England, 1759-1794
Thomas Cooper was born in London, England on October 22, 1759. He was sent to University College in Oxford where he qualified himself for the bachelor's degree but apparently he did not take it. He is said to have refused to recite the Apostle's Creed and subscribe to the Thirtynine Articles, perhaps an early reflection of his passion. At the University he had begun to cultivate acquaintances with leaders of thought and opinion. About 1781 he made the acquaintance of the eminent scientist and Unitarian divine, Joseph Priestly, by whose influence he, like many other young men, was inspired with interest in scientific, theological, and political investigation and inquiry.
Cooper was married in St. Georges Parish, on August 12, 1779, to Alice Greenwood, daughter of a man prominent in the shipping business. After his marriage it appeared that Cooper wished to follow the medical profession, although his father pushed for him to pursue law. In the summer of 1780 he attended a course of anatomical lectures where he elarned "how the meanest and most trifling articles might be employed under the direction of scientific skill."
His earliest published work was called Arguments in Favor of Reform in the Representation of People which illustrated one of the chief interests of his life, popular freedom. After publication, he was proposed as an honorary member of the Manchester Literary and Philoshical Society, of which Benjamin Rush was a member.
Later in 1787 he was admitted into the bar after years of study. For the next several years Cooper used his scientific knowledge in chemistry and founded (with his friend Joseph Baker) Baker and Company, which dealt with cotton manufacturing.
Perhaps the most memorable act of Cooper's whole life in England was a trip to Paris in March, 1792 with his young friend James Watt. He observed and studied the methods of the French manufacturers, particularly those making use of chemicals. Here he also became thriled with the enthusiasm and great aims of the French Revolution. Also in France he met with members of the controversial Jacobin Club.
Upon his return to England in 1792, Cooper was caught in a unique situation. The effort to bring about a constitutional reform in England had come to a head in Parliament. Cooper and Watt were bitterly denounced as "ambassadors extraordinary" to "that infamous band of regicides, the Jacobin Club", and was charged that they plotted to spread their detestable doctrines though a federation of the people of England and those of France.
Cooper relied by attacking both his accuser (Burke) and the English government. In attacking Burke, he said "Boldly rejecting the mask of hypocrisy, he stands forward to the world as the public professor of political turpitude, the systematic opposer of any measure of reform, and, in love with the very sinfulness of sin, he unblushingly obtrudes himself on the disgusted eye of the public in all the nakedness and deformity of political vice."
In attacking the English government, Cooper ventured on to attack the hereditary system of the monarchy and the nobility on the ground of the lack of hereditary qualities, their pride and selfishness, and their tendency to live luxurious lives of idleness and immortality. They are "encumbances, absurd, useless, dangerous, and unjust." He praised the American government by showing that the annual cost to the English people of maintaining their governmental system is more than 25,000,000 pounds while in America is costs just $600,000. "The American republicans have taught us that nations may flourish and be happy with no bishops, no nobles, no kings." He claimed that a standing army is useless and a menace to popular liberty.
In 1792 Cooper republished his Propositions Respecting the Foundations of Civil Government in which he showed his disillusionment with the idea of female inferiority: "Since these publications were first published I have repeatedly considered the subject of the rights of women of the political superiority so generally arrogated to the male sex which will not equally apply to any system of despotism of man over man...we educate women from infancy to marriage in such a way as to debilitate both their corporeal and mental powers. All their accomplishments we teach them are directed not to their future benefit in life, but to the amusement of the male sex...we say they are not fit to govern themselves, and arrogate the right of making them slaves through life."
Disappointments
The bleaching business turned out badly. The political notoriety attached to his name injured him with his scientific friends and resulted in his rejection in the Royal Society by a vote of 24-20. Cooper's name was often mentioned in a series of prosecutions of conspiracy against the government. However, the biggest disappointment in Cooper's life (and in the lives of thousands of young Englishmen) was the degeneration of the French Revolution, for which Cooper had been influenced so much by. England fell into a hopeless conservatism and is no wonder that Cooper began thinking about leaving England for America.
Leaving England
In February 1793, Cooper and Priestly engineered a plan in which they would establish a colony of republican Englishmen somewhere in the unsettled interior parts of the United States. The location was hopefully going to be a "rallying-point of the English who...would be more happy in society of the kind they had been accustomed to. It was further thought, that by the union of industry and capital, the wilderness would soon become cultivated, and equal to any other part of the country in everything necesary to the enjoyment of life." In June 1793, Cooper, with members of his own family and members of the Priestly family, went on a prospecting trip to America to look for a suitable site, evaluate prices, and ascertain all the necessary information for the Colonists. They found a site, about 300,000 acres, near the head of the Susquehanna River about 50 miles from Northumberland.
Cooper returned to England in February, 1794. However, Cooper was very secretive of his movements; fearing the danger that he might be prosecuted for conspiracy against the English government. Cooper attended the trial of his friend, Thomas Walker, early in April 1794. Shortly after the trial Cooper returned to America. He never returned to England.
