The Mines Inspectorate was one of the earliest products of the dilemma with which the emerging social conscience of the nineteenth century was forced to grapple: how to mitigate the worst sufferings of the industrial worker without restricting the freedom of the entrepreneur to pursue his private and legitimate aim of making money. In the light of the starkly illustrated report of the Children's Employment Commission, on the long hours and at times almost bestial conditions in which even tiny children (and grown women) were required to work underground, there could be no serious opposition to the widespread demand that these abuses should cease. Proposals for the necessary legislation appeared in the form of a Bill promoted by Lord Ashley, which provided that, after 1 March 1843, it would be unlawful to employ women and girls underground in any capacity and to employ boys underground below the age of ten; boys of less than ten were not to be bound apprentice and no apprenticeship should last for more than eight years. The penalties for infringement of any of these conditions were fixed at not less than £5 and not more than £10. The legislation, according to Boyd, the historian of the Inspectorate, ‘was characterized as a useless and mischievous prying into the affairs of private individuals’; Lord Londonderry described it as a measure which ‘might be regarded as the commencement of a series of grievances which would be got up for the purpose of working on that hypocritical humanity which reigned so much’; but it became law in spite of him.