Lord Shaftesbury 12+

📕 LORD SHAFTESBURY THE SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY BY J. L. HAMMOND AND BARBARA HAMMOND PREFACE SHAFTESBURY was out of the general run of statesmen and politicians yet there are few statesmen of the nineteenth century to whom England owes more in the way of solid and lasting benefit for the general mass of her population. He is one of a remarkable band of Englishmen who busied themselves with politics, not with the object most usual with politicians, in order to carry out the business of the country in accordance with the views of some political party and by means of the responsibility of office, but simply in order to carry into effect certain definite views of their own, quite outside the creed of any party in the State. In this band should be included men like Wilberforce, with his zeal for the emancipation of negro slaves Cobbett, the tribune of tlje agricultural labourer Bright and Cobden, of the antiCorn Law League Plimsoll, scornful of the ameni ties of parliamentary conventions in his struggle for the lives of our sailors Courtney, who gave up brilliant prospects of a successful ministerial career for causes unattractive to the ordinary politician. Some of these men did, indeed, take office, but the work for which they are known was accomplished as private Members. Again, some of these men were narrow in their views and concentrated all their efforts on the one object they saw clear before them, being almost wilfully blind to evils, as in the case of Wilberforce, much n...