What I Remember, Volume 2 | Page 4

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, still too long. Those
gentlemen had built and endowed a church and a school for their hands,
and everything was done in their mill which could humanise and
improve the lot of the men, women, and children. Mr. Bull, who was to
be the incumbent of the new church, then not quite finished, was far
less hopeful than his patron. He told me that he looked forward to some
tremendous popular outbreak, and should not be surprised any night to
hear that every mill in Bradford was in flames.
But perhaps the most remarkable individual with whom this Lancashire
journey brought us into contact, was a Mr. Oastler. He was the Danton
of the movement. He would have been a remarkable man in any
position or calling in life. He was a very large and powerfully framed
man, over six feet in height, and proportionately large of limb and
shoulder. He would, perhaps, hardly have been said to be a handsome
man. His face was coarse, and in parts of it heavy. But he had a most
commanding presence, and he was withal a picturesque--if it be not
more accurate to say a statuesque--figure. Some of the features, too,
were good. He had a very keen and intelligent blue eye, a mass of iron
grey hair, lips, the scornful curl of which was terrible, and with all this
a voice stentorian in its power, and yet flexible, with a flow of language

rapid and abundant as the flow of a great river, and as
unstemmable--the very beau-idéal of a mob orator.
"In the evening," says my diary, "we drove out to Stayley Bridge to
hear the preaching of Stephens, the man who has become the subject of
so much newspaper celebrity," (Does any one remember who he was?)
"We reached a miserable little chapel, filled to suffocation, and
besieged by crowds around the doors. We entered through the vestry
with very great difficulty, and only so by the courtesy of sundry
persons who relinquished their places, on Doherty's representing to
them that we were strangers from a distance and friends to the cause.
Presently Stephens arrived, and a man who had been ranting in the
pulpit, merely, as it seemed, to occupy the people till he should come,
immediately yielded his place to him. Stephens spoke well, and said
some telling words in that place, of the cruel and relentless march of
the great Juggernauth,