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the spirit of honourable rivalry, inflicted on him. He gained the prize, but found it impossible to discard the subject from his thoughts. In the succeeding autumn, after great struggles of mind, he resolved to give up his plan for entering the Church, and devoted time, health and substance (to use his own words) to "seeing these calamities to an end." In sketching the progress of this great measure, the name of Wilberforce alone will be presented to view; and it is our duty therefore, in the first place, to make honourable mention of him who roused Wilberforce in the cause, and whose athletic vigour and indomitable perseverance surmounted danger, difficulties, fatigues, and discouragements, which few men could have endured, in the first great object of collecting evidence of the cruelties habitually perpetrated in the Slave Trade.

In the first stage of his proceedings, Mr. Clarkson, in the course of his application to members of Parliament, called on Mr. Wilberforce, who stated, that "the subject had often employed his thoughts, and was near his heart." He inquired into the authorities for the statements laid before him, and became, not only convinced of, but impressed with, the paramount duty of abolishing so hateful a traffic. Occasional meetings of those who were alike interested were held at his house; and in May, 1787, a committee was formed, of which Wilberforce became the Parliamentary leader. Early in 1788 he gave notice of his intention to bring the subject before the House; but owing to his severe indisposition that task was ultimately undertaken by Mr. Pitt, who moved and carried a resolution, pledging the House in the ensuing session to enter on the consideration of the subject. Accordingly, May 12, 1789, Mr. Wilberforce moved a series of resolutions, founded on a report of the Privy Council, exposing the iniquity and cruelty

of the traffic in slaves, the mortality which it occasioned among white as well as black men -and the neglect of health and morals by which the natural increase of the race in our West India islands was checked; and concluding with a declaration, that if the causes were removed by which that increase was checked, no considerable inconvenience would result from discontinuing the importation of African slaves. Burke, Pitt, and Fox supported the resolutions. Mr. Wilberforce's speech was distinguished by eloquence and earnestness, and by its unanswerable appeals to the first principles of justice and religion. The consideration of the subject was ultimately adjourned to the following session. In that, and in two subsequent sessions, the motions were renewed, and the effect of pressing such a subject upon the attention of the country was to open the eyes of many who would willingly have kept them closed, yet could not deny the existence of the evils so forced on their view.

In 1792 Mr. Wiberforce's motion for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was met by a proposal to insert in it the word "gradually ;" and in pursuance of the same policy, Mr. Dundas introduced a bill to provide for its discontinuance in 1800. The date was altered to 1796, and in that state the bill passed the Commons, but was stopped in the Upper House by a proposal to hear evidence upon it. Mr. Wilberforce annually renewed his efforts, and brought every new argument to bear upon the question, which new discoveries, or the events of the times, produced. In 1799 the friends of the measure resolved on letting it repose for a while, and for five years Mr. Wilberforce contented himself with moving for certain papers; but he took an opportunity of assuring the House that he had not grown cool in the cause, and that he would renew the discussion in a future session. On the 30th of May, 1804, he once more moved for

leave to bring in his bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in a speech of great eloquence and effect. He took the opportunity of making a powerful appeal to the Irish members, before whom, in consequence of the Union, this question was now for the first time brought, and the greater part of whom supported it. The division showed a majority of 124 to 49 in his favour; and the bill was carried through the Commons, but was again postponed in the House of Lords. In 1805 he renewed his motion, but on this occasion it was lost in the Commons by over-security among the friends of the measure. But when Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville took office in 1806, the Abolition was brought forward by the ministers, most of whom supported it, though it was not made a government question in consequence of several members of the cabinet opposing it. The Attorney General (Sir A. Pigott) brought in a bill, which was passed into a law, prohibiting the Slave Trade in the conquered colonies, and excluding British subjects from engaging in the foreign Slave Trade; and Mr. Fox, at Mr. Wilberforce's special request, introduced a resolution pledging the House to take the earliest measures for effectually abolishing the whole Slave Trade: this resolution was carried by a majority of 114 to 15; and January 2, 1807, Lord Grenville brought forward a bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in the House of Lords, which passed safely through both Houses of Parliament. As, however, the King was believed to be unfriendly to the measure, some alarm was felt by its friends, lest its fate might still be affected by the dismissal of the ministers, which had been determined upon. Those fears were groundless; for though they received orders to deliver up the seals of their offices on the 25th of March, the royal assent was given by commission by the Lord Chancellor Erskine on the same day; and thus the last act of

the administration was to conclude a contest, maintained by prejudice and interest during twenty years, for the support of what Mr. Pitt denominated "the greatest practical evil that ever afflicted the human race.”

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Among other testimonies to Mr. Wilberforce's merits, we are not inclined to omit that of Sir James Mackintosh, who in his journal, May 23, 1808, speaks thus of Wilberforce on the Abolition.' This refers to a pamphlet on the Slave Trade which Mr. Wilberforce had published in 1806 :—“ Almost as much enchanted by Mr. Wilberforce's book as by his conduct. He is the very model of a reformer. Ardent without turbulence, mild without timidity or coolness, neither yielding to difficulties, nor disturbed or exasperated by them; patient and meek, yet intrepid ; persisting for twenty years through good report and evil report; just and charitable even to his most malignant enemies; unwearied in every experiment to disarm the prejudices of his more rational and disinterested opponents, and supporting the zeal, without dangerously exciting the passions of his adherents."

The rest of Mr. Wilberforce's parliamentary conduct was consistent with his behaviour on this question. In debates chiefly political he rarely took a forward part: but where religion and morals were directly concerned, points on which few cared to interfere, and where a leader was wanted, he never shrunk from the advocacy of his opinions. He was a supporter of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform; he condemned the encouragement of gambling, in the shape of lotteries established by government; he insisted on the cruelty of employing boys of tender age as chimney-sweepers; he attempted to procure a legislative enactment against duelling, after the hostile meeting between Pitt and Tierney; and on the renewal of the East India Company's charter in 1816, he gave his zealous support

to the propagation of Christianity in Hindostan, in opposition to those who, as has been more recently done in the West Indies, represented the employment of missionaries to be inconsistent with the preservation of our empire. It is encouraging to observe, that with the exception of the one levelled against duelling, all these measures, however violently opposed and unfairly censured, have been carried in a more or less perfect form.

As an author, Mr. Wilberforce's claim to notice is chiefly derived from his treatise entitled 'A Practical View of the prevailing religious system of professing Christians in the higher and middle classes in this country, contrasted with Real Christianity.'

The object of it was to show that the standard of life generally adopted by those classes, not only fell short of, but was inconsistent with, the doctrines of the Gospel. It has justly been applauded as a work of no common courage, not from the asperity of its censures, for it breathes throughout a spirit of gentleness. and love, but on the joint consideration of the unpopularity of the subject and the writer's position. The Bishop of Calcutta, in his introductory essay, justly observes, that "the author in attempting it risked every thing dear to a public man and a politician, as such consideration, weight, ambition, reputation." And Scott, the divine, one of the most fearless and ardent of men, viewed the matter in the same light; for he wrote, "Taken in all its probable effects, I do sincerely think such a stand for vital Christianity has not been made in my memory. He has come out

beyond my expectations." Of a work so generally known we shall not describe the tendency more at large. It is said to have gone through about twenty editions in Britain, since the publication in 1797, and more in America; and to have been translated into most European languages.

In the discharge of his parliamentary duties Mr.

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