Life
Hartley was born in Bath, Somerset, England in 1732. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford on 6 April 1747 at the age of 15. He was awarded his B.A. on 14 March 1750 and was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford until his death. He became a student of Lincoln's Inn in 1759. During the 1760s he gained recognition as a scientist and, through mutual interests, he met and became an intimate friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. Hartley was sympathetic to the Lord Rockingham's Whigs, although he did not hold office in either Rockingham ministry. He represented Kingston upon Hull in parliament from 1774 to 1780, and from 1782 to 1784, and attained considerable reputation as an opponent of the war with America, and of the African slave trade.
He was expert in public finance and spoke frequently in parliament in opposition to the war in America. Although a liberal on American policy, Hartley was a long-time friend of Lord North and strongly disliked the Prime Minister, Shelburne. He supported the Coalition by voting against Shelburne's peace preliminaries. It was probably owing to his friendship with Franklin, and to his consistent support of Lord Rockingham, that he was selected by the government to act as plenipotentiary in Paris, where on 3 September 1783 he and Franklin drew up and signed the definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States of America. He died at Bath on 19 December 1813 in his eighty-second year.
His portrait was painted by George Romney and has been engraved by J. Walker in mezzotint. Nathaniel William Wraxall says that Hartley, "though destitute of all personal recommendation of manner, possessed some talent with unsullied probity, added to indefatigable perseverance and labour." He adds that his speeches were intolerably long and dull, and that "his rising always operated like a dinner bell" (Memoirs, iii. 490).
Read more about this topic: David Hartley (the Younger)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)