John Herschel was a political radical in the utilitarian mould but no social leveller. Indeed, he was highly ambivalent over the notion of ‘democracy’ and feared it could unleash the tyranny of the masses. Rather, like his one-time close friend Charles Babbage, he was a rational materialist reformer with little sympathy for old state props such as the Church of England and the prevailing curriculum of the elite Anglican universities. This periodically put him at logger heads with contemporary Cambridge and Oxford taught men. (Herschel had graduated from Cambridge as senior wrangler in 1813 and Babbage was awarded a Cambridge degree with no examination in 1814.)