The Earl Who Went Underground

In 1842, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, did something no British nobleman was expected to do. He read the testimony of children — some as young as five — who crawled through coal mine shafts so narrow they could not stand, dragging carts on chains fastened to their waists. He did not look away.

Shaftesbury brought their words to Parliament. He described girls hauling coal in darkness for fourteen hours. He quoted a child named Sarah Gooder, age eight, who said she was scared in the pit and sometimes sang hymns to keep from crying. His colleagues squirmed. The mine owners called him a radical. But Shaftesbury pressed the Mines and Collieries Act through Parliament that same year, banning children under ten from the mines entirely.

He did not stop there. Over forty years, he championed laws protecting chimney sweeps, factory workers, and the mentally ill — people whose suffering most powerful men found easy to ignore. Asked why he spent his life this way, Shaftesbury pointed to scripture: the God who sees the afflicted demands rulers who see them too.

Psalm 72 paints this very portrait of righteous authority. The king God blesses is not the one who accumulates power but the one who delivers the needy when they cry out, who takes pity on the weak, and who regards their blood as precious in his sight. True greatness, the psalmist insists, is measured by what a leader does for those who have no one else to help.