initiative of the first Sir Robert Peel. A few years
later the question was revived by Sir John Hobhouse, but left unsettled.
In 1831 Sadler introduced a ten hours bill for children, and obtained a
select committee, before which disclosures were made well calculated to
shock the country. At the general election of 1832, Sadler was defeated
by Macaulay for the new borough of Leeds, but his mantle fell on Lord
Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the noblest
philanthropists of modern times.

Early in the session of 1833 Ashley introduced a ten hours bill,
applicable, like that of Sadler, to all young persons under eighteen
years of age working in factories. It also prohibited the employment of
children under nine, and provided for the appointment of inspectors. It
was strongly opposed by the Lancashire members as interfering with
freedom of labour even for adults, since mills could not be kept running
without the labour of boys under eighteen. They also objected to the
evidence already reported as one-sided, and succeeded in procuring the
appointment of a royal commission. This commission prosecuted its
inquiries with unusual despatch, but its report was not in the hands of
members on July 5, when the bill came on for its second reading. Though
Althorp, unwilling to offend the manufacturing interest, pleaded for
deliberation and urged that a select committee should frame the
regulations to be adopted, the majority of the house was impatient of
delay, and he encountered a defeat. The question now resolved itself
into a choice between a greater or less limitation of hours. On this
question, a compromise proposed by Althorp prevailed, and Ashley
resigned the conduct of the bill into his hands. It was further modified
in committee, but ultimately became law in a form which secured the main
objects of its promoters. No child under nine years of age could be
employed at all in a factory, after two years none under thirteen could
be worked more than eight hours, and no young person under eighteen
could be required to work more than sixty-nine hours a week, while the
provisions for inspection were retained along with others which
contained the germ of education on the half-time system.

[Pageheading: _THE EAST INDIA COMPANY._]

The trading monopoly of the East India Company, though confined to China
by the act of 1813, had been regarded ever since with great jealousy by
the mercantile community. As the revised charte