His father, Lieutenant Henry Dove RN, retired from active service with the Navy at the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, taking up an appointment at Deal, Kent connected with the Cinque Ports.
He was a first-rate horseman, took up fly-fishing and sailing, was an excellent shot and showed mechanical abilities, contributing the article on gunmaking to the 8th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.
While Dove was still in Darmstadt, his book The Theory of Human Progression, and Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice was published anonymously in 1850 as a limited edition, both in London and Edinburgh.
The book was praised by Thomas Carlyle as the voice of a new revolution in education and economics, and the philosopher Sir William Hamilton spoke of it rallying mankind to great reforms.
Charles Sumner had copies made and circulated them in the United States, subsequently persuading Dove to write an article opposing slavery titled The Elder and Younger Brother which appeared in the Boston Commonwealth on 21 September 1853.
[2] He reasons that intuitive perception of a "primordial force" in the works of nature, if only matter is thought to be objective, leads to pantheism, "the theological credence of a large portion of the scientific men on the continent".
In April 1853 he became captain of the Midlothian Rifle Club, and in 1854 as well as editing the Witness during the illness of a friend, he published the second volume of his treatise, Elements of Political Science.
He also wrote the Encyclopædia Britannica article on Government and devised a rifled cannon with advantages in range and accuracy, but was unable to afford further testing which the ordnance committee requested.