Edward Copleston, 1776-1849.

English cleric, theologian and logician at Oriel College, Oxford, Edward Copleston may be regarded as the founding father of the "Oxford-Dublin School".

By all accounts, Edward Copleston was a man of prodigious talents and wide interests. Copleston graduated from Corpus Christi College and was subsequently elected fellow at Oriel College, Oxford in 1795.  He obtained his M.A. and a tutorship at Oriel in 1797. Oriel was then under John Eveleigh (Provost of Oriel from 1781 to 1814).  Copleston was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1802 to 1812, and wrote, during this time, his famous "Advice to a Young Reviewer", a satire on English literary criticism, published as a pamphlet in 1807.  He also wrote another satirical piece, "The Examiner Examined" in 1809 skewering Robert Kett's elementary book on logic.  In 1814, Copleston succeeded Eveleigh as provost of Oriel, a position he held until 1827, when he became Bishop of Llandalf in Wales.

Under Copleston's tutelage, Oriel College became arguably the most intellectually-accomplished (and ambitious) college at the University of Oxford.  Copleston mentored a generation of fellows and students at Oriel known as the "Noetics" (Greek for "reasoners"), that flourished in the 1810s and 1820s, which included John Davison, Richard Whately, Edward Hawkins, Renn Dickson Hampden, Thomas Arnold, Baden Powell,  J. Blanco White and others. Oriel Noetics acquired (and cultivated) a reputation as hyper-intellectuals, the leading lights of the university. They also constituted the Oxford branch of the "Broad Church" movement, promoting liberal theology and freedom of enquiry, which often stood in stark contrast to the stuffy conservative "High Church" Tory outlook that dominated much of the university at the time. The future leaders of the ultra-conservative Oxford Movement ("the Tractarians"), notably John Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey and Hurrell Froude, were cultivated at Oriel during Copleston's tenure, but later (1830s) revolted against the liberal outlook Copleston had promoted.

Copleston was an accomplished Aristotlean scholar and logician and promoted the centrality of logic in the Oxford curriculum (Copleston's lectures and notes on logic, ostensibly inspired by Dugald Stewart's "philosophy of the mind", were the basis of Whately's later work).  In 1808 and 1809, three articles appeared in the Edinburgh Review  which questioned the value of Aristotlean logic and classical learning in the Oxford curriculum, at the expense of modern subjects, notably mathematics and political economy (the most vigorous attack was identified to be authored by Sydney Smith, himself a graduate of New College, Oxford). Copleston's combative Reply to the Calumnies (1810) can be considered the "Noetic manifesto", defending the centrality and usefulness of logic. It also set out the attitude to the study of economics (which would be carried almost unchanged decades later by Copleston's principal disciple, Richard Whately).  Copleston notes that knowledge of political economy is essential to statesmanship, and that "the science has a tendency, if rightly studied, to enlarge the mind" (1810: p.172), but that it should not be studied exclusively. Other fields, notably religion and the classics, are also necessary, if nothing else, to provide the normative basis of the field and logic, naturally, for clarity of thought. Copleston heaps praise on Adam Smith for having demonstrated scientifically how to increase the wealth of nations, but "in truth, national wealth is not the ultimate scope of human society" (p.108-09). Smith, Copleston asserts, had explained the means to that end, but ultimately "it is the value of the end that must determine the value of the means" (p.165), and in this a wider education is essential. Economists, Copleston warns, are "prone to usurp over the rest", and "the pedant in political economy is not disagreeable only, but dangerous." (p.174).

Although keeping logic as central, Edward Copleston encouraged inquiry and discussion on political economy in the Oriel common room, and dabbled in the field himself. His Oxford prize essay on agriculture (1796) foreshadows his more famous 1819 tracts on the bullion crisis and agricultural pauperism, both published anonymously in 1819 under the guise of letters to Sir Robert Peel - emblazoning, on its cover, the old French liberal slogan, "Laissez nous faire". Copleston blamed poverty and agricultural distress on inflation. Copleston hypothesized that commodity prices tend to adjust faster than wages, with the result that the debasement of the currency, by driving up commodity prices quicker than wages, has had a tendency of pushing real wages down. The Poor Laws, Copleston claims, have been merely a historical response - and an ill-thought and inefficient one - to such periods of inflation-induced distress in the past. He assaults the Poor Laws, particularly the Speenhamland form, for encouarging employers to lower wages below subsistence, confident that the parish will make up the difference.

In his1822 article in the Quarterly Review on the state of the currency, Coppleston takes a strict bullionist  position, and approvingly quotes Ricardo and Huskisson, although Ricardo would express his displeasure and complain that Copleston "put sentiments in my mouth that I never uttered" (Ricardo, letter to Malthus, Dec 16, 1822, p.212).

It is probable that Copleston was instrumental in bringing the Drummond chair to be established at Oxford in 1825.  During his tenure, Copleston was engaged in competition for influence with Charles Lloyd, the effective leader of Christ Church College (Oriel's main rival), and a quintessential High Tory, who had been Sir Robert Peel's tutor (Charles Lloyd was also the older brother of the economist W.F.Lloyd).  It culminated in a competition between Copleston and Lloyd for the Regius Professorship of Divinity and the Bishopric of Oxford which, with Peel's help, finally went to Lloyd in 1827.  Copleston was assigned the Bishopric of Llandaff in Wales in 1827, as a consolation prize (although its obscure location seemed almost designed to remove him from influence). 

The Noetic Edward Hawkins succeeded Copleston as Provost of Oriel in 1828.  But there is little doubt that Edward Copleston's principal disciple and intellectual successor was Richard Whately , who inherited Copleston's mantle as spokesman of Broad Church liberalism and Aristotlean philosophy at Oxford.  Whately's celebrated works on logic and economics drew much upon Copleston's own work. Whately carried on Copleston's influence at Oxford, until he himself departed in 1831.

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