RICHARD WHATELEY BIOGRAPHY

WHATELEY, RICHARD (1787-1863). —Theologian and economist, s. of the Rev. Dr. Joseph W., born in London, and ed. at a school in Bristol, and at Oxf., where he became a coll. tutor. Taking orders he became Rector of Halesworth, Suffolk. In 1822 he delivered his Bampton lectures on The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Religion . Three years later he was made Principal of St. Alban's Hall, in 1829 Prof. of Political Economy, and in 1831 Archbishop of Dublin. As head of a coll. and as a prelate W. showed great energy and administrative ability. He was a vigorous, clear-headed personality, somewhat largely endowed with contempt for views with which he was not in sympathy, and with a vein of caustic humour, in the use of which he was not sparing. These qualities made him far from universally popular; but his honesty, fairness, and devotion to duty gained for him general respect. He had no sympathy with the Oxf. movement, was strongly anti-Calvinistic, and somewhat Latitudinarian, so that he was exposed to a good deal of theological odium from opposite quarters. He was a voluminous writer, and among his best known works are his treatises on Logic (1826) and Rhetoric (1828), his Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte (1819), intended as a reductio ad absurdum of Hume's contention that no evidence is sufficient to prove a miracle, Essays on some Peculiarities of the Christian Religion (1825), Christian Evidences (1837), and ed. of Bacon's Essays with valuable notes, and of Paley's Evidences .