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.”