracted the attention, 

 and generally the admiring attention, of thinkers 

 like Leibnitz, Voltaire ( who, however, ridicules his 

 optimism in Candide), Lessing, Diderot, Mendels- 

 sohn, and Herder. 



Se Professor Fowler's Shaftesbury and Hutcheson 

 ('English Philosophers' series, 1882); Hunt's Seliffious 

 ThouyM in Enyland (1870-73; new ed. 1884); Leslie 

 Stephen's Enijlish Thought in the Eighteenth Century 

 ( 1876 ) ; and two German monographs by Spicker ( Frei- 

 burg, 1872) and Gizycki (Leip. 1875). 



ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, seventh Earl of 

 Shaftesbury, was born in London, 28th April 1801. 

 From the early training of a faithful old servant, 

 Maria Millis, the future philanthropist received his 

 earliest and deepest religious impressions. He 

 went to Harrow in his twelfth year, and to Christ 

 Church, Oxford, in 1819, and took a first-class in 

 classics in 1822, his M.A. degree in 1832; and he 

 was made D.C.L. in 1841. As Lord Ashley he 

 represented Woodstock in parliament from 1826 to 

 1830 ; and joining the Conservatives, then led by 

 Lord Liverpool and Canning, he formed a close 

 friendship with the Duke of Wellington, under 

 whom he obtained the post of Commissioner of the 

 India Board of Control ( 1828). Under Peel he was 

 made a Lord of the Admiralty in 1834. In 1830 he 

 married Emily, daughter of the fifth Earl Cowpet 



