When you are again exhorting a suffering people to fortitude under their privations, when you are telling them, "These are the chastenings of an all-wise and merciful Providence, sent for some inscrutable but just and beneficent purpose, it may be, to humble our pride, or to punish our unfaithfulness, or to impress us with the sense of our own nothingness and dependence on His mercy," when you are thus addressing your suffering fellow-subjects, and encouraging them to bear without repining the dispensations of Providence, may God grant that by your decision of this night you may have laid in store for yourselves the consolation of reflecting that such calamities are, in truth, the dispensations of Providence--that they have not been caused, they have not been aggravated, by laws of man, restricting, in the hour of scarcity, the supply of food! VII LORD SHAFTESBURY INTRODUCTION TO THE CAUSE OF LABOR [In February, 1833, when the failure of Michael Sadler to be returned to Parliament left his "Short Time Bill" without a champion, Lord Ashley (afterwards known as Lord Shaftesbury) was asked to lead the cause. His decision was thus announced to the local "Short Time Committees" in the manufacturing towns.] Rev. G. S. Bull to Short Time Committees. London, February 6, 1833. Dear Sir:--I have to inform you that in furtherance of the object of the delegates' meeting, I have succeeded, under Mr. Sadler's sanction, in prevailing upon Lord Ashley to move his (Mr. Sadler's) bill. Lord Ashley gave notice yesterday afternoon, at half-past two, of a motion on the 5th of March, for leave "to renew the bill brought in by Mr. Sadler last session, to regulate the labor of children in the mills and factories of the United Kingdom, with such amendments and additions as appear necessary from the evidence given before the select Committee of this House." This notice, I am very happy to say (for I was present), was received with hearty and unusual cheers from all parts of a House of more than three hundred. No other notice was so cheered; and more than forty, some of them very popular, were given at the same time. I am informed that Lord Ashley received many unexpected assurances of support immediately after his notice, and has had more since. Pray call your committee together directly, and read this to them. As to Lord Ashley, he is noble, benevolent, and resolute in mind, as he is manly in person. I have been favored with several interviews, and all of the most satisfactory kind. On one occasion his Lordship said, "I have only zeal and good intentions to bring to this work; I can have no merit in it, that must all belong to Mr. Sadler. It seems no one else will undertake it, so I will; and without cant or hypocrisy, which I hate, I assure you I dare not refuse the request you have so earnestly pressed. I believe it is my duty to God and to the poor, and I trust he will support me. Talk of trouble! What do we come to Parliament for?"