The answer of Mr. Serjeant Parry in question was given without premeditation; it was evident to the audience that it was made under the inspiration of an after-dinner speech, when robust barristers, in those days, were liable to airiness or eccentricity of statement. Being pursued vindictively, he became too indignant to give the obvious explanation of the inadvertency of his denial of his signature.
There are saints of the Church and saints of humanity; Lord Shaftesbury was a saint of both churches. There are two kinds of Conservatives, as I have elsewhere said.* One class seek power for personal aggrandisement; another, and better class, covet it as a means of doing good. Lord Shaftesbury belonged to this class. Through not making this distinction, the whole Conservative body are made answerable for the actions of a part Discrimination is as just in politics as in morals.
* "Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, Preacher and Political Orator."
Lord Shaftesbury was a nobleman of two natures. In politics he would withhold power from workmen. In humanity he would withhold nothing from them which could do them good. In theology he knew no measure. Of Professor Seeley's book, "Ecce Homo," he said it was "vomited from the mouth of hell." Surely something ought to be pardoned to a writer who made Satan sick. At an earlier day such language had handed the luckless Professor over to Torquemada. Yet Lord Shaftesbury was so courteous, tender, and friendly to Nonconformists, that he laid more foundation stones of Dissenting chapels than any other peer or patron. Should England one day be counted among extinct civilisations, and some explorers arrive to excavate its ruins, they will come upon so many stones deposited by Lord Shaftesbury and bearing his name, that report will be made of the discovery of the king of the last dynasty. Whatever contradictions biographers may have to record of the character of Lord Shaftesbury, everything will be forgiven him in consideration of his noble exertions on behalf of factory children. He sought to improve the condition of women in mines and collieries. Public health, emigration, ragged-schools, penny banks, drinking-fountains, and model lodging-houses were subjects of his generous solicitude. Lord Shaftesbury was one of the earliest of slum visitors. He was essentially and exclusively a social reformer. He took no part in political amelioration. He believed that working people only clamoured for political enfranchisement because they were ill-used and uncomfortable. He saw no further. Their desire for independence never occurred to him. His sympathy with co-operators was on moral grounds. It was quite unforeseen by any, and had little acceptance in his day, that he should advise, that the agencies for planting Christianity among heathen nations should include the secular missionary, who must precede the Christian teacher to prepare the soil of the soul by social amelioration before the seeds of Christianity could take root Like Faraday, Lord Shaftesbury had a dual mind. Faraday reasoned like a Sandemanian on questions of faith and like a philosopher on questions of science. In like manner Lord Shaftesbury was a sectarian in piety and a latitudinarian in humanity.