tion 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 fac