1811. His father succeeds to the earldom. He himself becomes Lord Ashley.
1813-17. Harrow.
1819-22. Christ Church, Oxford.
1826. M.P. for Woodstock.
1828. Commissioner of India Board of Control.
1829. Chairman of Commission for Lunatic Asylums.
1830. Marries Emily, daughter of fifth Earl Cowper.
1832. Takes up the cause of the Ten Hours Bill or Factory Act.
1833. M.P. for Dorset.
1836. Founds Church Pastoral Aid Society.
1839. Founds Indigent Blind Visiting Society.
1840. Takes up cause of Boy Chimney-sweepers.
1842. Mines and Collieries Bill carried.
1843. Joins the Ragged School movement.
1847. Ten Hours Bill finally carried.
1847. M.P. for Bath.
1848. Public Health Act. Chairman of Board of Health.
1851. President of British and Foreign Bible Society.
1851. Succeeds to the earldom.
1855. Lord Palmerston twice offers him a seat in the Cabinet.
1872. Death of Lady Shaftesbury.
1884. Receives the Freedom of the City of London.
1885. Dies at Folkestone, October 1.
LORD SHAFTESBURY
PHILANTHROPIST
The word 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words
in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a
professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think
of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the
mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety,
filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth
century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly
conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was
fond of his home, fond of the old associations of his house. To come out
into public life, to take his place in Parliament or on the platform, to
be mixed up in the wrangling of politics was naturally distasteful to
him. It continually needed a strong effort for him to overcome this
distaste and to act up to his sense of duty. It is only when we remember
this that we can do justice to his lifelong activity, and to the high
principles which bore him up through so many efforts and so many
disappointments. For himself he would submit to injustice and be still:
for his fellow countrymen and for his religion he would renew the battle
to the last day of his life.
His childhood was not happy. His parents had little sympathy with
children, his father being absorbed in the cares of public life, his
mother given up to society pleasures. He had three sisters older than
himself, but no brother or companion, and he was left largely to
himself. At the age of seven he went to a preparatory school, where he
was made miserable by the many abuses which flourished there; and it was
not till he went to Harrow at the age of twelve that he began to enjoy
life. He had few of the indulgences which we associate with the early
days of those who are born heirs to high position. But, thus thrown back
on himself, the boy nurtured strong attachments, for the old housekeeper
who first showed him tenderness at home, for the school where he had
learnt to be happy, and for the Dorset home, which was to be throughout
his life the pole-star of his affections. The village of Wimborne St.
Giles lies some eight miles north of Wimborne, in Dorset, on the edge of
Cranborne Forest, one of the most beautiful and unspoiled regions in the
south of England, which 'as late as 1818 contained twelve thousand deer
and as many as six lodges, each of which had its walk and its ranger'.
Here he wandered freely in his holidays for many years, giving as yet
little promise of an exceptional career; here you may find in outlying
cottages those who still treasure his memory and keep his biography
among the few books that adorn their shelves.
From Harrow, Lord Ashley went at the age of sixteen to read for two
years with a clergyman in Derbyshire; in 1819 he went to Christ Church,
Oxford, and three years later succeeded in taking a first class in
classics. He had good abilities and a great power of concentration.
These were to bear fruit one day in the gathering of statistics, in the
marshalling of evidence, and in the presentation of a case which needed
the most lucid and most laborious advocacy.
He came down from Oxford in 1822, but did not go into Parliament till
1826, and for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In
those days it was usual enough for a young nobleman to take up politics
when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than
the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he
responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to
put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of his own
notes from this time which show the extent of his reading, and still
more, the depth of his reflections. As with Milton, who spent over five
years at Cambridge and then five more in study and retirement at Horton,
the long years of self-education were profitable and left their mark on
his life. His first strong religious impulse he himself dates back to
his school-days at Harrow, when (as is now recorded in a mural tablet
on the spot) in walking up the street one day he was shocked by the
indignities of a pauper funeral. The drunken bearers, staggering up the
hill and swearing over the coffin, so appalled him that the sight
remained branded on his memory and he determined to devote his life to
the service of the poor. But one such shock would have achieved little,
if the decision had not been strengthened by years of thought and
resolution. His tendency to self-criticism is seen in the entry in his
diary for April, 1826 (his twenty-fifth birthday). He blames himself for
indulging in dreams and for having performed so little; but he himself
admits that the visions were all of a noble character, and we know what
abundant fruit they produced in the sixty years of active effort which
were to follow. The man who a year later could write sincerely in his
diary, 'Immortality has ceased to be a longing with me. I desire to be
useful in my generation,' had been little harmed by a few years of
dreaming dreams, and had little need to be afraid of having made a false
start in life.
When he entered the House of Commons as member for Woodstock in 1826,
Lord Ashley had strong Conservative instincts, a fervid belief in the
British constitution, and an unbounded admiration for the Duke of
Wellington, whose Peninsula victories had fired his enthusiasm at
Harrow. It was to his wing of the Conservative party that Ashley
attached himself; and it was the duke who, succeeding to the premiership
on the premature death of Canning, gave him his first office, a post on
the India Board of Control. The East India Company with its board of
directors (abolished in 1858) still ruled India, but was since 1778
subject in many ways to the control of the British Parliament, and the
board to which Lord Ashley now belonged exercised some of the functions
since committed to the Secretary of State for India. He set himself
conscientiously to study the interests of India, but over the work of
his department he had little chance of winning distinction. In fact his
first prominent speech was on the Reform of Lunatic Asylums, not an easy
subject for a new member to handle. He was diffident in manner and
almost inaudible. Without the kindly encouragement of friends he might
have despaired of future success; but his sincerity in the cause was
worth more than many a brilliant speech. The Bill was carried, a new
board was constituted, and of this Lord Ashley became chairman in 1829,
and continued to hold the office till his death fifty-six years later.
This was the first of the burdens that he took upon himself without
thought of reward, and so is worthy of special mention, though it never
won the fame of his factory legislation. But it shows the character of
the man, how ready he was to step into a post which meant work without
remuneration, drudgery without fame, prejudice and opposition from all
whose interests were concerned in maintaining the abuses of the past.
It was this spirit which led him in 1836 to take up the Church Pastoral
Aid Society,[15] in 1839 to found the Indigent Blind Visiting Society,
in 1840 to champion the cause of chimney-sweeps, and in all these cases
to continue his support for fifty years or more. We are accustomed
to-day to 'presidents' and 'patrons' and a whole broadsheet of
complimentary titles, to which noblemen give their names and often give
little else. Lord Ashley understood such an office differently. He was
regular in attendance at meetings, generous in giving money, unflinching
in his advocacy of the cause. We shall see this more fully in dealing
with the two most famous crusades associated with his name.
[Note 15: To help church work by adding to the number of clergy.]
Though these growing labours began early to occupy his time, we find the
record of his life diversified by other claims and other interests. In
1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several
children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy;
and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always
associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy.
At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend
all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed
his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found
pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them visits in
their homes. Many of his early visits were paid to the Iron Duke at
Strathfieldsaye; in later life no one entertained him more often than
Lord Palmerston, with whom he was connected by marriage. He was the
friend and often the guest of Queen Victoria, and in his twenty-eighth
year he is even found as a guest at the festive board of George IV.
'Such a round of laughing and pleasure I never enjoyed: if there be a
hospitable gentleman on earth it is His Majesty.' And at all times he
was ready to mix freely and on terms of social equality with all who
shared his sympathies, dukes and dustmen, Cabinet ministers and
costermongers.
In the holiday season he delighted to travel. In his journals he sets
down the impressions which he felt among the pictures and churches of
Italy, and in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland; he loves to
record the friendliness of the greetings which he met among the
peasantry of various lands. When he talked to them no one could fail to
see that he was genuinely interested in them, that he wanted to know
their joys and their sorrows, and to enrich his own knowledge by
anything that the humblest could tell him. Still more did he delight in
Scotland, where he had many friends. He was of the generation
immediately under the spell of the 'Wizard of the North', and the whole
country was seen through a veil of romantic and historical association.
There he went nearly every year, to Edinburgh, to Roslin, to Inveraray,
to the Trossachs, and to a hundred other places--and if his heart was
stirred with the glories of the past, his eye was quick to 'catch the
manners living as they rise'. As he commented caustically at Rome on
'the church lighted up and decorated like a ball-room--the bishop with a
stout train of canons, listening to the music precisely like an opera',
so at Newbattle he criticizes the coldness of the kirk, 'all is silent
save the minister, who discharges the whole ceremony and labours under
the weight of his own tautologies'. His bringing up had been in the
Anglican church; he was devoted to her liturgy, her congregational
worship, her moderation and simplicity combined with reverence and
warmth. Although these travels were but interludes in his busy life,
they show that it was not for want of other tastes and interests of his
own that his life was dedicated to laborious service. He was very human
himself, and there were few aspects of humanity which did not attract
him.
With his father relations were very difficult. As his interest in social
questions grew, his attention was naturally turned on the poor nearest
to his own doors, the agricultural labourers of Dorset. Even in those
days of low wages Dorset was a notorious example quoted on many a
Radical platform: the wages of the farm labourers were frequently as low
as seven shillings a week, and the conditions in which they had often to
bring up a large family of children were deplorable. If Lord Ashley had
not himself felt the shame of their poverty, their bad housing and their
other hardships, there were plenty of opponents ready to force them on
his notice in revenge for his having exposed their own sores. He was
made responsible for abuses which he could not remedy. While his father,
a resolute Tory of the old type, still lived, the son was unable to
stir. He sedulously tried to avoid all bitterness; but he could not,
when publicly challenged, avoid stating his own views about fair wages
and fair conditions of living, and his father took offence. For years it
was impossible for the son to come under his father's roof. When the old
earl died in 1851, his son lost no time in proving his sincerity as a
reformer; but meanwhile he had to go into the fray against the
manufacturers with his arms tied behind his back and submit to taunts
which he little deserved. That he could carry on this struggle for so
many years, without embittering the issues, and without open exposure of
the family quarrel, shows the strength of character which he had gained
by years of religious discipline and self-control.
Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians
found early that he was not of the 'available' type--that he would not
lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to
him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him
were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his
bringing forward embarrassing measures which might split the party.
Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single
course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he
accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his
department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never
held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached
to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little
love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times
Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley
often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded
as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an
instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could
combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the
cause and ready to push it forward against all obstacles, at all costs.
Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief
ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the
goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he
gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of
character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare
dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him
he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.
It was in 1832 that he first had his attention drawn to the conditions
of labour in factories. He never claimed to be the pioneer of the
movement, but he was early in the field. The inventions of the latter
part of the eighteenth century had transformed the north of England. The
demand for labour had given rise to appalling abuses, especially in the
matter of child labour. From London workhouses and elsewhere children
were poured into the labour market, and by the 'Apprentice System' were
bound to serve their masters for long periods and for long hours
together. A pretence of voluntary contract was kept up, but fraud and
deception were rife in the system and its results were tragic. Mrs.
Browning's famous poem, 'The Cry of the Children,' gives a more vivid
picture of the children's sufferings than many pages of prose. At the
same time we have plenty of first-hand evidence from the great towns of
the misery which went along with the wonderful development of national
wealth. Speaking in 1873 Lord Shaftesbury said, 'Well can I recollect in
the earlier periods of the Factory movement waiting at the factory gates
to see the children come out, and a set of dejected cadaverous creatures
they were. In Bradford especially the proofs of long and cruel toil were
most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by
hundreds perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected together a
vast number for me; the sight was most piteous, the deformities
incredible.' And an eye-witness in Bolton reports in 1792: 'Anything
like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which
the weak and feeble are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to
behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' Some measures of relief were
carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but
public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr.
Sadler,[16] member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours
Bill'. When Sadler was unseated in 1832, Lord Ashley offered his help,
and so embarked on the greatest of his works performed in the public
service. He had the support of a few of the noblest men in England,
including Robert Southey and Charles Dickens; but he had against him the
vast body of well-to-do people in the country, and inside Parliament
many of the most progressive and influential politicians. The factory
owners were inspired at once by interest and conviction; the political
economy of the day taught them that all restrictions on labour were
harmful to the progress of industry and to the prosperity of the
country, while the figures in their ledgers taught them what was the
most economical method of running their own mills.
[Note 16: See articles in _D.N.B._ on Michael Thomas Sadler
(1780-1835) and on Richard Oastler (1789-1861).]
Already it was clear that Lord Ashley was no mere sentimentalist out for
a momentary sensation. At all times he gave the credit for starting the
work to Sadler and his associates; and from the outset he urged his
followers to fix on a limited measure first, to concentrate attention on
the work of children and young persons, and to avoid general questions
involving conflicts between capital and labour. Also he took endless
pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,'
he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and
saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went
down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves'
haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise
have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and
figured in the pages of _Punch_; it was no distraction caught up for a
week or a month, but a labour of fifty years! We have an account of him
as he appeared at this period of his life: 'above the medium height,
about 5 feet 6 inches, with a slender and extremely graceful figure...
curling dark hair in thick masses, fine brow, features delicately cut,
the nose perhaps a trifle too prominent,... light blue eyes deeply set
with projecting eyelids, his mouth small and compressed.' His whole face
and appearance seems to have had a sculpturesque effect and to have
suggested the calm and composure of marble. But under this marble
exterior there was burning a flame of sympathy for the poor, a fire of
indignation against the system which oppressed them.
In 1833 some progress was made. Lord Althorp, the Whig leader in the
Commons, under pressure from Lord Ashley, carried a bill dealing indeed
with some of the worst abuses in factories, but applying only to some of
the great textile industries. That it still left much to be done can be
seen from studying the details of the measure. Children under eleven
years of age were not to work more than nine hours a day, and young
persons under nineteen not more than twelve hours a day. Adults might
still work all day and half the night if the temptation of misery at
home and extra wages to be earned was too strong for them. It seems
difficult now to believe that this was a great step forward, yet for the
moment Ashley found that he could do no more and must accept what the
politicians gave him. In 1840, however, he started a fresh campaign on
behalf of children not employed in these factories, who were not
included in the Act of 1833, and who, not being concentrated in the
great centres of industry, escaped the attention of the general public.
He obtained a Royal Commission to investigate mines and other works, and
to report upon their condition. The Blue Book was published in 1842 and
created a sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the
stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or
fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening
and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone
each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few
paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of
neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling
on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping
under the low roofs, and even so chafing and wounding their backs, as
they hauled the coal along the underground rails, or carrying in baskets
on their backs, up steps and ladders, loads which varied in weight from
a half to one and a half hundredweights. The physical health, the mental
education, and the moral character of these poor creatures suffered
equally under such a system; and well might those responsible for the
existence of such abuses fear to let the Report be published. But copies
of it first reached members of Parliament, then the public at large
learnt the burden of the tale, and Lord Ashley might now hope for enough
support from outside to break down the opposition in the House of
Commons and the delays of parliamentary procedure.
'The Mines and Collieries Bill' was brought in before the impression
could fade, and on June 7, 1842, Ashley made one of the greatest of his
speeches and drove home powerfully the effect of the Report. His mastery
of facts was clear enough to satisfy the most dispassionate politician;
his sincerity disarmed Richard Cobden, the champion of the Lancashire
manufacturers and brought about a reconciliation between them; his
eloquence stirred the hearts of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,
and drew from the latter words of glowing admiration and promises of
support. In August the bill finally passed the House of Lords, and a
second great blow had been struck. Practices which were poisoning at the
source the lives of the younger generation were forbidden by law; above
all, it was expressly laid down that, after a few years, no woman or
girl should be employed in mines at all. The influence which such a law
had on the family life in the mining districts was incalculable; the
women were rescued from servitude in the mines and restored to their
natural place at home.
There was still much to do. In 1844 the factory question was again
brought to the front by the demands of the working classes, and again
Ashley was ready to champion their cause, and to propose that the
working day should now be limited to eight hours for children, and to
ten hours for grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting
over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill
directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its
mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the minds of the official
politicians.