Sadler, whose paternal ancestors were minor Derbyshire squires, while his mother was of Huguenot descent, was largely self-taught and developed an early interest in mathematics and theology. At the age of 17 he wrote his first ‘stinging’ pamphlet, An Apology for the Methodists, with whom his parents, though members of the Church of England, were in sympathy. Mary Howitt of Uttoxeter recalled him as a youth of ‘gentlemanly bearing, handsome dress, intelligent face, and pleasant voice’.
When his Member Clinton resigned his seat for Newark because he felt unable to oppose the Wellington ministry’s concession of Catholic emancipation in February 1829, the 4th duke of Newcastle offered to bring in Sadler ‘as a bulwark of the Protestant cause’.
what he considered to be most useful advice as to his parliamentary proceedings so as to gain the favour of the House and to obtain a willing hearing; his Yorkshire dialect is rather broad, but that is the only thing against him.
Newcastle mss Ne2 F3/1/114.
He took his seat the following day, and presented and endorsed several petitions against emancipation, 11 Mar. In a long and emotional maiden speech, 17 Mar., when he ‘was listened to at least with attention’, he challenged Parliament’s authority to proceed ‘in this work of counter-revolution’ without making a fresh appeal to the people, dismissed the notion that emancipation would pacify Ireland and condemned Peel’s apostacy.
nervous and unused to the tact of the House ... it was admitted even by his opponents that he displayed great force, power and energy of mind. He gave Peel a great dressing and in good taste. If he is not too old to learn to accommodate himself to the etiquette or forms of the House he will be a prominent debater.
Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 17 Mar. 1829.
The poet Robert Southey*, who had long admired Sadler’s politics and talents, thought he had ‘answered my expectations’.
Sadler voted for Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb. 1830, and next day took exception to ‘the extraordinary levity’ with which some Members treated the economic condition of the country, criticized absentee Irish landlords, blamed the resumption of cash payments for adding to the cost of government and called for stringent retrenchment. When in early February he and Clinton Fynes Clinton, Newcastle’s Member for Aldborough, decided ‘forcibly to take up the cause of the liberty of the press as connected with the late ex-officio prosecutions for libel’, Newcastle had no doubt that their ‘temperately though spiritedly managed’ campaign would ‘produce considerable effect’.
Sadler stood for Newark at the general election of 1830 and was returned in second place ahead of Wilde.
It was I believe ... felt on all hands to be a failure ... and above all cheerless in its general aspect as affording little or no surplus, and consequently little prospect of meeting any additional demands without fresh impositions or of reducing taxation much below its present amount in future. It was, however, the budget of political economy.
Ibid. f. 71.
He warmly welcomed Hobhouse’s bill to regulate and restrict child factory labour, 15 Feb. On the 16th he argued that distress was attributable to a cause other than overpopulation and pressed for the development of uncultivated land. Next day he opposed the proposed levy on steamboat passengers, which would hit poor Irish migrant labourers and allow Irish landlords to ‘continue without restraint their culpable system of absenteeism’. On 18 Feb. he declared that only ‘wise and graduated poor laws’ could rescue Ireland from recurrent famine and distress. He condemned Howick’s Malthusian emigration scheme and pledged himself to produce a ‘practical plan for the relief of the people’, 22 Feb. He favoured the immediate committal of the calico duties repeal bill, 8 Mar. Having attended the public meeting convened by merchants and ship owners of London, he endorsed their petition against relaxation of the timber duties, 15 Mar. Requested to support the kelp growers’ petition, 16 Mar., he affirmed that the reduction of duties on imported barilla would cause great hardship and that in parts of Scotland ‘the people are hardly able to obtain the means of subsistence’. On 18 and 30 Mar. he again maintained that Irish distress would only be alleviated by the introduction of poor laws and dismissed the government’s relief proposals as ‘utterly inadequate’. He voted against the second reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar., questioned the alleged enthusiasm of the people for it, 28 Mar., and disputed the crown’s right to suspend writs, 30 Mar. According to Mrs. Arbuthnot, the Ultras were ‘voting with Mr. O’Connell, who sits whispering with Mr. Sadler all night, and Sir F. Burdett, with the object of breaking down the government’.
It is calculated that the ministers will have a majority in the Commons of above 100, but that they will be in a minority in the Peers, except a large batch is made. Time alone will show ... Yesterday I was at a grand party of the opposition at which there were many dukes and nobles ... It was a party ... of all the Tories and we all shook hands. The duke of Newcastle and Sir Robert Peel were reconciled ... Its being supposed that I am true to my principles and have employed my abilities be they what they may in furthering them ... was the consideration that moved the duke of Newcastle to promote me to a seat; but if the constitution is destroyed, neither he nor anyone will have it in his power to countenance men these distinctions, many years.
LSE Lib. Archives, Coll. Misc. 62 I 13, Sadler to son [30 June 1831].
On the address, 21 June 1831, he called for more decisive action to relieve distress in Ireland, and by his own account ‘was listened to and much cheered in what I said’.
On 29 Aug. 1831, after many frustrating delays, he brought on his motion for an Irish poor law, but although a number of Members spoke in its support, it was rejected by 64 votes to 52. Yet Sadler told Oastler that ‘even the ministers themselves, acknowledge [the division] to be a defeat’; and The Times, hitherto disparaging of his endeavours, remarked that ‘his speech ... was able and eloquent, nor are we among those who consider it a defect, that he treated the subject broadly’.
Commenting on the distressed condition of the glove trade, 15 Dec. 1831, he warned government that ‘people are not to be fed by abstract notions of political economy’. He objected to the anatomy bill that day, presented a hostile petition, 2 Feb., and spoke against its third reading, 11 May 1832. He voted against the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831, and its committal, 20 Jan. 1832. He criticized the £10 householder qualification, 2 Feb., voted against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and divided against the third reading, 22 Mar., and the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May. He endorsed the Leeds petition to reform the Irish tithes system and establish poor laws there, 23 Jan., when he also spoke in favour of inquiry into the condition of the country as a whole. He supported a petition for investigation of the state of the silk trade, 21 Feb. He backed the call for the accurate registration of births and deaths, 23 Mar. On 19 June he proposed to make permanent provision for the Irish poor by taxing absentees, but was defeated by 77-58. He divided against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July, and was in the minority of 16 against the Greek loan, 6 Aug. He spoke in favour of remission of the death penalty for forgery, 31 July, and presented petitions for relaxation of the criminal code, 2 Aug. On 7 Aug. 1832 he alleged that he had been excluded from the silk trade select committee as a notorious advocate of protection and called for abolition of the redundant board of trade. Next day he drew unfavourable comparisons between the conditions of colonial slaves and factory children, opposed the civil list payments bill and moved to reduce the lord chancellor’s salary by £2,000; he was a teller for the minority of six.
Sadler had become increasingly aware of the need for decisive action to regulate child factory labour. In correspondence with Oastler in September 1831 he wrote:
I not only concur with Mr. Hobhouse’s factory bill; but, as I have expressed to him over and over again, I go much beyond it. Had he not taken it up this session, I should have done so, as my views and feelings are very strong upon that subject.
When Hobhouse withdrew the measure in the face of strong opposition, Sadler assumed the lead in Parliament, despite Hobhouse’s warning to Oastler that if he persisted in his determination to limit working hours to ten, he would ‘not be allowed to proceed a single stage with any enactment’ and would ‘only throw an air of ridicule and extravagance over this kind of legislation’. This was not a view shared by Oastler, who suggested that when the reform bill became law, Sadler should contest the new parliamentary borough of Leeds in order to make factory reform an electioneering issue. In November 1831 Sadler told Oastler:
The question of factory labour never has been taken up with sufficient energy in Parliament; and the law, as at present carried, is not only nothing, but actually worse than nothing ... I am persuaded, and all I hear and read confirms me in conviction, that TEN hours can never be receded from by those who love children, or who wish to obtain the approbation of Him who was indeed their friend and lover. I am sorry, therefore, to see that Sir John Hobhouse has not only conceded his bill, but his very views and judgement to the political economists, who in this, as in many other things, are the pests of society and the persecutors of the poor ... I had rather have no bill, than one that would legalize and warrant their excessive labour.
Alfred, 127-31; Driver, 93.
He introduced his bill to regulate the labour of children and young persons in mills and factories on 17 Jan. 1832: it prohibited the employment of children under nine, limited those under 18 to ten hours daily work and banned night work for those under 21. He presented numerous petitions in favour of factory reform throughout February, echoing the fervour of Oastler’s extra-parliamentary campaign in support of the ten hours bill. On 6 Feb. he met the duke of Sussex and persuaded him to present favourable petitions to the Lords.
I spoke last night and I believe pretty well. Old Mr. Marshall [John Marshall*] was under the gallery ... but I made a piece fly at his son Billy [William Marshall*] who smiled while I was describing the misery of a factory child. Lord Althorp proposed him on the committee but I said I could not allow it and would divide the House upon it. I said I would not have one factory man upon the list and he yielded. The great physician here Mr. Blundel was under the gallery and said that all I said physiologically was quite correct. The House after all did not like it, I am persuaded; but the country is up, and will not have [children] to be worked 12 hours a day for a cotton lord in the land.
LSE Coll. Misc. 62 I 7.
He continued to present petitions in favour of reform throughout the rest of March, and on the 26th he derided those which purported to endorse the existing factory system. According to Macaulay, there was ‘a strong and general feeling in the House of Commons, that something ought to be speedily done for the protection of children’, but ‘also ... a general feeling that the details of Mr. Sadler’s bill have not been well considered’.
I repeat perhaps too little in accordance with the views of some whom I highly respect and revere, but they are such as can alone give our party in the north the slightest chance, and restore it to the affections and surround it by the power of the people though I hope I did not take them up for that purpose, but from a thorough belief and conviction that the grounds of our political adherence being smitten from under us, by the rascally Whigs, it better suited the principles as well as being the only policy of the true Tories to check for themselves some intelligible principles of actions, rather than to fight their battles in defending the fragments of the system which they have left us. In a word I lean to the people, not indeed to the mob ... but to the neglected, abused and deserted people, whose principles we may form and whose affections we may [win] if we think fit, but without whom we shall be found as powerless as our enemies could wish us ... I have then stated that in some few of the large towns, I would have given the operative classes some direct political influence, that though averse from short, I am not the defender of septennial parliaments ... as to the ballot they may fight about it that please. It is I know Lord Brougham’s ‘security’. I despise it as such, and I think it would be quite as favourable to the higher as to the lower classes, and in fact do neither good nor harm to either.
Add. 56369, f. 80.
Sadler stood for Leeds at its first parliamentary election in December 1832 but, after a bitter contest, which revolved largely around the principles of social reform, he was defeated by his old adversary Macaulay and John Marshall, son of the eminent flax manufacturer. He remained active in the factory movement, and in late 1833 accepted an invitation to contest a by-election at Huddersfield, but was defeated. Too ill to take up a renewed offer to stand for Leeds following Macaulay’s resignation in February 1834, he played some part in the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Act that year, but withdrew to Ireland, where he had business interests, settling at New Lodge, Belfast. He was invited to contest Birmingham and South Durham in 1835, but the breakdown of his health as a consequence of over-exertion made a public life impossible, and he died of heart failure in July. According to an obituary, it was generally understood that his ‘severe study and great anxiety’ had hastened his early death.