In 1830 Lord Ashley married a daughter of Lord Cowper, and this
marriage, independently of the radiant happiness which it brought, had
an important bearing on his political career; for Lady Ashley's uncle
was Lord Melbourne, and her mother became, by a second marriage, the
wife of Lord Palmerston. Of Lord Melbourne and his strong common sense
Lord Shaftesbury, in 1882, told me the following characteristic story.
When the Queen became engaged to Prince Albert, she wished him to be
made King Consort by Act of Parliament, and urged her wish upon the
Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. At first that sagacious man simply
evaded the point, but when her Majesty insisted on a categorical answer,
"I thought it my duty to be very plain with her. I said, 'For G----'s
sake, let's hear no more of it, ma'am; for if you once get the English
people into the way of making kings, you will get them into the way of
unmaking them.'"

By this time Lord Ashley was deeply immersed in those philanthropic
enterprises which he had deliberately chosen as the occupation of his
lifetime. Reform of the Lunacy Law and a humaner treatment of lunatics
were the earliest objects to which he devoted himself. To attain them
the more effectually he got himself made a member, and subsequently
chairman, of the Lunacy Commission, and threw himself into the work with
characteristic thoroughness. He used to pay "surprise visits" both by
day and night to public and private asylums, and discovered by those
means a system of regulated and sanctioned cruelty which, as he narrated
it in his old age, seemed almost too horrible for credence.

The abolition of slavery all over the world was a cause which very early
enlisted his sympathy, and he used to tell, with grim humour, how, when,
after he had become Lord Shaftesbury, he signed an Open Letter to