Chapter VI: Part 6

COOKWORTHY, WILLIAM (1705-1780), English potter, famous for his discovery of the existence of china-clay and china-stone in Cornwall, and as the first manufacturer of a porcelain similar in nature to the Chinese, from English materials, was born at Kingsbridge, Devon, of Quaker parents who were in humble circumstances. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a London apothecary named Bevans, and he afterwards returned to the neighbourhood of his birthplace, and carried on business at Plymouth with the co-operation of his master, under the title of Bevans & Cookworthy. The manufacture of porcelain was at the time attracting great attention in England, and while the factories at Bow, Chelsea, Worcester and Derby were introducing the artificial glassy porcelain, Cookworthy, following the accounts of Pere d'Entrecolles, spent many years in searching for English materials similar to those used by the Chinese. From 1745 onwards he seems to have travelled over the greater portion of Cornwall and Devon in search of these minerals, and he finally located them in the parish of St Stephen's near to St Austell. With a certain amount of financial assistance from Mr Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc (afterwards Lord Camelford) he established the Plymouth China Factory at least as early as 1768. The factory was removed to Bristol about 1770, and the business was afterwards sold to Richard Champion and others and became the well-known Bristol Porcelain Manufactory. Apart from its historic interest there is little to be said for the Plymouth porcelain. Technically it was often imperfect, and its artistic treatment was never of a high order. But Cookworthy deserves to be remembered for his discovery of those abundant supplies of English clay and rocks which form the foundation of English porcelain and fine earthenware (see CERAMICS).

COOLGARDIE, a municipal town in Western Australia, 310 m. by rail E. by N. of Perth, and 528 m. by rail N.E. of Albany. Pop. (1901) 4249. Its gold-fields were discovered in 1891 and are among the richest in the colony. Lignite, copper, graphite and silver are also found. Toorak and Montana are small residential suburbs. A remarkable engineering work by which a full supply of water was brought to the town from Fremantle (a distance exceeding 330 m. direct) was completed in 1903.

COOLIE, or COOLY (from Koli or Kuli, an aboriginal race of western India; or perhaps from Tamil _k[=u]li_, hire, i.e. one hired), a term generally applied to Asiatic labourers belonging to the unskilled class as opposed to the artisan, and employed in a special sense to designate those natives of India and China who leave their country under contracts of service to work as labourers abroad. After the abolition of slavery much difficulty was found in obtaining cheap labour for tropical plantations. The emancipated black was unwilling to engage in field labour, while the white man was physically incapable of so doing. Recourse was had to the overpeopled empires of China and India, as the most likely sources from which to obtain that supply of workers upon which the very existence of some colonies, notably in the West Indies, depended.

Chinese coolies.

The first public recognition of the coolie traffic was in 1844, when the British colony of Guiana made provision for the encouragement of Chinese immigration. About the same time both Peru and Cuba began to look to China as likely to furnish an efficient substitute for the negro bondsman. Agents armed with consular commissions from Peru appeared in Chinese ports, where they collected and sent away shiploads of coolies. Each one was bound to serve the Peruvian planter to whom he might be assigned for seven or eight years, at fixed wages, generally about 17s. a month, food, clothes and lodging being provided. From 1847 to 1854 coolie emigration went on briskly without attracting much notice, but it gradually came to light that circumstances of great cruelty attended the trade. The transport ships were badly equipped and overcrowded, and many coolies died before the end of the voyage. On arrival in Cuba or Peru the survivors were sold by auction in the open market to the highest bidders, who held them virtually as slaves for seven years instead of for life. Particularly terrible was the lot of those who, contrary to their agreements, had been sent to labour in the foul guano pits of the Chincha islands, where they were forced to toil in gangs, each under the charge of an overseer armed with a cowhide lash. In 1860 it was calculated that of the four thousand coolies who had been fraudulently consigned to the guano pits of Peru not one had survived. The greater number of them had committed suicide. In 1854 the British governor of Hong-Kong issued a proclamation forbidding British subjects or vessels to engage in the transport of coolies to the Chinchas. Technically this was _ultra vires_ on his part, but his policy was confirmed by the Chinese Passengers' Act 1855, which put an end to the more abominable phase of the traffic. After that no British ship was allowed to sail on more than a week's voyage with more than twenty coolies on board, unless her master had complied with certain very stringent regulations.

The consequence of this was that the business of shipping coolies for Peru was transferred to the Portuguese settlement of Macao. There the Peruvian and Cuban "labour-agents" established depots, which they unblushingly called "barracoons," the very term used in the West African slave trade. In these places coolies were "received," or in plain words, imprisoned and kept under close guard until a sufficient number were collected for export. Some of these were decoyed by fraudulent promises of profitable employment. Others were kidnapped by piratical junks hired to scour the neighbouring coasts. Many were bought from leaders of turbulent native factions, only too glad to sell the prisoners they captured whilst waging their internecine wars. The procurador or registrar-general of Macao went through the form of certifying the contracts; but his inspection was practically useless. After the war of 1856-1857 this masked slave trade pushed its agencies into Whampoa and Canton. In April 1859, however, the whole mercantile community of the latter port rose up in indignation against it, and transmitted such strong representations to the British embassy in China, that steps were taken to mitigate the evil. New regulations were from time to time passed by the Portuguese authorities for the purpose of minimizing the horrors of the Macao trade. They seem, however, to have been systematically evaded, and to have been practically inoperative. At Canton and Hong-Kong the coolie trade was put under various regulations, which in the latter port worked well only when the profits of "head-money" were ruined. In March 1866 the representatives of the governments of France, England and China drew up a convention for the regulation of the Canton trade, which had an unfortunate effect. It left head-money, the source of most of the abuses, comparatively untouched. It enacted that every coolie must at the end of a five years' engagement have his return passage-money paid to him. The West Indian colonies at once objected to this. They wanted permanent not temporary settlers. They could not afford to burden the coolie's expensive contract with return passage-money, so they declined to accept emigrants on these terms. Thus a legalized coolie trade between the West Indies and China was extinguished. Thereafter the coolie supply for British colonies was drawn exclusively from India, until 1904, when an exception was made in the case of the Transvaal. Under a convention drawn up in that year between the United Kingdom and China over fifty thousand indentured Chinese labourers were engaged on three years' contracts to work in the Witwatersrand gold mines (see TRANSVAAL). To the Malay states and other parts of eastern Asia there is an extensive yearly migration of Chinese coolies. This migration, however, is not under contract. From Amoy alone some seventy-five thousand coolies yearly migrate to Singapore and the Straits Settlements, whence they are drafted for labour purposes in every direction.

Indian coolies.

It is scarcely possible to say when the Indian coolie trade began. Before the end of the 18th century Tamil labourers from southern India were wont to emigrate to the Straits Settlements, and they also flocked to Tenasserim from the other side of the Bay of Bengal after the conquest had produced a demand for labour. The first regularly recorded attempt at organizing coolie emigration from India took place in 1834, when forty coolies were exported to Mauritius; but it was not until 1836 that the Indian government decided to put the trade under official regulations. In 1837 an emigration law was passed for all the territories of the East India Company, providing that a permit must be obtained from government for every shipment of coolies, that all contracts should terminate in five years, that a return passage should be guaranteed, that the terms of his contract should be carefully explained to each coolie, and that the emigrant ship should only carry one coolie for every ton and a half of burden. Then as now the Indian government watched the deportation of labour from their dominions with jealous and anxious care, and when in 1838 it was found that upwards of twenty-five thousand natives had, up to that year, gone from all parts of India to Mauritius, the government became somewhat alarmed at the dimensions which the traffic was assuming. Brougham and the anti-slavery party denounced the trade as a revival of slavery, and the Bengal government suspended it in order to investigate its alleged abuses. The nature of these may be guessed when it is said that the inquiry condemned the fraudulent methods of recruiting then in vogue, and the brutal treatment which coolies often received from ship captains and masters. In 1842 steps were taken formally to reopen the coolie trade with Mauritius, and in 1844 emigration to the West Indies was sanctioned by the Indian government. In 1847 Ceylon was separated from India, and her labour supply was cut off; but this accident was soon remedied, the Ceylon government adopting protective regulations for the coolies.

Modern regulations.

Emigration of coolies under contract to labour outside India is now regulated by the Emigration Act of 1883 and the rules issued under its provisions, the only exceptions being in respect of emigrants to Ceylon and the Straits Settlements and adjoining states, or those engaged by the British government for employment in east and central Africa. By section 8 of this act natives of India are permitted to emigrate under labour contracts only to such countries as have satisfied the government of India that sufficient provision is made for the protection of the emigrants. A country which is duly empowered under the act to receive emigrants may appoint an agent, residing in India, who is responsible for the due observance of the provisions of the law. These agents are under the general supervision of the protector of emigrants. As emigrants have to be recruited at great distances from the port of embarkation, recruiters are appointed by the agents and licensed by the protector. The conduct of these subordinates is minutely regulated. Every precaution is taken to let the emigrant know the exact terms on which he is hired, and to ensure good treatment in the interval between registration and embarkation. Coolies are shipped for the most part from Calcutta and Madras, but of recent years large numbers bound for Mombasa and the Seychelles left from Bombay and Karachi. Both the coolies themselves and the depot are medically inspected. Only those physically fit are allowed to embark. The vessels for their conveyance are licensed and inspected by the local government. The terms on which emigrants are recruited are settled beforehand by convention with the colonies concerned, and are embodied in ordinances passed by the local legislatures. They vary in detail, but their main provisions relate to the rights and obligations of the emigrants, including the grant of a return passage on the expiry of a specified period, usually ten years. The British colonies to which coolies were exported in the decade 1891-1901 were British Guiana, Trinidad, St Lucia, Jamaica, Mauritius, the Seychelles Islands, Fiji, East Africa and Natal; the only non-British country was Dutch Guiana. Emigration to the French colonies, including Reunion has been forbidden by the government of India since 1886, but there still remain in those colonies some of the former emigrants, and the questions of their treatment and repatriation have frequently formed the subject of representations to the French authorities.

The British colonies.

The number of Indian coolies resident in the various British colonies in 1900 was 625,000, of which the largest numbers were 265,000 in Mauritius and 125,000 in British Guiana. There were still 13,800 in Reunion. The regulations governing coolie labour in British Guiana may be taken as typical for the British colonies generally. They are contained in the Labour Ordinance of 1873, which was amended by the ordinances of 1875, 1876, 1886 and 1887. Under these ordinances an immigration agent-general is appointed, to whom medical officers and recruiting agents are responsible, and the emigrants are allotted by him to the separate estates. They regulate the hours of work, the rate of wages, and the general treatment of the coolies, the nature of house and hospital accommodation, the terms of re-enlistment and the conditions of marriage amongst the coolies themselves. The coolies returning from the British colonies to India in 1901 possessed average savings of L19.

British East and South Africa.

During the construction of the Uganda railway large numbers of coolies were recruited in the Punjab and exported from Karachi to Mombasa. During the decade 1891-1901 the number of these emigrants was 33,000; but on the completion of the line the emigration practically stopped, while in 1901-1902 there were over 6000 emigrants who returned to India. Some, however, settled in East Africa. Coolies are also exported for government employment in Nyasaland. In Natal the Indian population had by 1904 reached over 100,000 and slightly outnumbered the whites. Many of the coolies had become permanent residents in the colony (see NATAL).

Assam, Ceylon and Burma.

According to the census of 1901 there were 775,844 foreigners in Assam, of whom no fewer than 645,000 or 83% were brought into the province as garden coolies. The recruiting of these coolies is regulated by Act VI. of 1901, which provides that a labour agreement may be entered into for four years, and includes a penal clause, under which a coolie deserting or refusing to work may be punished with imprisonment. The coolies can also give an agreement under Act XIII. of 1859, by which they are only liable to civil action for breach of contract. The latter are called non-act coolies. This system of immigration has made tea-planting the most important industry in Assam, and has greatly increased the prosperity of the province. Migration to Ceylon and Burma takes place chiefly from the Madras ports, and is of a seasonal and temporary character. The tea estates and pearl fisheries of Ceylon, and the town work and harvesting in Burma attract large numbers of Tamil labourers. The respective numbers embarking in 1901 were 117,000 for Ceylon, 84,000 for Burma and 27,000 for the Straits Settlements. In Ceylon there is no system of recruitment like that for the Assam tea-gardens. The coolies come in gangs, each under its own headman, with whom the planter deals exclusively, leaving him to make his own arrangements with the individual coolies. The coolies are mostly carried in small sailing vessels from the ports of Madura and Tanjore, and the number who permanently settle in Ceylon is not very great.

See E. Jenkins, _The Coolie; his Rights and Wrongs_ (1871); J. L. A.
Hope, _In Quest of Coolies_ (1872); and C. B. Grose, _The Labour
Ordinances_ (Georgetown, 1890). (C. L.)

COOMA, a town of Beresford county, New South Wales, Australia, 264 m. by rail S.S.W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 1938. The town is the centre of a pastoral district and has a large trade in furs, while at Bushy Hill, a mile from the town, is a small gold-field. Cooma, which is pleasantly situated at an elevation of 2657 ft., is the tourist centre for visitors to the Yarrangobilly Caves and Mount Kosciusko and its observatory. The caves are distant 65 m. from the town, situated in the side of a hill, overlooking the Yarrangobilly river; they are seven in number and of remarkable beauty and extent.

COOPER, ABRAHAM (1787-1868), English animal and battle painter, the son of a tobacconist, was born in London. At the age of thirteen he became an employe at Astley's amphitheatre, and was afterwards groom in the service of Sir Henry Meux. When he was twenty-two, wishing to possess a portrait of a favourite horse under his care, he bought a manual of painting, learned something of the use of oil-colours, and painted the picture on a canvas hung against the stable wall. His master bought it and encouraged him to continue in his efforts. He accordingly began to copy prints of horses, and was introduced to Benjamin Marshall, the animal painter, who took him into his studio, and seems to have introduced him to the _Sporting Magazine_, an illustrated periodical to which he was himself a contributor. In 1814 he exhibited his "Tam O'Shanter," and in 1816 he won a prize of L100 for his "Battle of Ligny." In 1817 he exhibited his "Battle of Marston Moor" and was made associate of the Academy, and in 1820 he was elected Academician. Cooper, although ill educated, was a clever and conscientious artist; his colouring was somewhat flat and dead, but he was a master of equine portraiture and anatomy, and had some antiquarian knowledge. He had a special fondness for Cavalier and Roundhead pictures.

COOPER, ALEXANDER (d. 1660), English miniature painter. His works are of great rarity, and the chief are a series representing the king and queen of Bohemia and their children, in the possession of the German emperor; some very remarkable portraits belonging to the queen of Holland, and others in the possession of the king of Sweden and in various Swedish galleries. He was the brother of Samuel Cooper, but whether senior or junior to him is not known, although, according to certain Swedish authorities, he is stated, upon very slight evidence, to have been born in 1605, four years before his more famous brother. He came to Sweden in 1646, and the Swedish documents declare that he was a Jew, and that his full name was Abraham Alexander Cooper. He had previously been residing in Holland, but on reaching Sweden entered the service of Queen Christina, and continued to be her miniature painter until 1654, when she resigned the crown. Two years later, Cooper was in Denmark, carrying out some commissions for Christian IV., but in 1657 was back again in Stockholm, where he died in the early part of 1660. The date of his birth is not known, but he is believed to have been born in London.

For full information regarding his career, and for various documents
bearing his signature, see _The History of Portrait Miniatures_, by G.
C. Williamson, chap. vi. page 78, and an article in the _Nineteenth
Century_ for October 1905. (G. C. W.)

COOPER, SIR ASTLEY PASTON (1768-1841), English surgeon, was born at the village of Brooke in Norfolk on the 23rd of August 1768. His father, Dr Samuel Cooper, was a clergyman of the Church of England; his mother was the author of several novels. At the age of sixteen he was sent to London and placed under Henry Cline (1750-1827), surgeon to St Thomas's hospital. From the first he devoted himself to the study of anatomy, and had the privilege of attending the lectures of John Hunter. In 1789 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas's hospital, where in 1791 he became joint lecturer with Cline in anatomy and surgery, and in 1800 he was appointed surgeon to Guy's hospital, on the death of his uncle, William Cooper. In 1802 he received the Copley medal for two papers read before the Royal Society of London on the destruction of the _membrana tympani_; and in 1805 he was elected a fellow of that society. In the same year he took an active part in the formation of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and published in the first volume of its _Transactions_ an account of an attempt to tie the common carotid artery for aneurism. In 1804 he brought out the first, and in 1807 the second, part of his great work on hernia, which added so largely to his reputation that in 1813 his annual professional income rose to L21,000 sterling. In the same year he was appointed professor of comparative anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons and was very popular as a lecturer. In 1817 he performed his famous operation of tying the abdominal aorta for aneurism; and in 1820 he removed a wen from the head of George IV., and about six months afterwards received a baronetcy, which, as he had no son, was to descend to his nephew and adopted son, Astley Cooper. He served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1827 and again in 1836, and he was elected a vice-president of the Royal Society in 1830. He died on the 12th of February 1841 in London, and was interred, by his own desire, beneath the chapel of Guy's hospital. A statue by E. H. Baily was erected in St Paul's.

His chief works are _Anatomy and Surgical Treatment of Hernia_
(1804-1807); _Dislocations and Fractures_ (1822); _Lectures on
Surgery_ (1824-1827); _Illustrations of Diseases of the Breast_
(1829); _Anatomy of the Thymus Gland_ (1832); _Anatomy of the Breast_
(1840).

See _Life of Sir A. Cooper_, by B. B. Cooper (1843).

COOPER, CHARLES HENRY (1808-1866), English antiquary, was born at Great Marlow, on the 20th of March 1808, being descended from a family formerly settled at Bray, Berkshire. He received his education at a private school in Reading. In 1826 he fixed his residence at Cambridge, and in 1836 was elected coroner of the borough. Four years later he was admitted a solicitor, and in course of time he acquired an extensive practice, but his taste and inclination ultimately led him to devote almost the whole of his time to literary research, and especially the elucidation of the history of the university of Cambridge. In 1849 he resigned the office of borough coroner on being elected to the town-clerkship, which he retained till his death on the 21st of March 1866. His earliest production, _A New Guide to the University and Town of Cambridge_, was published anonymously in 1831. _The Annals of Cambridge_ followed (1842-1853) containing a chronological history of the university and town from the earliest period to 1853. His most important work, the _Athenae Cantabrigienses_ (1858, 1861), a companion work to the famous _Athenae Oxonienses_ of Anthony a Wood, contains biographical memoirs of the authors and other men of eminence who were educated at the university of Cambridge from 1500 to 1609. Cooper's other works are _The Memorials of Cambridge_, (1858-1866) and a _Memoir of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby_ (1874). He was a constant contributor to _Notes and Queries_, the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and other antiquarian publications, and left an immense collection of MS. materials for a biographical history of Great Britain and Ireland.

COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851), American novelist, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, on the 15th of September 1789. Reared in the wild country round Otsego Lake, N.Y., on the yet unsettled estates of his father, a judge and member of Congress, he was sent to school at Albany and at New Haven, and entered Yale College in his fourteenth year, remaining for some time the youngest student on the rolls. Three years afterwards he joined the United States navy; but after making a voyage or two in a merchant vessel, to perfect himself in seamanship, and obtaining his lieutenancy, he married and resigned his commission (1811). He settled in Westchester county, N.Y., the "Neutral Ground" of his earliest American romance, and produced anonymously (1820) his first book, _Precaution_, a novel of the fashionable school. This was followed (1821) by _The Spy_, which was very successful at the date of issue; _The Pioneers_ (1823), the first of the "Leatherstocking" series; and _The Pilot_ (1824), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next was _Lionel Lincoln_ (1825), a feeble and unattractive work; and this was succeeded in 1826 by the famous _Last of the Mohicans_, a book that is often quoted as its author's masterpiece. Quitting America for Europe he published at Paris _The Prairie_ (1826), the best of his books in nearly all respects, and _The Red Rover_, (1828), by no means his worst.

At this period the unequal and uncertain talent of Cooper would seem to have been at its best. These excellent novels were, however, succeeded by one very inferior, _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_ (1829); by _The Notions of a Travelling Bachelor_ (1828), an uninteresting book; and by _The Waterwitch_ (1830), one of the poorest of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer, defending in a series of letters to the _National_, a Parisian journal, the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the _Revue Britannique_; and for the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once. This opportunity of making a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of imposing them on the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, _The Bravo_ (1831), _The Heidenmauer_ (1832) and _The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron_ (1833), were designed to exalt the people at the expense of the aristocracy. Of these the first is by no means a bad story, but the others are among the dullest ever written; all were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1833 Cooper returned to America, and immediately published _A Letter to my Countrymen_, in which he gave his own version of the controversy he had been engaged in, and passed some sharp censure on his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with _The Monikins_ (1835) and _The American Democrat_ (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his _England_ (1837), in three volumes, a burst of vanity and ill-temper; and with _Homeward Bound_, and _Home as Found_ (1838), noticeable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself. All these books tended to increase the ill-feeling between author and public; the Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his old vigour and success. A _History of the Navy of the United States_ (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of _Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers_, was succeeded by _The Pathfinder_ (1840), a good "Leatherstocking" novel; by _Mercedes of Castile_ (1840); _The Deerslayer_ (1841); by _The Two Admirals_ and by _Wing and Wing_ (1842); by _Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief_, and _Ned Myers_ (1843); and by _Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford_ (1844). From pure fiction, however, he turned again to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the two _Littlepage Manuscripts_ (1845-1846) he fought with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was _The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak_ (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery with indifferent success; and this was succeeded by _Oak Openings_ and _Jack Tier_ (1848), the latter a curious _rifacimento_ of _The Red Rover_; by _The Sea Lions_ (1849); and finally by _The Ways of the Hour_ (1850), another novel with a purpose, and his last book. He died of dropsy on the 14th of September 1851 at Cooperstown, New York. His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894), was known as an author and philanthropist.

Cooper was certainly one of the most popular authors that have ever written. His stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia. Balzac admired him greatly, but with discrimination; Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master of modern romance, and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of inferior readers, who were satisfied with no title for their favourite less than that of "the American Scott." As a satirist and observer he is simply the "Cooper who's written six volumes to prove he's as good as a Lord" of Lowell's clever portrait; his enormous vanity and his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, which is exceedingly tiresome. It is only as a novelist that he deserves consideration. His qualities are not those of the great masters of fiction; but he had an inexhaustible imagination, some faculty for simple combination of incident, a homely tragic force which is very genuine and effective, and up to a certain point a fine narrative power. His literary training was inadequate; his vocabulary is limited and his style awkward and pretentious; and he had a fondness for moralizing tritely and obviously, which mars his best passages. In point of conception, each of his three-and-thirty novels is either absolutely good or is possessed of a certain amount of merit; but hitches occur in all, so that every one of them is remarkable rather in its episodes than as a whole. Nothing can be more vividly told than the escape of the Yankee man-of-war through the shoals and from the English cruisers in _The Pilot_, but there are few things flatter in the range of fiction than the other incidents of the novel. It is therefore with some show of reason that _The Last of the Mohicans_, which as a chain of brilliantly narrated episodes is certainly the least faulty in this matter of sustained excellence of execution, should be held to be the best of his works.

The personages of his drama are rather to be accounted as so much painted cloth and cardboard, than as anything approaching the nature of men and women. As a creator of aught but romantic incident, indeed, Cooper's claims to renown must rest on the fine figure of the Leatherstocking, and, in a less degree, on that of his friend and companion, the Big Serpent. The latter has many and obvious merits, not the least of which is the pathos shed about him in his last incarnation as the Indian John of _The Pioneers_. Natty Bumpo, however, is a creation of no common unity and consistency. There are lapses and flaws, and Natty is made to say things which only Cooper, in his most verbosely didactic vein, could have uttered. But on the whole the impression left is good and true. In the dignity and simplicity of the old backwoodsman there is something almost Hebraic. With his naive vanity and strong reverent piety, his valiant wariness, his discriminating cruelty, his fine natural sense of right and wrong, his rough limpid honesty, his kindly humour, his picturesque dialect, and his rare skill in woodcraft, he has all the breadth and roundness of a type and all the eccentricities and peculiarities of a portrait.

See _James Fenimore Cooper_ (Boston, 1883), by Thomas R. Lounsbury in
the "American Men of Letters" series; Griswold, _Prose Writers of
America_ (Philadelphia, 1847); J. R. Lowell, _Fable for Critics_; M.
A. de Wolfe Howe, _American Bookmen_ (New York, 1898); and the
introduction by Mowbray Morris to Macmillan's uniform edition of
Cooper's novels (London, 1900). (W. E. H.)

COOPER, PETER (1791-1883), American manufacturer, inventor and philanthropist, was born in New York city on the 12th of February 1791. His grandfathers and his father served in the War of American Independence. He received practically no schooling, but worked with his father at hat-making in New York city, at brewing in Peekskill, at brick-making in Catskill, and again at brewing in Newburgh. At seventeen he was apprenticed to a coach-builder in New York city. On coming of age he got employment at Hempstead, Long Island, making machines for shearing cloth; three years afterwards he set up in this business for himself, having bought the sole right to manufacture such machinery in the state of New York. Business prospered during the War of 1812, but fell off after the peace. He turned his shop into a furniture factory; soon sold this and for a short time was engaged in the grocery business on the site of the present Bible House, opposite Cooper Union; and then invested in a glue and isinglass factory, situated for twenty-one years in Manhattan (where the Park Avenue Hotel was built later) and then in Brooklyn. About 1828 he built the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, Maryland, the foundation of his great fortune. The Baltimore & Ohio railway was to cross his property, and, after various inventions aiming to do away with the locomotive crank and thus save two-fifths of the steam, in 1830 he designed and constructed (largely after plans made two years before) the first steam locomotive built in America; though only a small model it proved the practicability of using steam power for working that line. The "Tom Thumb," as Cooper called the locomotive, was about the size of a modern hand-car; as the natural draft was far from sufficient, Cooper devised a blowing apparatus. Selling his Baltimore works, he built, in 1836, in partnership with his brother Thomas, a rolling mill in New York; in 1845 he removed it to Trenton, New Jersey, where iron structural beams were first made in 1854 and the Bessemer process first tried in America in 1856; and at Philippsburg, New Jersey, he built the largest blast furnace in the country at that time. He built other foundries at Ringwood, New Jersey, and at Durham, Pennsylvania; bought iron mines in northern New Jersey, and carried the ore thence by railways to his mills. Actively interested with Cyrus Field in the laying of the first Atlantic cable, he was president of the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, and his frequent cash advances made the success of the company possible; he was president of the North American Telegraph Company also, which controlled more than one-half of the telegraph lines of the United States. For his work in advancing the iron trade he received the Bessemer gold medal from the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain in 1879. He took a prominent part in educational affairs, strongly opposed the Roman Catholic claims for public funds for parochial schools, and conducted the campaign of the Free School Society to its successful issue in 1842, when a state law was passed forbidding the support from public funds of any "religious sectarian doctrine." He is probably best known, however, as the founder of the Cooper Union (q.v.). Cooper was an early advocate of the emancipation and the enlistment in the Union army of Southern negroes, and he upheld the administration of Lincoln. Though he had been a hard-money Democrat, he joined the Greenback party after the Civil War, and in 1876 was its candidate for the presidency, but received only 81,740 out of the 8,412,833 votes cast. He died in New York city on the 4th of April 1883. He published _The Political and Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper, with an Autobiography of his Early Life_ (1877), and _Ideas for a Science of Good Government, in Addresses, Letters and Articles on a Strictly National Currency, Tariff and Civil Service_ (1883).

There is a brief biography by R. W. Raymond, _Peter Cooper_ (Boston,
1900).

COOPER, SAMUEL (1609-1672), English miniature painter. This artist was undoubtedly the greatest painter of miniatures who ever lived. He is believed to have been born in London, and was a nephew of John Hoskins, the miniature painter, by whom he was educated. He lived in Henrietta St., Covent Garden, and frequented the Covent Garden Coffee-House. Pepys, who makes many references to him, tells us he was an excellent musician, playing well upon the lute, and also a good linguist, speaking French with ease. According to other contemporary writers, he was a short, stout man, of a ruddy countenance. He married one Christiana, whose portrait is at Welbeck Abbey, and he had one daughter. In 1668 he was instructed by Pepys to paint a portrait of Mrs Pepys, for which he charged L30. He is known to have painted also the portrait of John Aubrey, which was presented in 1691 to the Ashmolean Museum, as we learn from his correspondence with John Ray, the naturalist. Evelyn refers to him in 1662, when, on the occasion of the visit that the diarist paid to the king, Cooper was drawing the royal face and head for the new coinage.

Magnificent examples of his work are to be found at Windsor Castle, Belvoir Castle, Montague House, Welbeck Abbey, Ham House, the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam and in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan. His largest miniature is in the possession of the duke of Richmond and Gordon at Goodwood. A piece of the artist's handwriting is to be seen at the back of one of his miniatures in the Welbeck Abbey collection, and one of his drawings in black chalk is in the University Gallery at Oxford. His own portrait of himself is in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan.

The date of his death has been handed down by a record in the diary of Mary Beale, the miniature painter; and in some letters from Mr Charles Manners, addressed to Lord Roos, dated 1672, now amongst the duke of Rutland's papers at Belvoir, the writer refers to Cooper's serious illness on the 4th of May, and to his doubt as to whether the artist would ever recover. Mary Beale's reference to his decease is in the following words: "Sunday, May 5, 1672--Mr Samuel Cooper, the most famous limner of the world for a face, dyed."

For a fuller account see the _History of Portrait Miniatures_, by G.
C. Williamson, vol. i. p. 64. (G. C. W.)

COOPER (or COUPER), THOMAS (c. 1517-1594), English bishop and writer, was born in Oxford, where he was educated at Magdalen College. He became master of Magdalen College school, and afterwards practised as a physician in Oxford. His literary career began in 1548, when he compiled, or rather edited, a Latin dictionary _Bibliotheca Eliotae_, and in 1549 he published a continuation of Thomas Lanquet's _Chronicle of the World_. This work, known as _Cooper's Chronicle_, covers the period from A.D. 17 to the time of writing, and was reprinted in 1560 and 1565. In 1565 appeared the first edition of his greatest work, _Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae_, and this was followed by three other editions. Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased with the _Thesaurus_, generally known as _Cooper's Dictionary_; and its author, who had been ordained about 1559, was made dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1567. Two years later he became dean of Gloucester, in 1571 bishop of Lincoln and in 1584 bishop of Winchester. Cooper was a stout controversialist; he defended the practice and precept of the Church of England against the Roman Catholics on the one hand and against the Martin Marprelate writings and the Puritans on the other. He took some part, the exact extent of which is disputed, in the persecution of religious recusants in his diocese, and died at Winchester on the 29th of April 1594.

Cooper's _Admonition against Martin Marprelate_ was reprinted in 1847,
and his _Answer in Defence of the Truth against the Apology of Private
Mass_ in 1850.

COOPER, THOMAS (1759-1840), American educationalist and political philosopher, was born in London, England, on the 22nd of October 1759, and educated at Oxford. Threatened with prosecution at home because of his active sympathy with the French Revolution, he emigrated to America about 1793, and began the practice of law in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania. He was president-judge of the Fourth District of Pennsylvania in 1806-1811. Like his friend Joseph Priestley, who was then living in Northumberland, he sympathized with the Anti-Federalists, and took part in the agitation against the Sedition Act, and for a newspaper attack in 1799 on President John Adams, Cooper was convicted, fined and imprisoned for libel. Like Priestley, Cooper was very highly esteemed by Thomas Jefferson, who secured for him the appointment as first professor of natural science and law in the University of Virginia--a position which Cooper was forced to resign under the fierce attack made on him by the Virginia clergy. After filling the chair of chemistry in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. (1811-1814), and in the University of Pennsylvania (1818-1819), he became professor of chemistry in South Carolina College, at Columbia, in 1819, and afterwards gave instruction in political economy also. In 1820 he became acting president of this institution, and was president from 1821 until 1833, when he resigned owing to the opposition within the state to his liberal religious views. In December 1834, owing to continued opposition, he resigned his professorship. He had been formally tried for infidelity in 1832. He was a born agitator: John Adams described him as "a learned, ingenious, scientific and talented madcap." Before his college classes, in public lectures, and in numerous pamphlets, he constantly preached the doctrine of free trade, and tried to show that the protective system was especially burdensome to the South. His remedy was state action. Each state, he contended, was a sovereign power and was in duty bound to protest against the tyrannical acts of the Federal government. He exercised considerable influence in preparing the people of South Carolina for nullification and secession; in fact he preceded Calhoun in advocating a practical application of the state sovereignty principle. The last years of his life were spent in preparing an edition of the Statutes at Large of the state, which was completed by David James McCord (1797-1855) and published in ten volumes (1836-1841). Dr Cooper died in Columbia on the 11th of May 1840. As a philosopher he was a follower of Hartley, Erasmus Darwin, Priestley and Broussais; he was a physiological materialist, and a severe critic of Scotch metaphysics. Among his publications are _Political Essays_ (1800); _An English Version of the Institutes of Justinian_ (1812); _Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy_ (1826); _A Treatise on the Law of Libel and the Liberty of the Press_ (1830); and a translation of Broussais' _On Irritation and Insanity_ (1831), with which were printed his own essays, "The Scripture Doctrine of Materialism," "View of the Metaphysical and Physiological Arguments in favour of Materialism," and "Outline of the Doctrine of the Association of Ideas."

See I. Woodbridge Riley, _American Philosophy: the Early Schools_ (New
York, 1907).

COOPER, THOMAS (1805-1892), English Chartist and writer, the son of a working dyer, was born at Leicester on the 20th of March 1805. After his father's death his mother began business as a dyer and fancy box-maker at Gainsborough. Young Cooper was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He had a passion for knowledge; studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew in his spare time; and in 1827 gave up cobbling to become a schoolmaster, and, later, a Methodist preacher. His affairs did not prosper, and after going to Lincoln, where he obtained work on a local newspaper, he came to London in 1839. Here he became assistant to a second-hand bookseller, but in 1840 he joined the staff of the _Leicestershire Mercury_. His support of the Chartist movement obliged him to resign his position, but he undertook to edit _The Midland Counties Illuminator_, a Chartist journal, in 1841. He became a leader of the extreme Chartist party, and for his action in urging on the strike of 1842 he was imprisoned in Stafford gaol for two years. Here he produced _The Purgatory of Suicides_, a political epic in ten books, embodying the radical ideas of the time. In his efforts to publish this work after his liberation he came under the notice of Benjamin Disraeli and Douglas Jerrold. Through Jerrold's help it appeared in 1845, and Cooper then turned his attention to lecturing upon historical and educational subjects. In 1856 he suddenly renounced the free-thinking doctrines which he had held for many years, and became a lecturer on Christian evidences. He died at Lincoln on the 15th of July 1892. Among his other works may be mentioned the _Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time_ (1871) and the _Life of Thomas Cooper, written by Himself_ (1872).

COOPER, THOMAS SIDNEY (1803-1902), English painter, was born at Canterbury on the 20th of September 1803. In very early childhood he showed in many ways the strength of his artistic inclinations, but as the circumstances of his family did not admit of his receiving any systematic training, he began before he was twelve years old to work in the shop of a coach painter. A little later he obtained employment as a scene painter; and he alternated between these two occupations for about eight years. But the desire to become an artist continued to influence him, and all his spare moments were given up to drawing and painting from nature. At the age of twenty he went to London, drew for a while in the British Museum, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. He then returned to Canterbury, where he was able to earn a living as a drawing-master and by the sale of sketches and drawings. In 1827 he settled in Brussels; but four years later he returned to London to live, and by showing his first picture at the Royal Academy (1833) began an unprecedentedly prolonged career as an exhibitor. Cooper's name is mainly associated with pictures of cattle or sheep, and the most notable of the many hundred he produced are: "A Summer's Noon" (1836), "A Drover's Halt on the Fells" (1838), "A Group in the Meadows" (1845), "The Half-past One o'Clock Charge at Waterloo" (1847), "The Shepherd's Sabbath" (1866), "The Monarch of the Meadows" (1873), "Separated but not Divorced" (1874), "Isaac's Substitute" (1880), "Pushing off for Tilbury Fort" (1884), "On a Farm in East Kent" (1889), "Return to the Farm, Milking Time" (1897). He was elected A.R.A. in 1845 and R.A. in 1867. He presented to his native place, in 1882, the Sidney Cooper Art Gallery, built on the site of the house in which he was born. He wrote his reminiscences, under the title of _My Life_, in 1890; and died on the 7th of February 1902.

COOPERAGE, or COPERAGE (Flemish and Dutch _kooper_, a trader, dealer), a system of traffic in spirituous liquors, tobacco and other articles amongst the fishermen in the North Sea. The practice began in the middle of the 19th century, when Flemish and Dutch _koopers_ frequented the fishing fleets for the purpose of barter. Trading first in tobacco, they extended their operations, and soon became practically floating grog-shops.

The demoralizing nature of the traffic was brought to the public notice in 1881, and a convention was held at the Hague in 1882 to consider means of remedying the abuses. In 1887 Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France and the Netherlands signed an agreement to prevent the sale or purchase of spirituous liquors among fishermen at sea. In Great Britain an act (the North Sea Fisheries Act 1888) was passed to carry into effect the terms of the convention. The act (now repealed and replaced by the North Sea Fisheries Act 1893, with which it is identical but for some slight verbal modifications) imposes a fine not exceeding L50 or a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months for supplying, exchanging or otherwise selling spirits. It imposes a like penalty for purchasing spirits by exchange or otherwise, and requires every British vessel dealing in provisions or other articles to have a licence and to carry a special mark. In 1882 Mr E. J. Mather started a mission to deep sea fishermen, which sends out mission ships and supplies the fishermen with good clothing, literature, tobacco, &c., at a fair price. This mission, now the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, is registered by the Board of Trade.

See E. J. Mather, _Nor'ard of the Dogger_ (1888), and publications of
the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.

COOPERAGE (from "cooper," a maker of casks, derived from such forms as Mid. Dutch _cuper_, Ger. _Kufer_, Lat. _cuparius_; the same root is seen in various Teut. words for a basket, such as Dutch _kuip_ and Eng. "kipe" and "coop," but cooper is apparently not formed directly from "coop," which never means a "cask" but always a basket-cage for poultry, &c.), the art of making casks, barrels and other rounded vessels, the sides of which are composed of separate staves, held together by hoops surrounding them. The art is one of great antiquity; Pliny ascribes its invention to the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys. The trade is one in which there are numerous subdivisions, the chief of which are tight or wet and dry or slack cask manufacture. To these may be added white cooperage, a department which embraces the construction of wooden tubs, pails, churns and other even-staved vessels. Of all departments, the manufacture of tight casks or barrels for holding liquids is that which demands the greatest care and skill since, in addition to being perfectly tight when filled with liquid, the vessels must bear the strain of transportation to great distances, and in many cases have to resist considerable internal pressure when they contain fermenting liquors. The staves are best made of well-seasoned oak. Since a cask is a double conoid, usually having its greatest diameter (technically the bulge or belly) at the centre, each stave must be properly curved to form a segment of the whole, and must be so cut as to have a suitable bilge or increase of width from the ends to the middle; it must also have its edges bevelled to such an angle that it will form tight joints with its neighbours. The staves being prepared, the next operation is to set up or raise the barrel. For this purpose as many staves as are necessary are arranged upright in a circular frame, and round their lower halves are fitted truss hoops which serve to keep them together for the permanent hooping. The upper ends are then drawn together by means of a rope which is passed round them and tightened by a windlass, and other truss hoops are dropped over them, the wood being steamed or heated to enable it to bend freely to shape. The two ends of the cask are next finished to receive the heads by forming the chime, or bevel on the extremity of the staves, and the croze or groove into which the heads fit. Finally the heads and permanent hoops are put in place. The heads, when made of two or more pieces, are jointed by wooden dowel pins, and after being cut to size are chamfered or bevelled round the edge to fit into the croze grooves. The hoops are generally of iron. The manufacture of slack casks proceeds on the same general lines, but is simpler in various respects, both because less accurate workmanship is required, and because softer woods, largely fir, may be employed. Machinery of the most elaborate and specialized character has been devised to perform most of the operations in making both slack and tight casks, and though it involves considerable capital outlay it effects so great an economy of time that it has largely superseded hand labour. (For an account of such machinery see L. H. Ransome, "Cask-making Machinery," _Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng._ vol. 115; also an article in _Engineering_, 1908, 85, p. 845.) Barrels without separate staves are made by bending a sheet of wood, sawn from a log in a continuous strip, into the required circular shape, the bulge at the centre being obtained by cutting out V gores from the ends. Barrels are also sometimes made of steel, either of the ordinary bulging form or consisting of straight-sided drums provided near the middle with rings on which they may be rolled. Immense numbers of casks of different shapes and sizes are employed in various industries. Tight barrels are a necessity to the wine and cider maker, brewer and distiller, and are largely used for the transport of oils and liquid chemicals, while slack barrels are utilized by the million for packing cement, alkali, china, fruit, fish and numerous other products.