Thomas Cooper (October 22, 1759May 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. Later in life, Cooper became an ardent and outspoken defender of slavery, and personally owned several slaves. Early life in Europe Cooper was born in Westminster, England. He attended University College, Oxford, matriculating in 1779, but did not graduate, supposedly refusing the religious test. He then qualified as a barrister being admitted to the Inner Temple in 1779 and called to the bar in 1787. He also studied medicine and the natural sciences. He travelled the Northern Circuit practising as a barrister from 1788-1790. 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. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1802. In the rapid developments stemming from the French Revolution, Cooper was sent to Paris in 1792 with James Watt Jr., by the Constitutional Society of Manchester. They travelled with an introduction from Walker to political circles through Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, and another