He placed himself at the head of the fight against all cruelty to children and became the first President of the Society to put it down, which has now become great and powerful with officers in every town to guard child life and protect the helpless little things from all manner of nameless sufferings.
He championed the animal world and raised his voice against the unspeakable doings of the vivisectors, and the whole anti-vivisection movement was started and built up under his wise and benign guidance, as first President of the Anti-Vivisection Society.
He belonged to the period when those who worked in the field of philanthropy were almost exclusively concerned in curing, if they could, the evils they perceived around them; but he himself was a pioneer of the later school who aim also at preventing
those evils. Those who went before him sought to assist the poor and helpless, but while he endeavoured to do this with all his heart, he also strove to destroy the causes of pauperism. He perceived that physical squalor inevitably produces spiritual squalor, and that if we are to make men think and live cleanly we must enable them to possess decent and clean homes.
Others of his family in the past had served the State with credit in the great public offices that satisfy men’s reputable pride and honourable ambition, but none before him had served his fellow creatures during a long life with no other motive than to bind up their wounds and aggravate the mercies of God.
His appearance when I had the happiness to know him intimately was noble and memorable, and he won his way less by commanding abilities than by weight of character. His large benignity repressed the expression of any small or mean thought in his presence; and his arrival was sufficient without his saying a word to elevate
the tone and manner of any discussion in which he was expected to participate. He was incapable of asperity.
In the House of Lords there was conceded to him by universal courtesy a special seat which he occupied independently of the change of parties, a tribute of respect to his unique and distinguished position which as far as I am aware has at any rate in recent years been paid to no one else.
He was a survival of the times when rank more recognised its duties and received more homage than in the present day; for when I was young it was still possible for the public to believe that peerages were only conferred on men for serious and meritorious services to the country, and that those who succeeded to them by inheritance were trained to recognise the large obligations of their station.
He lived in a great house on the west side of Grosvenor Square, tempering his august surroundings with a personal austerity. There he was easily accessible to anyone who came to him for good