Michael Sadler entered the British House of Commons at the behest of the 4th Duke of Newcastle, returned by the pocket borough of Newark as an 'Ultra' opponent of Catholic emancipation, but he devoted much effort in Parliament to urging the extension of the Poor Law to Ireland.

[1]: 11  Sadler and his brother were linen-drapers; in 1810 they gave up the retail trade[3] and went into partnership with the widow of an importer of Irish linen (in 1816 he married her eldest daughter[1]: 28  Anne[2]), but his biographer comments that Michael was lucky to have competent partners as his mind, nature, and habits were unfitted to business.

[1]: 13 His biographer reports that his family were Anglicans but his mother was sympathetic to Methodism[1]: 9  adding that "He had always entertained a decided preference for the Church of England, but after his marriage he became more regular and undeviating in his attendance on her ordinances.

[5][a] Religious affiliation was not merely a matter of private conscience (or social status) but also had political implications: Dissenters objected to paying for the Established Church, and were therefore favourable to any reform which might address this, and antagonistic to any steps which might increase the burden.

He also visited the sick and destitute as a member of the 'Stranger's Friend Society',[d] was superintendent of a large Sunday School, and sat on the Poor Law board for Leeds, eventually becoming Poor-rates Treasurer.

He disagreed strongly with the orthodox authorities of the age on economics and poverty such as David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, believing that their views tended to a destruction of traditional society.

Before the 1832 Reform Act Newark a borough in Nottinghamshire returned 2 MPs, chosen for it by a coalition of local landed interests; those of the Duke of Newcastle (the 'Reds') and other Tories chiefly Lord Middleton (the 'Yellows').

Again without consulting them, he searched for Clinton's replacement, eventually picking Sadler as a good public speaker with suitably hard-line views against Emancipation.

But we are firmly convinced, that to concede to its grand adversary the power it seeks to recover, to resign that influence which it would infalllibly exert, would be to dilapidate the venerable fabric of that happy constitution erected by the wisdom and cemented by the blood of our ancestors; would shake the very pillars on which the Protestant throne of these realms is founded; would invalidate the title of the present Protestant royal family; would threaten the existence of the Protestant establishment; would change many of our laws and subvert many of our sacred institutions; would extinguish the very spirit of the glorious revolution of 1688, and pour contempt on those great characters, who, under divine providence, brought about that happy event; and in fine, would, in the present state of political parties, deliver up the country to Roman Catholic ascendancy.

[1]: 21  but his objections were not merely political or constitutional; he held – he said in his declaration speech in 1829 – that "No man is properly qualified to fulfil the duties of any important office whose religion is not founded upon the sacred book of God – who does not derive his faith from that only source -who is prevented from reading it in his native language – who is deprived of the translated Bible".

[13] In 1831, it was therefore thought prudent that Sadler should stand for Aldborough, rather than Newark [g]where his election would be ensured as the borough, which had less than 80 electors, was securly under the control of the Duke of Newcastle.

The speech was well received, but it was rapidly concluded that Sadler could never expect a government post under George IV[2] (apparently because he lacked social polish).

[26] Reporting his final illness in 1835, the Yorkshire Gazette described him as "this philanthropic gentleman, whose great exertions to ameliorate the condition of the poor of the sister isle will never be forgotten".

The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect.

The guests learn too late their error, in counter-acting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all guests should have plenty, and knowing she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full.Since population increased by geometrical progression whilst production increased by arithmetical progression, population was only held in check by the want and distress of the poor; hence to relieve that want and distress whether by charity or by the poor-rates was (however kind-hearted) wrong-headed since it would artificially sustain a greater number of the poor (and hence increase the number of those in distress).

[28]: 297 going on to point out that even Sadler's analysis did not support an inverse relationship in the technical/accurate meaning of the term, but rather a mild tailing off of fecundity at higher population densities which did not invalidate Malthus, attacking various details of Sadler's analysis, and ending 25 pages later: We have shown that Mr Sadler is careless in the collection of facts, — that he is incapable of reasoning on facts when he has collected them, — that he does not understand the simplest terms of science, — that he has enounced a proposition of which he does not know the meaning,— that the proposition which he means to enounce, and which he tries to prove, leads directly to all those consequences which he represents as impious and immoral, — and that, from the very documents to which he has himself appealed, it may be demonstrated that his theory is false.

[35] Sadler (having been burnt in effigy at Newark[36]) was now returned for Aldborough;[2] the Whigs retained power and introduced a revised Reform Bill, which eventually passed the House of Commons.

Sadler voted against the Reform Bill; he spoke at Committee stage when boroughs in schedule B (those formerly returning two MPs, but now to return one: Aldborough was to be one of these, but with revised boundaries, and hence no longer in the pocket of the Duke of Newcastle) were under consideration[37] His main contribution was to (like a few Radicals such as Henry Hunt) deplore the introduction of a uniform qualification for the vote sweeping away much wider "scot & lot" franchises in the few boroughs where they existed.

The debate he initiated on Irish Poor Laws (29 August 1831) was held on the next sitting day after Sir Robert Peel had supported ministers by appealing to members to "avoid every other business which should interfere with the progress of the Reform Bill".

[39] In October he moved the First Reading of a Bill to improve the lot of the (agricultural) labouring poor (by Government building respectable cottages with land attached and letting them at an economic rent.

Sadler's only recorded speech in the Reform Bill debates was a short one on Hunt's amendment for a 'scot-and-lot' franchise "That all householders paying taxes, shall have a vote for the respective Members to be chosen in the next, and every succeeding Parliament.

[46] Sadler had been absent from Parliament because of ill-health, but attended specifically to speak on the Third Reading of Hobhouse's Bill, regretting its reduced scope (and referring to a petition in its favour from Dundee spinners to whom it was now irrelevant).

[49] Hobhouse advised Richard Oastler, a Yorkshire supporter of Sadler, that Hobhouse had got as much as he could, given the opposition of Scottish flax-spinners and 'the state of public business':[o] if Sadler put forward a Bill matching the aims of the Short Time Committees “he will not be allowed to proceed a single stage with any enactment, and … he will only throw an air of ridicule and extravagance over the whole of this kind of legislation”.

It will only spur them on to greater exertions, and would undoubtedly lead to certain success "[51][52] Sadler's Bill when introduced indeed corresponded closely to the aims of the Short Time Committees.

Sadler had resisted this "if the present Bill was referred to one, it would not become a law this Session, and the necessity of legislating was so apparent, that he was unwilling to submit to the delay of a Committee, when he considered they could obtain no new evidence on the subject".

[64] These exchanges (together with a prolonged scuffle at the meeting over a Ten-Hour banner depicting small ragged children entering Marshall's mill at 5 am on a winter morning)[64] have sometimes been taken to show the Leeds campaign was "a hard fight which hinged largely on the factory question"[46]: 53  but (if the newspapers supporting the rival parties reported the campaign with any accuracy)[q] after this meeting factory reform was never a major campaign issue; in its account of the next week's canvassing the Intelligencer noted Sadler to have raised the issue, but reported in detail only his denial that he had taken up the issue for electioneering purposes – no millchild had a vote, nor did their mothers, nor (as the Whigs had been careful to ensure) did any but a handful of their fathers:[66] its report of the following week has nothing on the subject.

[r] Sadler's previous speeches and actions meant that there were substantive differences between the candidates on church rates, the Corn Laws and close corporations;[71] these were supplemented by repeated claims by Whig supporters that Sadler's declared views on other issues were not his real views; he pretended to be the friend of the poor so that he could return to being the lackey of the Duke of Newcastle.

Macaulay called Sadler 'a convenient philanthropist' and likened him to 'the Hyaena who, when it wishes to decoy the unwary into its den, has a singular knack of imitating the cries of little children .

Lord Ashley, eldest son of the 6th Earl of Shaftesbury, took Sadler's place as the leading spokesman in Parliament for the factory reform movement,[11] and reintroduced the Bill.

This mud-slinging aside, there were also underlying policy differences between the Tories and the Radicals (e.g. attitude to the Corn Laws) and the passage of Althorp's Factory Act had for the moment removed the Ten-Hour Bill as a cause behind which they could easily unite.