Note 1148 — Chapter III

It is to be regretted that Green, while admitting that Mr. Christie was "in some respects" successful in his vindication of Shaftesbury, should have left his own account of Shaftesbury's character glaringly unfair. Verbally following Burnet, he pronounces Ashley "at best a Deist" in his religion, and adds that his life was "that of a debauchee," going on to couple the terms "Deist and debauchee" in a very clerical fashion. And yet in the previous paragraph he admits that "the debauchery of Ashley was simply a mask. He was, in fact, temperate by nature and habit, and his ill-health rendered any great excess impossible." The non-correction of the flat contradiction must apparently be set down to Green's ill-health. As a matter of fact, the charge of debauchery is baseless. Long before Mr. Christie, one of the annotators of Burnet's History (ed. 1838, p. 64, note) defended Shaftesbury generally, and pointed out that "in private life we have no testimony that he was depraved." Cp. Christie, Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1871, i, 316.