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THOMAS COOPER. 715

drifted to metaphysics, from metaphysies he passed to pol-
ities, and in polities made himself so unpopular in England
that he emigrated to the United States. Here he began the
practice of law, but, though an earnest Republican, a scholar
and a man of unquestionable ability, his elienta were few,
and he found himself under the necessity of seeking a gov-
ernment place. In 1797 the office of agent for American
claims under the English treaty was vacant. His friend Dr.

previons oath, and then committing the constables who refused to
serve them; with insisting in one ease in examining under oath, a
prisoner charged with crime, as to bis own guilt; with sending pri-
vate notes to juries in criminal cases, tending to extract a verdict
of guilty; with earting a Luzerne conviet to the Philadelphia prison,
a thing not then provided for, which ended in the convict being
kept in abeyanes by the Philadelphia jailer, who refused to receive
him, and the court who refused to take him back, thereby, under
this new ambulatory commitment, withdrawing the sheriff from his
public duties; and with brow-beating counsel, witnesses and parties,
i cases so Numerous as to make their recapitulation cover three
pages. The Presbyterian and Quaker professions, he waa charged
with declaring in open court, to be ‘all damned hypocrisy and non-
sense;’ and divera specifications were given of illegal interference
on his part in the profits of eases before him, and of private spee-
ulations in interests which were to pass under his adjndication. On
Feb, 21, 1811, these charges having been formally laid before the
Pennsylvania House of Representatives, were referred to a com-
mittee, who two days afterwards reported, that the evidence pro-
duced before them sufficiently substantiated the epecifieations of
passionate and oppressive judicial bearing, leaving, however, the
accusation of pecalation without any further basis than that af-
forded by an imprudent purchase of certain property, sold at sher-
iffs sale under process from the court, a transaction which, though
clear from any moral stain, the committee thought to be of doubtfal
propriety and dangerous precedent. They submitted, in eonclusion,
@ resolution, ‘that a committee be appointed to draft_an address to
the Governor for the removal of Thomas Cooper, Faq. from the
offite of President Judge of the eighth judicial district of Pennsyl-
vania.’ . . . The Governor removed him.

“Mr. Cooper's fine chemical acquirements, which, during all the
storms of his eventful life, had never been submerged, now gave
him a safe retreat, He was first placed in a philosophieal profe
sorship in Dickinson’s College, and afterwards in a highly honor-
able post in the University of Pennsylvania, which he finally aban-
doned for the chemical chair in Columbia College, South Carolina,
of whieh he soon became president. In the nollifieation atrnggle he
took a bold part, isauing documents of the most ultra States’ rights

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