(1759-1833)
[Illustration: William Wilberforce.]
William Wilberforce, whose name a heartfelt, enlightened, and
unwearied philanthropy, directing talents of the highest order, has
enrolled among those of the most illustrious benefactors of mankind,
was born August 24, 1759, in Hull, England, where his ancestors had
been long and successfully engaged in trade. By his father's death he
was left an orphan at an early age. He received the chief part of his
education at the grammar school of Pockington, in Yorkshire, and at
St. John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow-commoner
about 1776 or 1777. When just of age, and apparently before taking his
B.A. degree, he was returned for his native town at the general
election of 1780. In 1784 he was returned again, but being also chosen
member for Yorkshire he elected to sit for that great county, which he
continued to represent until the year 1812, during six successive
Parliaments. From 1812 to 1825, when he retired from Parliament, he
was returned by Lord Calthorpe for the borough of Bramber. His
politics were in general those of Mr. Pitt's party, and his first
prominent appearance was in 1783, in opposition to Mr. Fox's India
Bill. In 1786 he introduced and carried through the Commons a bill for
the amendment of the criminal code, which was roughly handled by the
Lord Chancellor, Thurlow, and rejected in the House of Lords without a
division.
At the time when Mr. Wilberforce was rising into manhood, the
inquiry into the slave trade had engaged in a slight degree the
attention of the public. To the Quakers belongs the high honor of
having taken the lead in denouncing that unjust and unchristian
traffic. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the life
of Penn, the Quakers of Pennsylvania passed a censure upon it, and
from time to time the Society of Friends expressed their
disapprobation of the deportation of negroes, until, in 1761, they
completed their good work by a resolution to disown all such as
continued to be engaged in it. Occasionally the question was brought
before magistrates, whether a slave became entitled to his liberty
upon landing in England. In 1765 Granville Sharp came forward as the
protector of a negro, who, having been abandoned and cast upon the
world in disease and misery by his owner, was healed and assisted
through the charity of Mr. Sharp's brother. Recovering his value
with his health, he was claimed and seized by his master, and would
have been shipped to the colonies, as many Africans were, but for
the prompt and resolute interference of Mr. Sharp. In several
similar cases the same gentleman came forward successfully; but the
general question was not determined, or even argued, until 1772,
when the celebrated case of the negro Somerset was brought before
the Court of King's Bench, which adjudged, after a deliberate
hearing, that in England the right of the master over the slave
could not be maintained. The general question was afterward, in
1778, decided still more absolutely by the Scotch Courts, in the
case of Wedderburn _vs._ Knight. In 1783 an event occurred well
qualified to rouse the feelings of the nation, and call its
attention to the atrocities of which the slave trade was the cause
and pretext. An action was brought by certain underwriters against
the owners of the ship Zong, on the ground that the captain had
caused 132 weak, sickly slaves to be thrown overboard for the
purpose of claiming their value, for which the plaintiffs would not
have been liable if the cargo had died a natural death. The fact of
the drowning was admitted, and defended on the plea that want of
water had rendered it necessary, though it appeared that the crew
had not been put upon short allowance. It now seems incredible that
no criminal proceeding should have been instituted against the
perpetrators of this wholesale murder.
In 1785 the Vice-chancellor of Cambridge proposed as the subject for
the Bachelor's Prize Essay, the question, Is it allowable to enslave
men without their consent? Thomas Clarkson, who had gained the prize
in the preceding year, again became a candidate. Conceiving that the
thesis, though couched in general terms, had an especial reference
to the African slave trade, he went to London to make inquiries on
the subject. Investigation brought under his view a mass of
cruelties and abominations which engrossed his thoughts and shocked
his imagination. By night and day they haunted him; and he has
described in lively colors the intense pain which this composition,
undertaken solely in the spirit of honorable 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 honorable mention of him who first roused Wilberforce
in the cause, and whose athletic vigor 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 the West India islands was checked; and concluding with
a declaration that if the causes by which that increase was checked
were removed, 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. Wilberforce'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 awhile,
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 May 30, 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 decision
showed a majority of 124 to 49 in his favor; 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 Granville 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
Granville brought forward, in the House of Lords, a bill for the
abolition of the slave trade, 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 March 25th, 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."
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 behavior 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 the British 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
everything 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. Wilberforce was
punctual and active beyond his apparent strength; and those who
further recollect his diligent attendance on a vast variety of
public meetings and committees connected with religious and
charitable purposes, will wonder how a frame naturally weak should
so long have endured the wear of such exertion. In 1788, when his
illness was a matter of deep concern to the Abolitionists, Dr.
Warren said that he had not stamina to last a fortnight. No doubt
his bodily powers were greatly aided by the placid and happy frame
of mind which he habitually enjoyed; but it is important to relate
his own opinion, as delivered by an ear-witness, on the physical
benefits which he derived from a strict abstinence from temporal
affairs on Sundays: "I have often heard him assert that he never
could have sustained the labor and stretch of mind required in his
early political life, if it had not been for the rest of his
Sabbath; and that he could name several of his contemporaries in the
vortex of political cares, whose minds had actually given way under
the stress of intellectual labor so as to bring on a premature death
or the still more dreadful catastrophe of insanity and suicide, who,
humanly speaking, might have been preserved in health, if they would
but conscientiously have observed the Sabbath."
In 1797 Mr. Wilberforce married Miss Spooner, daughter of an eminent
banker at Birmingham. Four sons survived him. He died, after a
gradual decline, July 29, 1833, in Cadogan Place. He directed that
his funeral should be conducted without the smallest pomp; but his
orders were disregarded, in compliance with a memorial addressed to
his relatives by many of the most distinguished men of all parties,
and couched in the following terms: "We, the undersigned Members of
both Houses of Parliament, being anxious, upon public grounds, to
show our respect for the memory of the late William Wilberforce, and
being also satisfied that public honors can never be more fitly
bestowed than upon such benefactors of mankind, earnestly request
that he may be buried in Westminster Abbey, and that we and others
who may agree with us in these sentiments may have permission to
attend his funeral." The attendance of both Houses was numerous. Mr.
Wilberforce was interred within a few yards of his great
contemporaries, Pitt, Fox, and Canning.