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!”