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It is useless here and now to say anything of the horrors of uncivilised savagery and hopeless abject misery which we witnessed.  They are painted in my mother’s book, and should any reader ever refer to those pages for a picture of the state of things among the factory hands at that time, he may take with him my testimony to the fact that there was no exaggeration in the outlines of the picture given.  What we are there described to have seen, we saw.

And let doctrinaire economists preach as they will, and Radical socialists abuse a measure, which helps to take from them the fulcrum of the levers that are to upset the whole existing framework of society, it is impossible for one who did see those sights, and who has visited the same localities in later days, not to bless Lord Shaftesbury’s memory, ay, and the memory, if they have left any, of the humble assistants whose persistent efforts helped on the work.

But the little knot of apostles to whom Lord Shaftesbury’s letters introduced us, and into whose intimate conciliabules his recommendations caused our admittance, was to my mother, and yet more to me, to whom the main social part of the business naturally fell, a singularly new and strange one.  They were all, or nearly all of them, men a little raised above the position of the factory hands, to the righting of whose wrongs they devoted their lives.  They had been at some period of their lives, in almost every case, factory workers themselves, but had by various circumstances, native talent, industry, and energy, or favouring fortune—­more likely by all together—­managed to raise themselves out of the slough of despond in which their fellows were overwhelmed.  One, I remember, a Mr. Doherty, a very small bookseller, to whom we were specially recommended by Lord Shaftesbury.  He was an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a furious Radical, but a very clever man.  He was thoroughly acquainted with all that had been done, all that it was hoped to do, and with all the means that were being taken for the advancement of those hopes, over the entire district.

He came and dined with us at our hotel, but it was, I remember, with much difficulty that we persuaded him to do so, and when at table his excitement in talking was so great and continuous that he could eat next to nothing.

I remember, too, a Rev. Mr. Bull, to whom he introduced us subsequently at Bradford.  We passed the evening with this gentleman at the house of Mr. Wood, of the firm of Walker and Wood, to whom also we had letters from Lord Shaftesbury.  He, like our host, was an ardent advocate of the ten hours’ bill, but unlike him, had very little hope of legislative interference.  Messrs. Walker and Wood employed three thousand hands.  At a sacrifice of some thousands per annum, they worked their hands an hour less than any of their neighbours, which left the hours, as Mr. Wood strongly declared,