At the Annual Meeting of the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION, on the 17th March last, the EARL off SHAFTESBURY was present, and delivered the following interesting speech. He said:— " The Committee of this society has conferred ! upon me an inestimable benefit by putting into this resolution confided to me the whole history and merits of the Life-boat Institution, so I think it will spare me and you a speech by merely reading the resolution. It is—' That this meeting desires to testify anew its ap- preciation of the great and national work of the Life-boat Institution, and of the continued success which attends its extensive and perilous operations; and therefore considers that it has, and must continue to have, the strongest claim to the support and sympathy of the public, par- ticularly when it is remembered that the Insti- tution has contributed, since its first establish- ment, to the saving of more than twenty-seven thousand persons from shipwreck.' Anybody who is acquainted with our maritime system, and with the character and condition of our seafaring men, must at once see, without enter- ing into argument or description, the enormous, the inexpressible value of such an institution as this. I have a little personal feeling in the matter, because I see here that one of the Life- boats, called the British Workman, was instru- mental last year in saving a number of lives; and I am told by Mr. Lewis that it has been one of the most successful on the coast, having saved altogether 162 lives. I am particularly touched by that fact, because a few years ago I was entrusted, at the invitation of my friend Mr. Smithies, the editor of the British Work- man, with the honourable duty of going down to Norfolk to name that boat, which was con- structed from the contributions of the readers of the British Workman. I recollect perfectly well the whole ceremony, and the satisfaction it gave to me and everybody else; and the im- pression it made on my mind was to leave a deep and solemn sense of the duty of maintain- ing such a society as the National Life-boat Institution. When I was residing at Warmer Castle I made some acquaintance with the Deal boatmen. I confess, everything I heard of them filled me with amazement—their calm- ness, their resolution, and their courage. I heard from their wives the conditions under which they lived, the hours they passed at sea, and the anxiety of mind both to themselves and their families at such times; I heard from all that when the signal of distress was given, it may be in the dead of night, however tempestuous the weather, there never was a moment's hesitation—they started from their beds, crowded to the shore, and as soon as possible manned and launched the Life-boat.

It has oftentimes been said that some of these men were rather exacting in their demands for recompense from shipowners for saving their ships; but I must say, when I consider the hazards which these men run—when I think that many of them are married men with families who depend upon their exertions, I cannot consider they are too exacting when they have rescued a rich ship having hazarded their lives in the enterprise. When they are called upon in the hour of danger, they never calculate on the character of the ship—it may be a rich ship, it may be a poor one that will yield them nothing, but they go with the same force to rescue human life or the ship, as the case may be. We must consider the lives of these men, and the character they ex- hibit on every occasion. Look at their cha- racter ! They exhibit not only daring forward courage under the immediate pressure of the moment, but look at their power of endurance.

Look at the power and endurance shown by the Life-boat men at Ramsgate when going out at night to rescue the crew of a sinking vessel on the sands twenty-five miles off, and not being able to approach her for the darkness, they determined to stay all night and wait for day- light to get near her; and that meant sixteen hours, during which these brave fellows were exposed to the pitiless storm! These are men of whom the country ought to be proud, and, instead of grudging them any remuneration, shipowners and others should do them service in every way in their power, and, like the Institution, pay them liberally for the work done. There is in our Liturgy a very beau- tiful service for those at sea, and one of the most beautiful and touching prayers in it is a prayer to Almighty God that He would protect all vessels that are passing the seas on their lawful occasions. We may apply that prayer with equal force to all these Life-boats under your control, and pray that God will bless an Institution such as this, which is so much for the national honour, and so much for the national security." (His lordship's speech was much applauded through- out.) This speech, was delivered with, the usual force and eloquence which cha- racterise the public remarks of LORD SHAFTESBURY, and, listening to him, few would conceive that he was within a few weeks of his eightieth year, which he attained on the 28th April last. No living man will hereafter be better re- membered than LORD SHAFTESBURY, and the ceremony which brought together an enthusiastic assembly at the Guildhall, London, to celebrate his eightieth birth- day, was only a just recognition of a long life nobly spent in ameliorating the lot and promoting the welfare of the working people of England.

The Times itself, as we well remember, took a most active and influential part in all the public events of LORD SHAFTES- BURY'S busy life, and well observes that it was he " who, as LORD ASHLEY, took up and carried through, in the year after the first Reform Bill was passed, the first measure of factory legislation, whereby Parliament endeavoured to regulate and control the employment of children in premature and exhausting labour. He it was who procured the appointment in 1840 of the Royal Commission to inquire into the employment of women and chil- dren in mining and other forms of labour, and who brought in and carried in 1842 the Act of Parliament which finally put an end to a system of white slavery as horrible and degrading as ever disgraced a civilised country. Again, in 1844, LORD ASHLEY introduced a Factory Act amend- ing and extending the former measures, and the subsequent legislation on the subject was largely due to his assistance and influence.

" Nor have LORD SHAFTESBURY'S lifelong efforts for the welfare of the working classes been confined to the task of legis- lation. His name is known and honoured wherever there are children to be re- claimed from ignorance and vice, and it is chiefly by his efforts and countenance that' in London alone at least 300,000 of the youth of both sexes have been rescued from the ranks of the criminal and dangerous classes, and made good and useful citizens, loyal and faithful subjects of HEB MAJESTY.' " Such is in brief the noble record of a long and well-spent life, and long before many of the men or the parents of many of the children who gathered to do him honour on his birthday were born, LORD SHAFTESBURY had identified himself with measures of social improvement, which are now bearing abundant and magnifi- cent fruit in the social and political con- dition of the nation. In the years when the Factory Legislation promoted by LORD SHAFTESBURY was maturing, the ' Condition of England Question,' as it was called, was the great question which perplexed all politicians and philanthro- pists of the time. To no one more than to LORD SHAFTESBURY is due the credit of having removed the 'Condition of England Question' from the range of practical politics, and of having sown the seed which has sprung up in a younger generation in the form of universal edu- cation, political enfranchisement, and social regeneration. An earlier move- ment had emancipated the negro. He himself has achieved a renown which at least deserves to be not less imperishable, by putting an end to the slavery, almost as revolting, and a great deal less ex- cusable, of English women and children.

The speech in which he introduced his Bill, in 1842, for the regulation of em- ployment in mines and collieries reads to the present generation like a horrible nightmare dream of degradation, cruelty, and oppression. Nothing that HOWARD tells of the state of prisons in his time is more revolting or more disgraceful to humanity. It is humiliating to think that only forty years ago, in the reign of the present Queen, children of both sexes were sent into coal mines at the age sometimes of four years, and generally of i six or seven, to work as beasts of burden.

No limit was set to their work except their own powers of endurance, and the interest of their employers in not ex- hausting the supply of labour. These wretched children, totally uncared for, ill-fed, and miserably clad, cuffed and buffeted by their brutal elders, living in an atmosphere of the foulest language, and the vilest behaviour, were made to crawl on their hands and knees dragging loads of coal by means of a chain attached to a girdle strapped round their waists, sometimes in seams of coal not more than 20 inches in thickness, the water standing deep on the floor of the mine, the air foul with accumulated gases, and the ventilation miserably imperfect. The labour of these wretched children was carried on from fourteen to sixteen hours, many of them having to walk for a mile or more in their dripping clothes when they at last quitted the mine. In other districts the children carried the burdens on their backs. ' I found,' said one of the Com- missioners appointed to inquire into the matter,' a little girl, only six years old, carrying half a hundred weight, and making regularly fourteen long journeys a day. With a burden from 1 cwt. to 1 cwt., the height ascended and the distance along the roads, added together, exceeded in each journey the height of St. Paul's Cathedral.' This, we must again remind our readers, for the fact is almost, incredible, was the condition of one kind of labour in England only forty years ago. Nor is even this the worst— the lot of women employed in the mines was even harder than that of the children.

' I have a belt round my waist,' said a witness, 'and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet.

The road is very steep, and we have to hold by a rope, and where there is no rope, by anything that we can catch hold of. It is very hard work for a woman.

. . . The pit is very wet. I have seen water up to my thighs. . . . My clothes are wet through almost all day long I have drawn, till I have had the skin off me. The belt and chain is worse when we are in the family-way.' Another witness stated that it was not uncommon for women in such a condition to go home and give birth to a child and return to work within the week. 'We return,' said another, 'as soon as able—never longer than ten or twelve days; many less if they are much needed. It is only horsework,' added this witness, 'and ruins the women; it crushes their haunches, bends their ankles, and makes them old women at forty.' " These are but a few of the revolting details of mining labour in England only forty years ago, and these are the horrors which LORD SHAFTESBURY put an end to for ever. The Bill which he introduced forbade female labour in mines altogether, and regulated the employment of children in accordance with the dictates of human- ity. The House of Commons accepted it gladly, but a member of the House of Lords, largely interested in collieries, actually proposed its rejection, though happily without success. In this case the task of LORD ASHLEY was rendered comparatively easy by the overwhelming appeal which the strength of his cause enabled him to make to the awakened humanity of Parliament and the nation.

It was otherwise, however, with the Factory Acts which followed in later years. It is true that the first Factory Act was passed, as we have said, in 1833, but it was not until 1847 that the great struggle came over the Factory Act in- troduced in that year by Mr. FIELDEN.

Already in 1844 LORD ASHLEY had in- troduced and carried a measure extending and amending the Act of 1833, and now another step forward was to be made— not this time at the instance of LORD ASHLEY himself, but by one whose assist- ance he is ever ready cordially to acknow- ledge. The Bill was strongly opposed on grounds of political economy by such authorities as Mr. ROEBUCK, Mr. HUME, Mr. BRIGHT, and Sir ROBERT PEEL; but it passed the House of Commons by a majority of 190 to 100. In the House of Lords the opposition to the measure was headed by no less an authority than LORD BROUGHAM, who delivered an impassioned speech, in which he dwelt with unrivalled but ineffectual force on the economical heresies involved in such a measure.

' There is no connection/ he said, ' be- tween this Bill and the doctrines of political economy, excepting that those doctrines are founded on plain common sense and daily experience, and this Bill is an outrage on common sense and that experience.' The language is not un- familiar in controversies of later date, and perhaps the history of the Factory Act may lead some persons to question the paramount and indefeasible authority of the political economy of the moment.

Be this as it may, the Act and the legisla- tion of which it formed a part are a standing monument of LORD SHAFTES- BURY'S benevolent energy and devotion to the cause of social improvement. It is given to few men to see so completely the fruit of their labours as he has done. To have changed the whole social condition of England, to have emancipated women and children from a condition almost worse than slavery, to have reclaimed the neglected and regenerated the outcast— these are the results which give the aged philanthropist a foremost place among those who have laboured for the welfare of England."