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Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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Bust of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, by F. Winter, 1886. In the collection of Dorset County museum, Dorchester.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885)[1], styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was an English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era.
Born in London, he was educated at Harrow School and Christ Church, Oxford. He became a Tory MP (Member of Parliament) in 1826, and almost immediately became a leader of the movement for factory reform. He was largely responsible for the Factory Acts of 1847 and 1853, as well as the Coal Mines Act of 1842 and the Lunacy Act 1845. One of his chief interests was the welfare of children, and he was chairman of the Ragged Schools Union and a keen supporter of Florence Nightingale.
Shaftesbury was a proponent of restoration, as the idea of returning the Jews to the Land of Israel was then known among Christians. Muhammad Ali’s conquest of Greater Syria (1831) changed the conditions under which European power politics operated in the Near East. As a consequence of that shift, Shaftesbury was able to help persuade Foreign Minister Palmerston to send a British consul to Jerusalem in 1838. A committed Christian and a loyal Englishman, Shaftesbury argued for a Jewish return because of what he saw as the political and economic advantages to England and because he believed that it was God’s will.
The lead-up to the Crimean War (1854), like the military expansionism of Muhammad Ali two decades earlier, signaled an opening for realignments in the Near East. In July 1853, Shaftesbury wrote to Prime Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was “a country without a nation” in need of “a nation without a country… Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” In his diary that year he wrote “these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other… There is a country without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country.” [2] [3] This is commonly cited as an early use of the phrase, "A land without a people for a people without a land." Shaftesbury was echoing another British proponent of the restoration of the Jews to Israel, Alexander Keith, D.D..
The Shaftesbury Memorial in Piccadilly Circus, London, erected in 1893, was designed to commemorate his philanthropic works. The Memorial is crowned by Alfred Gilbert's aluminium statue of Anteros as a nude, butterfly-winged archer. This is officially titled The Angel of Christian Charity, but has become popularly, if mistakenly, known as Eros. The use of a nude figure on a public monument was controversial at the time, but the statue has become a London icon and appears on the masthead of the Evening Standard. Lord Shaftesbury married Lady Emily Caroline Catherine Frances Cowper (d. 15 October 1872), daughter of Peter Cowper, 5th Earl Cowper, on 10 June 1830. They had ten children as cited in "The Seventh Earl" By Grace Irwin:
References
- ^ "thePeerage.com". Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
- ^ Shaftsbury as cited in Hyamson, Albert, “British Projects for the Restoration of Jews to Palestine,” American Jewish Historical Society, Publications 26, 1918 p. 140
- ^ Garfinkle, Adam M., “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase.” Middle Eastern Studies, London, Oct. 1991, vol. 27
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