John Hoppus

This led to the emergence of many privately funded independent Dissenting academies, many of which functioned as colleges, preparing young men for university studies abroad, in Scotland or on the Continent.

Mindful of their delicate political position, no appointments could be agreed upon for the two key posts of Chairs of Philosophy, either of which might attract a hostile press, eager to undermine the institution for its liberal sentiments, values and ideas.

George Grote, one of the promoters of London University, convinced the college that appointment of a Congregational minister such as John Hoppus would imply a religious affiliation, contrary to the institution's nondenominational principles.

[2] An altogether unflattering sketch of Dr Hoppus was entered in the college historian's pages, though his contribution has been treated more dispassionately in recent years.

Described as "thorough and exhaustive"[3] they covered René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, John Locke, Christian Wolff, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Immanuel Kant and post-Kantian idealists, and the ethical systems of Ralph Cudworth, Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, Clarke, Price, Butler, Jeremy Bentham and James Mill.

Though unsuccessful at the time, some twenty years later Hoppus's arguments won the day, and his belief that "no child... be excluded from instruction through the parents' poverty" came to fruition after the renewed campaign by him and others in the 1860s, which led to the Elementary Education Act 1870.

He chaired the Board of Congregational Ministers in 1830 when it passed the following anti-slavery resolution: "That it is the fixed a unanimous opinion of this meeting that of all the rights common to man, those of the person are the most sacred and inviolable; that therefore a state of slavery is a positive, entire, and extreme evil, the nature of which cannot be altered by any meliorating circumstances; that it is, in its mildest forms, destructive of human life, social intercourse, moral character, and intellectual advancement... that this body have always sympathised with the exertions made to abate and abolish this enormous evil..."[4] Hoppus's other political interest lay in animal welfare; a number of disparate groups collected under this banner in the 1830s, amongst which he supported the Rational Humanity campaigners.