Thomas Cooper (1759–1841)

Thomas Cooper (October 22, 1759 – May 11, 1839) was an Anglo-American economist, college president and political philosopher. Cooper was described by Thomas Jefferson as "one of the ablest men in America" and by John Adams as "a learned ingenious scientific and talented madcap." Dumas Malone stated that "modern scientific progress would have been impossible without the freedom of the mind which he championed throughout life." His ideas were taken very seriously in his own time: there were substantial reviews of his writings, and some late eighteenth-century critics of materialism directed their arguments against Cooper, rather than against the better-known Joseph Priestley.

Cooper was born in Westminster, England. He attended University College, Oxford, but did not graduate, supposedly refusing the religious test. He then studied law at the Inner Temple, medicine and the natural sciences. He travelled the northern court circuit for a few years; it is unclear in the records whether he practised as a qualified barrister. At the same period he went into the calico printing business at Raikes near Bolton, Lancashire.

Cooper took on a prominent role in the reforming politics of the time. In early 1790 he took part in the campaign by Dissenters for greater religious tolerance. His approach was considered too extreme by some, and he shed much moderate support after a meeting in Cheshire. Edmund Burke mentioned Cooper in the House of Commons in March of that year. In October 1790 the Manchester Constitutional Society was set up, with Cooper, author of Letters on the Slave Trade (1787), and other members such as Thomas Walker, noted as radicals and abolitionists. The Constitutional Society had members in common with the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. But in July 1791 the Priestley Riots took place, driving Joseph Priestley from his home. The whole radical group resigned en masse, in 1791, when the Literary and Philosophical Society refused to send Priestley a message of sympathy.

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