A new parliament was called to meet at Oxford, to avoid the influences of the city of London, where Shaftesbury had taken the greatest pains to make himself popular.
After an absence of over a twelvemonth, Ashley returned to England, and soon succeeded his father as earl of Shaftesbury.
After the death of Shaftesbury, however, in November 1682, he entered into the conferences held between Monmouth, Russell, Essex, Hampden and others.
After the first few weeks of Anne's reign, Shaftesbury, who had been deprived of the vice-admiralty of Dorset, returned to his retired life, but his letters to Furly show that he retained a keen interest in politics.
Although he retained his studentship at Christ Church, and occasionally visited Oxford, as well as his patrimony at Belluton, he found a home and shared fortune with Shaftesbury for fifteen years.
Although there are traces of both British and Roman occupation in the immediate neighbourhood, the site of Shaftesbury (Car Palladur, Car Septon, Seaftonia, Sceafstesbyrig, Shafton) was probably first occupied in Saxon times.
Among these may be especially mentioned Michael Ainsworth, a native of Wimborne St Giles, the young man who was the recipient of the Letters addressed to a student at the university, and was maintained by Shaftesbury at University College, Oxford.
An attempt was made by this official to put a stop to the English missions by violence; but the report of his conduct led to so much indignation in Australia and in England that the emperor Napoleon, on receipt of a protest from Lord Shaftesbury and others, caused a commission of inquiry to be appointed and free liberty of worship to be secured to the Protestant missions.
And, above all, it should not be forgotten, in justice to Shaftesbury's memory, that "during his long political career, in an age of general corruption, he was ever incorrupt, and never grasped either money or land."
Anne Ridley of Shaftesbury repeated her performance of last year to be first lady home - in 15th place overall.
Anti-Catholic feeling ran so high that, after the discovery of the Popish Plot, he found it wiser to retire to Brussels (1679), while Shaftesbury and the Whigs planned to exclude him from the succession.
Arguing that ethical judgment is an act of discrimination, he endeavours to invalidate the doctrine of the moral sense (see Shaftesbury and Hutcheson).
At Shaftesbury's instance he was placed in command of the army employed in 1675 against the Scottish Covenanters, and was present at Bothwell Bridge (June 22, 1679).
Being the husband of the duke of Yorks daughter, he had an understanding in this country with Sunderland, Godolphin and Templea party whose success was retarded for several years by the intrigues of Shaftesbury.
Besides the published writings, there are several memoranda, letters, rough drafts, &c., in the Shaftesbury papers in the Record Office.
But virtue, in Shaftesbury's view, is something more; it implies a recognition of moral goodness and immediate preference of it for its own sake.
But, whatever might be Shaftesbury's speculative opinions or his mode of expressing them, all witnesses bear testimony to the elevation and purity of his life and aims. As an earnest student, and ardent lover of liberty, an enthusiast in the cause of virtue, and a man of unblemished life and untiring beneficence,, Shaftesbury probably had no superior in his generation.
Butler fully admits this, and, in fact, grounds on it an important criticism of Shaftesbury.
By the advice of Temple, Charles now tried the experiment of forming a new privy council in which the chief members of the opposition were included, and Shaftesbury was made president, with a salary of £4000, being also a member of the committee for foreign affairs.
Charles dissolved the parliament in January 1681, declaring that he would never give his consent to the Exclusion Bill, and summoned another at Oxford, which met there on the 21st of March 1681, Shaftesbury's faction arriving accompanied by armed bands.
Charles soon regretted the loss of Shaftesbury, and endeavoured, as did also Louis, to induce him to return, but in vain.
Chicheley was parson of Sherston, Wiltshire, and prebendary of Nantgwyly in the college of Abergwilly, North Wales; on the 23rd of February 1401/2, now called doctor of laws, he was pardoned for bringing in, and allowed to use, a bull of the pope " providing " him to the chancellorship of Salisbury cathedral, and canenries in the nuns' churches of Shaftesbury and Wilton in that diocese; and on the 9th of January 1402/3 he was archdeacon of Salisbury.
Cowper-Temple, afterwards Baron Mount Temple, and then to her grandson Evelyn Ashley (1836-1907) son of her daughter, who married the 7th earl of Shaftesbury - who was Lord Palmerston's private secretary from 1858 to 1865.
Denison, archdeacon of Taunton, Lord Shaftesbury, and others formed a strong committee of protest, whilst Pusey declared that "the choice was the most frightful enormity ever perpetrated by a prime minister."
Every attempt, however, was henceforth made, especially by Shaftesbury, to accustom people to this idea, and his position was emphasized by James's second marriage, with the Roman Catholic princess Mary of Modena.
Evidence was given by an informer that, while at Shaftesbury's hiding-place in Wapping, Russell had joined in the proposal to seize the king's guard, a charge indignantly denied by him in his farewell paper, and that he was one of a committee of six appointed to prepare the scheme for an insurrection.
Ferguson was deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot, although he asserted that he had frustrated both this and a subsequent attempt to assassinate the king, and he fled to Holland with Shaftesbury in 1682, returning to England early in 1683.
Few politicians have been the mark of such abuse as Shaftesbury.
Finally, Price, writing after the demonstration by Shaftesbury and Butler of the actuality of disinterested impulses in human nature, is bolder and clearer than Cudworth or Clarke in insisting that right actions are to be chosen because they are right by virtuous agents as such, even going so far as to lay down that an act loses its moral worth in proportion as it is done from natural inclination.
For some the belief in future rewards and punishments was an essential of religion; some seem to have questioned the doctrine as a whole; and, while others made it a basis of morality, Shaftesbury protested against the ordinary theological form of the belief as immoral.
From these results we see that Shaftesbury, opposed to Hobbes and Locke, is in close agreement with Hutcheson, and that he is ultimately a deeply religious thinker, inasmuch as he discards the moral sanction of public opinion, the terrors of future punishment, the authority' of the civil authority, as the main incentives to goodness, and substitutes the voice of conscience and the love of God.
Had the king's life continued, Shaftesbury's influence at court would probably have been considerable.
He even made overtures to Shaftesbury in November 1679, but the latter insisted on the departure of both the queen and James.
He first follows Shaftesbury in exhibiting the social affections as no less natural than the appetites and desires which tend directly to self-preservation; then reviving the Stoic view of the prima naturae, the first objects of natural appetites, he argues that pleasure is not the primary aim even of the impulses which Shaftesbury allowed to be " self-affections "; but rather a result which follows upon their attaining their natural ends.
He makes an interesting addition to our conception of Shaftesbury's place in English politics, by insisting on his position as the first great party leader in the modern sense, and as the founder of modern parliamentary oratory.
He took an active part in the controversy over the Exclusion Bill, and claimed to be the author of the whole of the pamphlet "No Protestant Plot" (1681), parts of which are usually ascribed to Shaftesbury.
He was now rewarded by being made earl of Shaftesbury and Baron Cooper of Pawlett by a patent dated the 23rd of April 1672.
He was released on bail, and in February 1683, after the flight and death of Shaftesbury, he openly broke the implied conditions of his bail by paying a third visit to Chichester with Lord Grey and others on pretence of a hunting expedition.
Hermann Hettner says that not only Leibnitz, Voltaire and Diderot, but Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland and Herder, drew the most stimulating nutriment from Shaftesbury.
If this view of his optimism be correct, Shaftesbury, as Mill says of Leibnitz, must be regarded as maintaining, not that this is the best of all imaginable but only of all possible worlds.
In 1001 Æthelred gave this monastery and the town of Bradford to the nunnery of Shaftesbury, in order that the nuns might have a safe refuge against the insults of the Danes.
In 1001 Æthelred gave this monastery and the town of Bradford to the nunnery of Shaftesbury, in order that the nuns might have a safe refuge against the insults of the Danes.
In 1086 the abbey of Shaftesbury held the manor, which afterwards passed to the Norman kings, who raised the castle.
In 1669 he married Rachel (1636-1723), second daughter of the 4th earl of Southampton, and widow of Lord Vaughan, thus becoming connected with Shaftesbury, who had married Southampton's niece.
In 1682, however, Charles secured the appointment of Tory sheriffs for London; and, as the juries were chosen by the sheriffs, Shaftesbury felt that he was no longer safe from the vengeance of the court.
In 1769 a French translation of the whole of Shaftesbury's works, including the Letters, was published at Geneva.
In 1833 Lord Ashley, better known as Lord Shaftesbury, had carried the first important Factory Act.
In April 1673 he was appointed lord privy seal, and was disappointed at not obtaining the great seal the same year on the removal of Shaftesbury.
In April, upon the king's declaration that he was resolved to send for James from Scotland, Shaftesbury advised the popular leaders at once to leave the council, and they followed his advice.
In class (2) he includes, besides the Benevolence of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, the useful virtues, Justice, Veracity and Fidelity to compacts; as well as such immediately agreeable qualities as politeness, wit, modesty and even cleanliness.
In his letters and otherwise we have pleasant pictures of its inmates and domestic life and the occasional visits of his friends, among others Lord Peterborough, Lord Shaftesbury of the Characteristics, Sir Isaac Newton, William Molyneux and Anthony Collins.
In his resistance to the great movement for the exclusion of James from the succession, Charles was aided by moderate men such as Halifax, who desired only a restriction of James's powers, and still more by the violence of the extreme exclusionists themselves, who headed by Shaftesbury brought about their own downfall and that of their cause by their support of the legitimacy and claims of Charles's natural son, the duke of Monmouth.
In June Shaftesbury applied for a writ of habeas corpus, but could get no release until the 26th of February 1678, after his letter and three petitions to the king.
In October 1679, the circumstances which led Charles to desire to conciliate the opposition having ceased, Shaftesbury was dismissed from his presidency and from the privy council; when applied to by Sunderland to return to office he made as conditions the divorce of the queen and the exclusion of James.
In pursuance of his patronage of Monmouth, Shaftesbury now secured for him the command of the army sent to suppress the insurrection in Scotland, which he is supposed to have fomented.
In the end Shaftesbury was committed to the Tower, tried and acquitted.
In the ethical discussion of Shaftesbury and sentimental moralists generally this question drops naturally out of sight; and the cautious Butler tries to exclude its perplexities as far as possible from the philosophy of practice.
In the manor of the abbess of Shaftesbury were 111 houses and 151 burgesses; here 42 houses had been totally destroyed since St Edward's reign.
In the popular mind, Shaftesbury is generally regarded as a writer hostile to religion.
In the protest against the scheme of "judging truth by counting noses," Shaftesbury recognized the danger of the standard which seemed to satisfy many deists; and in almost every respect he has more in common with those who afterwards, in Germany, annihilated the pretensions of complacent rationalism than with the rationalists themselves.
In the wild schemes of Shaftesbury after the election of Tory sheriffs for London in 1682 he had no share; upon the violation of the charters, however, in 1683, he began seriously to consider as to the best means of resisting the government, and on one occasion attended a meeting at which treason, or what might be construed as treason, was talked.
In these two years Locke was much at Oxford and in Somerset, for the later movements of Shaftesbury did not commend themselves to him.
It is at the very northern end of Shaftesbury Avenue just south of the junction with New Oxford Street.
It is probable that Monmouth never went so far as to think of armed rebellion; but there is little doubt that he had talked over schemes likely to lead to this, and that Shaftesbury had gone farther still.
It may have been dictated by Shaftesbury.
It was at the opening of parliament that Shaftesbury made his celebrated "delenda est Carthago" speech against Holland, in which he urged the Second Dutch War, on the ground of the necessity of destroying so formidable a commercial rival to England, excused the Stop of the Exchequer which he had opposed, and vindicated the Declaration of Indulgence.
Leland speaks of Shaftesbury as a great market town, and it possessed a market in the time of Edward I.
Letters from Locke to Thoynard, Limborch, Le Clerc, Guenellon, Molyneux, Collins, Sir Isaac Newton, the first and the third Lord Shaftesbury, Lords Peterborough and Pembroke, Clarke of Chipley and others are preserved, many of them unpublished, most of them in the keeping of Lord Lovelace at Horseley Towers, and of Mr Sanford at Nynehead in Somerset, or in the British Museum.
Lord Ashley, afterwards first earl of Shaftesbury, had come to Oxford for his health.
Mandeville's ironical paradoxes are interesting mainly as a criticism of the "amiable" idealism of Shaftesbury, and in comparison with the serious egoistic systems of Hobbes and Helvetius.
Meanwhile the " Popish Plot," the creation of a band of impostors encouraged by Shaftesbury and the most violent and unscrupulous of the extreme Protestant party in order to exclude James from the throne, had thrown the whole country into a panic. Charles's conduct in this conjuncture was highly characteristic and was marked by his usual cynical selfishness.
Moral goodness, then, in a " sensible creature " implies primarily disinterested affections, whose direct object is the good of others; but Shaftesbury does not mean (as he has been misunderstood to mean) that only such benevolent social impulses are good, and that these are always good.
More certain, and also more striking, is the fact that the leading statesmen in the American War of Independence were emphatically deists; Benjamin Franklin (who attributes his position to the study of Shaftesbury and Collins), Thomas Paine, Washington and Jefferson, although they all had the greatest admiration for the New Testament story, denied that it was based on any supernatural revelation.
Moreover, the substance of Shaftesbury's main argument was adopted by Butler, though it could not pass the scrutiny of that powerful and cautious intellect without receiving important modifications and additions.
Most of Shaftesbury's writings have been already mentioned.
Much of Shaftesbury's career, increasingly so as it came near its close, is incapable of defence; but it has escaped most of his critics that his life up to the Restoration, apparently full of inconsistencies, was evidently guided by one leading principle, the determination to uphold the supremacy of parliament, a principle which, however obscured by self-interest, appears also to have underlain his whole political career.
Next year, 1362, he entered holy orders, being ordained subdeacon on the 12th of March and priest on the 12th of June; and adding to his canonries and prebends one in Shaftesbury Abbey on the r 5th of July and another in Lincoln cathedral on the 10th of August.
No mention of the monastery occurs after the Conquest, but the nunnery of Shaftesbury retained the lordship of the manor until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII.
No two thinkers could well be more opposed than Shaftesbury and Hobbes; yet sometimes ideas from both were combined by the same writer.
Of the so-called deists Shaftesbury was probably the most important, as he was certainly the most plausible and the most respectable.
On the 15th of November the Exclusion Bill, having passed the Commons, was brought up to the Lords, and an historic debate took place, in which Halifax and Shaftesbury were the leaders on opposite sides.
On the 17th of November Shaftesbury moved in the House of Lords for a divorce to enable the king to marry a Protestant and have legitimate issue; but he received little support, and the bill was opposed by Charles, who continued to show his wife "extraordinary affection."
On the 6th of June he accompanied Shaftesbury, when the latter indicted James at Westminster as a popish recusant; and on the 26th of October he took the extreme step of moving "how to suppress popery and prevent a popish successor"; while on the 2nd of November, now at the height of his influence, he went still further by seconding the motion for exclusion in its most emphatic shape, and on the 19th carried the bill to the House of Lords for their concurrence.
On the other hand, the ethical optimism of Shaftesbury, rather broadly impressive than exactly reasoned, and connected as it was with a natural theology that implied the Christian scheme to be superfluous, challenged attack equally from orthodox divines and from cynical freethinkers.
On the pivot of this distinction Hutcheson turns round from the point of view of Shaftesbury to that of later utilitarianism.
Reaction against the court party had restored Shaftesbury to power.
Robertson, Pioneer Humanists (1907); P. Sakmann, Bernard de Mandeville and die Bienenfabel-Controverse (Freiburg i/Br., 1897), and compare articles Ethics, Shaftesbury, Hobbes.
Secondly, the emotional element of the moral consciousness, on which attention had been concentrated by Shaftesbury and his followers, though distinctly recognized as accompanying the intellectual intuition, is carefully subordinated to it.
See Charles Hubert Mayo, The Municipal Records of the Borough of Shaftesbury (Sherborne, 1889).
See Ethics; also Butler, Joseph; and compare the "moral sense" doctrine of Shaftesbury.
Shaftesbury had assiduously kept alive the anti-popery agitation, and Monmouth, as the champion of Protestantism, was received with every sign of popular delight.
Shaftesbury had conclusively shown that these were not in the vulgar sense selfish; but the very stress which he lays on the pleasure inseparable from their exercise suggests a subtle egoistic theory which he does not expressly exclude, since it may be said that this " intrinsic reward " constitutes the real motive of the benevolent man.
Shaftesbury had meanwhile ineffectually warned the king that unless he followed his advice there would be no peace with the people.
Shaftesbury returned two members to parliament from '2 9 4 to 1832, when the representation was reduced to one, and it was lost in 1885.
Shaftesbury took great pains in the elaboration of his style, and he succeeded so far as to make his meaning transparent.
Shaftesbury vigorously protests against the notion of a wholly transcendent God.
Shaftesbury was a borough containing 104 houses in the king's demesne during the reign of Edward the Confessor; in 1086, 38 houses had been destroyed, but it was still the seat of a mint with three mint-masters.
Shaftesbury was attacked, but was saved for the time by a favouring jury.
Shaftesbury was imprisoned, and though the Middlesex jury threw out his indictment and he was liberated, he never recovered his power, and in October 1682 left England for ever.
Shaftesbury was nearly forty before he married, and even then he appears to have taken this step at the urgent instigation of his friends, mainly to supply a successor to the title.
Shaftesbury was the first great party leader in the modern sense, and the founder of modern parliamentary oratory.
Shaftesbury, dealing with matters for the most part different from those usually handled by the deists, stands almost wholly out of their ranks.
Shaftesbury, with fifteen other peers, petitioned the king that it might as usual be held in the capital.
Shaftesbury's amiability of character seems to have been one of his principal characteristics.
Shaftesbury's philosophical activity was confined to ethics, aesthetics and religion.
Shaftesbury's philosophical importance (see Ethics) is due mainly to his ethical speculations, in which his motive was primarily the ref utaticn of Hobbes's egoistic doctrine.
Some years later, having gained meanwhile a reputation as a theological controversialist and become a person of importance among the Nonconformists, he attracted the notice of the earl of Shaftesbury and the party which favoured the exclusion of the duke of York (afterwards King James II.) from the throne, and he began to write political pamphlets just at the time when the feeling against the Roman Catholics was at its height.
Still acting under Shaftesbury's advice, Monmouth now went upon the first of his progresses in the west of England, visiting the chief members of the country party, and gaining by his open and engaging manner much popularity among the people.
The appearance of Shaftesbury's Characteristics (1713) marks a turning-point in the history of English ethical thought.
The articles of Shaftesbury's religious creed were few and simple, but these he entertained with a conviction amounting to enthusiasm.
The bill was shelved, a prorogation having taken place in consequence of a quarrel between the two Houses, supposed to have been purposely got up by Shaftesbury, in which he supported the right of the Lords to hear appeal cases, even where the defendant was a member of the Lower House.
The bill was thrown out, and Shaftesbury signed the protest against its rejection.
The breaking out of the Popish Terror in 1678 marks the worst part of Shaftesbury's career.
The church of St Mary contains a chapel dedicated to St Edward, commemorating that Edward who was murdered at Corfe Castle in this neighbourhood, whose body lay here before its removal to Shaftesbury.
The circus of Seven Dials, east of Shaftesbury Avenue, affords a typical name in connexion with the lowest aspect of life in London.
The declining state of Shaftesbury's health rendered it necessary for him to seek a warmer climate, and in July 1711 he set out for Italy.
The emotional and the rational elements in the "moral sense" Shaftesbury did not fully analyse (see Hume).
The events preceding the peace of Utrecht, which he regarded as preparing the way for a base desertion of our allies, greatly troubled the last months of Shaftesbury's life.
The fact is that amid the analysis of feelings aroused by the sentimentalism of Shaftesbury's school, the fundamental questions " What is right ?
The fall of Shaftesbury in 1675 enabled Locke to escape from English politics.
The former, while accepting utility as the criterion of " material goodness," had adhered to Shaftesbury's view that dispositions, not results of action, were the proper object of moral approval; at the same time, while giving to benevolence the first place in his account of personal merit, he had shrunk from the paradox of treating it as the sole virtue, and had added a rather undefined and unexplained train of qualities, - veracity, fortitude, activity, industry, sagacity, - immediately approved in various degrees by the " moral sense " or the " sense of dignity."
The further development of theological utilitarianism was conditioned by opposition to the Moral Sense doctrine of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson.
The idea of securing the Protestant succession by legitimizing Monmouth again took shape and was eagerly pressed on by Shaftesbury; at the time it seemed possible that success would wait on the audacity.
The identification is slightly qualified in Hutcheson's posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy (1755), in which the general view of Shaftesbury is more fully developed, with several new psychological distinctions, including Butler's, separation of " calm " benevolence - as well as, after Butler, " calm self-love " - from the " turbulent " passions, selfish or social.
The influence of Shaftesbury's writings was considerable both at home and abroad.
The interest felt by German literary men in Shaftesbury was revived by the publication of two excellent monographs, one dealing with him mainly from the theological side by Dr Gideon Spicker (Freiburg in Baden, 1872), the other dealing with him mainly from the philosophical side by Dr Georg von Gizycki (Leipzig, 1876).
The interest which Shaftesbury took in his studies, and the desire that he should be specially fitted for the profession which he had selected, that of a clergyman of the Church of England, are marked features of the letters.
The king's advisers now urged him to arrest Shaftesbury; he was seized on the 2nd of July 1681, and committed to the Tower, the judges refusing his petition to be tried or admitted to bail.
The match appears to have been happy, though Shaftesbury had little sentiment on the subject of married life.
The meeting of roads from Bath, Frome, Shaftesbury and Salisbury made Warminster a busy coaching centre.
The opening of the thoroughfares of New Oxford Street (1840) and Shaftesbury Avenue (1855) by no means wholly destroyed the character of the district.
The party opposed to Monmouth, or rather to Shaftesbury, easily prevailed upon Charles to consent to his brother's temporary return.
The passing of the act was largely due to the experience and energy of Lord Shaftesbury, after whom it was for some time called.
The place he held as Shaftesbury's adviser is indeed the outstanding circumstance in his middle life.
The present parish church of St Giles in the Fields, between Shaftesbury Avenue and New Oxford Street, dates from 1734, but here was situated a leper's hospital founded by Matilda, wife of Henry I., in i ioi.
The principal London theatres lie between Piccadilly and Temple Bar, and High Holborn and Victoria Street, the majority being in Shaftesbury Avenue, the Haymarket, the neighbourhood of Charing Cross and the Strand.
The principal music halls (variety theatres) are in Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and the Strand.
The question of the succession was now again prominent, and Shaftesbury, in opposition to Halifax, committed the error, which really brought about his fall, of putting forward Monmouth as his nominee, thus alienating a large number of his supporters; he encouraged, too, the belief that this was agreeable to the king.
The result was that Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Wharton and Salisbury were sent to the Tower.
The second Lord Shaftesbury appears to have been a poor creature, both physically and mentally.
The Shaftesbury connexion must have helped to save Locke from those idols of the " Den " to which professional life and narrow experience is exposed.
The Test Act was now brought forward, and Shaftesbury, who appears to have heard how he had been duped in 1670, supported it, with the object probably of thereby getting rid of Clifford.
There is another side of Shaftesbury's harmony which Butler was ultimately led to oppose in a more decided manner, - the opposition, namely, between conscience or the moral sense and the social affections.
There is no evidence that Elizabeth granted Shaftesbury a charter, as has been asserted, but she confiscated the common lands in 1585, the town only recovering them by purchase.
These evil tendencies in the popular presentation of Christianity undoubtedly begot in Shaftesbury's mind a certain amount of repugnance and contempt to some of the doctrines of Christianity itself; and, cultivating, almost of set purpose, his sense of the ridiculous, he was too apt to assume towards such doctrines and their teachers a tone of raillery.
These exceptions are the Byerly Turk, who was " Captain Byerly's charger in Ireland in King William's wars (1689, &c.)," and a horse called Counsellor, bred by Mr Egerton in 1694, by Lord D'Arcy's Counsellor by Lord Lonsdale's Counsellor by the Shaftesbury Turk out of sister to Spanker - all the dams in Counsellor's pedigree tracing back to Eastern mares.
This being established, the main aim of Shaftesbury's argument is to prove that the same balance of private and social affections, which tends naturally to public good, is also conducive to the happiness of the individual in whom it exists.
This doctrine of the moral sense is sometimes represented as Shaftesbury's cardinal tenet; but though characteristic and important, it is not really necessary to his main argument; it is the crown rather than the keystone of his ethical structure.
This fruitful conception of man's ethical nature as an organic unity Butler owes directly to Shaftesbury and indirectly to Aristotle; it is the strength and clearness with which he has grasped it that gives peculiar value to his system.
This granted that in all eyres the justices itinerant should come to Shaftesbury and that the burgesses should not answer for aught without the town and might choose for themselves two coroners annually.
This is the line of thought which Shaftesbury (1671-1713) may be said to have initiated.
This theory had already been advanced by Cumberland and others, but Shaftesbury was the first to make it the cardinal point in his system; no one had yet definitely transferred the centre of ethical interest from the Reason, conceived as apprehending either abstract moral distinctions or laws of divine legislation, for the emotional impulses that prompt to social duty; no one had undertaken to distinguish clearly, by analysis of experience, the disinterested and self-regarding elements of our appetitive nature, or to prove inductively their perfect harmony.
Though his fame has become dimmed in comparison with that of Shaftesbury, Russell and Sidney, he was not less conspicuous in the parliamentary proceedings of Charles II.'s reign, and he left a more permanent mark than any of them on the constitutional changes of the period.
Thus, by the criterion of harmony, Shaftesbury refutes Hobbes, and deduces the virtue of benevolence as indispensable to morality.
To Clarendon now succeeded the ministry of Buckingham and Arlington, who with Lauderdale, Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury) and Clifford, constituted the so-called Cabal ministry in 1672.
To Kant's lectures and conversations he further owed something of his large interest in cosmological and anthropological problems. Among the writers whom he most carefully read were Plato, Hume, Shaftesbury, Leibnitz, Diderot and Rousseau.
Various repressive remedies were proposed, but Shaftesbury maintained that fanaticism was best encountered by "raillery" and "good-humour."
When Shaftesbury wrote that "religion is still a discipline, and progress of the soul towards perfection," he gave birth to the same thought that was afterwards hailed in Lessing's Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes as the dawn of a fuller and a purer light on the history of religion and on the development of the spiritual life of mankind.
Whether, however, these were taken immediately by Pope from Shaftesbury, or whether they came to him through the papers which Bolingbroke had prepared for his use, we have no means of determining.
While returning from one of these missions, in the winter before the Restoration, he was arrested at Dover and committed a prisoner to Lambeth Palace, then used as a gaol for apprehended royalists, but was liberated after confinement of a few weeks at the instance, among others, of Lord Shaftesbury.
While thus maintaining Shaftesbury's "harmony" between public and private good, Hutcheson is still more careful to establish the strict disinterestedness of benevolent affections.
With the exception of a Preface to the Sermons of Dr Whichcote, one of the Cambridge Platonists or latitudinarians, published in 1698, Shaftesbury appears to have printed nothing himself till 1708.