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Love. Serve.

NEAR THIS SPOT

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER

AFTERWARDS 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.

WHILE YET A BOY IN HARROW SCHOOL

SAW WITH SHAME AND INDIGNATION

THE PAUPER'S FUNERAL

WHICH HELPED TO AWAKEN HIS LIFELONG

DEVOTION TO THE SERVICE OF THE POOR

AND THE OPPRESSED.

Blessed is he that considereth the poor.

After leaving Harrow Lord Ashley (as he now was) spent two years at a private tutor's, and in 1819 he went up to Christ Church. In 1822 he took a First Class in Classics. The next four years were spent in study and travel, and in 1826 he was returned to Parliament, by the influence of his uncle the Duke of Marlborough, for the Borough of Woodstock. On November 16 he recorded in his diary: "Took the oaths of Parliament with great good will; a slight prayer for assistance in my thoughts and deeds." Never was a politician's prayer more abundantly granted.

In 1830 Lord Ashley married a daughter of Lord Cowper, and this marriage, independently of the radiant happiness which it brought, had an important bearing on his political career; for Lady Ashley's uncle was Lord Melbourne, and her mother became, by a second marriage, the wife of Lord Palmerston. Of Lord Melbourne and his strong common sense Lord Shaftesbury, in 1882, told me the following characteristic story. When the Queen became engaged to Prince Albert, she wished him to be made King Consort by Act of Parliament, and urged her wish upon the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. At first that sagacious man simply evaded the point, but when her Majesty insisted on a categorical answer, "I thought it my duty to be very plain with her. I said, 'For G---- 's sake, let's hear no more of it, ma'am; for if you once get the English people into the way of making kings, you will get them into the way of unmaking them.'"

By this time Lord Ashley was deeply immersed in those philanthropic enterprises which he had deliberately chosen as the occupation of his lifetime. Reform of the Lunacy Law and a humaner treatment of lunatics were the earliest objects to which he devoted himself. To attain them the more effectually he got himself made a member, and subsequently chairman, of the Lunacy Commission, and threw himself into the work with characteristic thoroughness. He used to pay "surprise visits" both by day and night to public and private asylums, and discovered by those means a system of regulated and sanctioned cruelty which, as he narrated it in his old age, seemed almost too horrible for credence.

The abolition of slavery all over the world was a cause which very early enlisted his sympathy, and he used to tell, with grim humour, how, when, after he had become Lord Shaftesbury, he signed an Open Letter to America in favour of emancipation, a Southern newspaper sarcastically inquired, "Where was this Lord Shaftesbury when the noble-hearted Lord Ashley was doing his single-handed work on behalf of the English slaves in the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire?"

Sanitary reform and the promotion of the public health were objects at which, in the middle part of his life, he worked hard, both as a landowner and as the unpaid Chairman of the Board of Health. The crusade against vivisection warmed his heart and woke his indignant eloquence in his declining years. His Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey was attended by representatives of nearly two hundred religious and philanthropic institutions with which he had been connected, and which, in one way or another, he had served. But, of course, it is with the reform of the Factory Laws that his name is most inseparably associated.

In 1833 Lord Ashley took up the Ten Hours Bill, previously in the charge of Mr. Sadler, who had now lost his seat. He carried his Bill through the Second Reading, but it was opposed by Lord Althorp, who threw it out, and carried a modified proposal in 1833. In 1844 the introduction of a new Bill for the regulation of labour in factories brought Lord Ashley back to his old battlefield. A desperate struggle was made to amend the Bill into a Ten Hours Bill, but this failed, owing to Sir Robert Peel's threat of resignation. In 1845 Lord Ashley refused the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland in order to be able to devote himself wholly to the Ten Hours Bill; and, as soon as Parliament rose, he went on a tour through the manufacturing districts, speaking in public, mediating between masters and men, and organizing the Ten Hours movement.

In 1847 the Bill passed into law. On June 1 in that year Lord Ashley wrote in his diary: "News that the Factory Bill has just passed the Third Reading. I am humbled that my heart is not bursting with thankfulness to Almighty God—that I can find breath and sense to express my joy. What reward shall we give unto the Lord for all the benefits He hath conferred upon us?—God in His mercy prosper the work, and grant that these operatives may receive the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord!"

The perfervid vein of philanthropic zeal which is apparent in this extract animated every part of Lord Shaftesbury's nature and every action of his life. He had, if ever man had, "the Enthusiasm of Humanity." His religion, on its interior side, was rapt, emotional, and sometimes mystic; but at the same time it was, in its outward manifestations, definite, tangible, and, beyond most men's, practical. At the age of twenty-seven he wrote in his diary: "On my soul, I believe that I desire the welfare of mankind." At eighty-four he exclaimed, in view of his approaching end, "I cannot bear to leave the world with all the misery in it." And this was no mere effusive declamation, but the genuine utterance of a zeal which condescended to the most minute and laborious forms of practical expression. "Poor dear children!" he exclaimed to the superintendent of a ragged school, after hearing from some of the children their tale of cold and hunger. "What can we do for them?"

"My God shall supply all their need," replied the superintendent with easy faith.

"Yes," said Lord Shaftesbury, "He will, but they must have some food directly." He drove home, and instantly sent two churns of soup, enough to feed four hundred. That winter ten thousand basins of soup, made in Grosvenor Square, were distributed among the "dear little hearts" of Whitechapel.

And as in small things, so in great. One principle consecrated his whole life. His love of God constrained him to the service of men, and no earthly object or consideration—however natural, innocent, or even laudable—was allowed for a moment to interpose itself between him and the supreme purpose for which he lived. He was by nature a man of keen ambition, and yet he twice refused office in the Household, once the Chief Secretaryship, and three times a seat in the Cabinet, because acceptance would have hindered him in his social legislation and philanthropic business. When we consider his singular qualifications for public life—his physical gifts, his power of speech, his habits of business, his intimate connections with the official caste—when we remember that he did not succeed to his paternal property till he was fifty years old, and then found it grossly neglected and burdened with debt; and that his purse had been constantly drained by his philanthropic enterprises—we are justified in saying that very few men have ever sacrificed so much for a cause which brought neither honours, nor riches, nor power, nor any visible reward, except the diminished suffering and increased happiness of multitudes who were the least able to help themselves.

Lord Shaftesbury's devotion to the cause of Labour led him to make the Factory Acts a touchstone of character. To the end of his days his view of public men was largely governed by the part which they had played in that great controversy. "Gladstone voted against me," was a stern sentence not seldom on his lips. "Bright was the most malignant opponent the Factory Bill ever had." "Cobden, though bitterly hostile, was better than Bright." Even men whom on general grounds he disliked and despised—such as Lord Beaconsfield and Bishop Wilberforce—found a saving clause in his judgment if he could truthfully say, "He helped me with the chimney-sweeps," or, "He felt for the wretched operatives."

But even apart from questions of humane sentiment and the supreme interests of social legislation, I always felt in my intercourse with Lord Shaftesbury that it would have been impossible for him to act for long together in subordination to, or even in concert with, any political leader. Resolute, self-reliant, inflexible; hating compromise; never turning aside by a hair's-breadth from the path of duty; incapable of flattering high or low; dreading leaps in the dark, but dreading more than anything else the sacrifice of principle to party—he was essentially the type of politician who is the despair of the official wire-puller.

Oddly enough, Lord Palmerston was the statesman with whom, despite all ethical dissimilarity, he had the most sympathy, and this arose partly from their near relationship and partly from Lord Palmerston's easy-going habit of placing his ecclesiastical patronage in Lord Shaftesbury's hands. It was this unseen but not unfelt power as a confidential yet irresponsible adviser that Lord Shaftesbury really enjoyed and, indeed, his political opinions were too individual to have allowed of binding association with either political party. He was, in the truest and best sense of the word, a Conservative. To call him a Tory would be quite misleading. He was not averse from Roman Catholic emancipation. He took no prominent part against the first Reform Bill. His resistance to the admission of the Jews to Parliament was directed rather against the method than the principle. Though not friendly to Women's Suffrage, he said: "I shall feel myself bound to conform to the national will, but I am not prepared to stimulate it."

But while no blind and unreasoning opponent of all change, he had a deep and lively veneration for the past. Institutions, doctrines, ceremonies, dignities, even social customs, which had descended from old time, had for him a fascination and an awe. In his high sense of the privileges and the duties of kingship, of aristocracy, of territorial possession, of established religions, he recalled the doctrine of Burke; and he resembled that illustrious man in his passionate love of principle, in his proud hatred of shifts and compromises, in his contempt for the whole race of mechanical politicians and their ignoble strife for place and power.

When Lord Derby formed his Government in 1866, on the defeat of Lord Russell's second Reform Bill, he endeavoured to obtain the sanction of Lord Shaftesbury's name and authority by offering him a seat in his Cabinet. This offer was promptly declined; had it been accepted, it might have had an important bearing on the following event, which was narrated to me by Lord Shaftesbury in 1882. One winter evening in 1867 he was sitting in his library in Grosvenor Square, when the servant told him that there was a poor man waiting to see him. The man was shown in, and proved to be a labourer from Clerkenwell, and one of the innumerable recipients of the old Earl's charity. He said, "My Lord, you have been very good to me, and I have come to tell you what I have heard." It appeared that at the public-house which he frequented he had overheard some Irishmen of desperate character plotting to blow up Clerkenwell prison. He gave Lord Shaftesbury the information to be used as he thought best, but made it a condition that his name should not be divulged. If it were, his life would not be worth an hour's purchase. Lord Shaftesbury pledged himself to secrecy, ordered his carriage, and drove instantly to Whitehall. The authorities there refused, on grounds of official practice, to entertain the information without the name and address of the informant. These, of course, could not be given. The warning was rejected, and the jail blown up. Had Lord Shaftesbury been a Cabinet Minister, this triumph of officialism would probably not have occurred.

What I have said of this favourite hero of mine in his public aspects will have prepared the sympathetic reader for the presentment of the man as he appeared in private life. For what he was abroad that he was at home. He was not a man who showed two natures or lived two lives. He was profoundly religious, eagerly benevolent, utterly impatient of whatever stood between him and the laudable object of the moment, warmly attached to those who shared his sympathies and helped his enterprises—Fort comme le diamant; plus tendre qu'une mère. The imperiousness which I described at the outset remained a leading characteristic to the last. His opinions were strong, his judgment was emphatic, his language unmeasured. He had been, all through his public life, surrounded by a cohort of admiring and obedient coadjutors, and he was unused to, and intolerant of, disagreement or opposition. It was a disconcerting experience to speak on a platform where he was chairman, and, just as one was warming to an impressive passage, to feel a vigorous pull at one's coat-tail, and to hear a quick, imperative voice say, in no muffled tone, "My dear fellow, are you never going to stop? We shall be here all night."

But when due allowance was made for this natural habit of command, Lord Shaftesbury was delightful company. Given to hospitality, he did the honours with stately grace; and, on the rare occasions when he could be induced to dine out, his presence was sure to make the party a success. In early life he had been pestered by a delicate digestion, and had accustomed himself to a regimen of rigid simplicity; but, though the most abstemious of men, he knew and liked a good glass of wine, and in a small party would bring out of the treasures of his memory things new and old with a copiousness and a vivacity which fairly fascinated his hearers. His conversation had a certain flavour of literature. His classical scholarship was easy and graceful. He had the Latin poets at his fingers' ends, spoke French fluently, knew Milton by heart, and was a great admirer of Crabbe. His own style, both in speech and writing, was copious, vigorous, and often really eloquent. It had the same ornamental precision as his exquisite handwriting. When he was among friends whom he thoroughly enjoyed, the sombre dignity of his conversation was constantly enlivened by flashes of a genuine humour, which relieved, by the force of vivid contrast, the habitual austerity of his demeanour.

A kind of proud humility was constantly present in his speech and bearing. Ostentation, display, lavish expenditure would have been abhorrent alike to his taste and his principles. The stately figure which bore itself so majestically in Courts and Parliaments naturally unbent among the costermongers of Whitechapel and the labourers of Dorsetshire. His personal appointments were simple to a degree; his own expenditure was restricted within the narrowest limits. But he loved, and was honestly proud of, his beautiful home—St. Giles's House, near Cranbourne; and when he received his guests, gentle or simple, at "The Saint," as he affectionately called it, the mixture of stateliness and geniality in his bearing and address was an object-lesson in high breeding. Once Lord Beaconsfield, who was staying with Lord Alington at Crichel, was driven over to call on Lord Shaftesbury at St. Giles's. When he rose to take his leave, he said, with characteristic magniloquence, but not without an element of truth, "Good-bye, my dear Lord. You have given me the privilege of seeing one of the most impressive of all spectacles—a great English nobleman living in patriarchal state in his own hereditary halls."