Page images
PDF
EPUB

every material object of an indication of the divine wisdom and goodness; in every human being an heir of immortality; in every enjoyment a proof of the divine benignity; in every affliction an act of parental discipline. The early development of this habit of mind appears to have been attended with much dejection and protracted self-denial; but the gay and social spirit of the man gradually resumed its dominion. A piety so profound was never so entirely free from asceticism. It was allied to all the pursuits, and all the innocent pleasures of life, we might almost say to all its blameless whims and humours. The frolic of earlier days had indeed subsided, and the indestructible gayety of his heart had assumed a more gentle and cautious character. But with a settled peace of mind, and a self-government continually gaining strength, he felt that perfect freedom which enabled him to give the reins to his constitutional vivacity; and the most devotional of men was at the same time the most playful and exhilarating companion. His presence was as fatal to dulness as to immorality. His mirth was as irresistible as the first laughter of childhood.

The sacred principles which he had now adopted were not sufficient entirely to cure those intellectual defects to which a neglected education and the too early enjoyment of wealth and leisure had given the force of inveterate habit. His conversation was remarkable for interminable digressions, and was no inapt index of the desultory temper of his mind. But even this discursive temper was made subservient to the great objects of his life. It exhibited itself in the rapid transitions which he was continually making from one scheme of benevolence to another; and in that singular faculty which he possessed of living at once as the inhabitant of the visible and invisible worlds. From the shadows of earth to the realities of man's future destiny he passed with a facility scarcely attainable to those who have been trained to more continuous habits of application. Between the oratory and the senate-devotional exercises and worldly pursuits-he had formed so intimate a connexion, that the web of his discourse was not rarely composed of very incongruous materials. But this fusion of religious with secular thoughts added to the spirit with which every duty was performed, and to the zest with which every enjoyment was welcomed; and if the want of good mental discipline was perceptible to the last, the triumph of Christianity was but the more conspicuous in that inflexible constancy of purpose with which he pursued the great works of benevolence to which his life was consecrated. No aspirant for the honours of literature, or for the dignities of the woolsack, ever displayed more decision of character than marked his labours for the abolition of the slave trade.

Some notice, however brief, of that great event is indispensable in the most rapid survey of the life of Mr. Wilberforce. The aspirations of his school-boy days on this subject have been already noticed. That early impression was deep and abiding. At the commencement of his parliamentary career, in 1780, his in

quiries into the system of colonial slavery had led him to conceive and to avow the hope that he should live to redress the wrongs of the Negro race. The direction of public opinion towards the accomplishment of great political objects is one of those social acts which, during the last half century, has almost assumed the character of a new invention. But. the contrast between the magnitude of the design, and the poverty of the resources at his command, might have justified many an anxious foreboding, while, during the following six years, Mr. Wilberforce concerted plans for the abolition of the slave trade with James Ramsey, the first confessor and proto-martyr of the new faith, with Ignatius Latrobe, the missionary, in his lodging in Fetter Lane, or even with Sir Charles and Lady Middleton, at their mansion in Kent. Allies of greater apparent importance were afterwards obtained; and it was when seated with Mr. Pitt, "in conversation in the open air, at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the valley of Keston," that Mr. Wilberforce resolved "to give notice, on a fit occasion, in the House of Commons, of his intention to bring the subject forward." The experience of the next twenty years was, however, to convince him that it was not from the eloquent statesman who, for nearly the whole of that period, directed the government of this country, that effectual support must be drawn; but from the persevering energy of men who, like Ramsey and Latrobe, could touch in the bosoms of others those sacred springs of action which were working in their own. Amongst such associates in this holy war are to be mentioned, with peculiar veneration, the names of Granville Sharpe and of Thomas Clarkson. To the former was committed the presidency of the society, charged with the duty of collecting and diffusing information; while Mr. Clarkson became the zealous and indefatigable agent of that body. To Mr. Wilberforce himself was assigned the general superintendence of the cause, both in and out of Parliament.

In 1789, he first proposed the abolition of the slave trade to the House of Commons, in a speech which Burke rewarded with one of those imperishable eulogies which he alone had the skill and the authority to pronounce. But a victory over Guinea merchants was not to be numbered amongst the triumphs of eloquence. Unable to withstand the current of popular feeling which the novelty as much as the nature of the proposal had stirred, they sagaciously resolved to await the subsidence of this unwonted enthusiasm,; soliciting only a suspension of the measure until Parliament should be in possession of the facts which they undertook to substantiate. To this Fabian policy, ever changing in its aspect, but uniform in its design, the slave traders were indebted for the prolongation of their guilty commerce. Nearly two years were worn away in the examination of their own witnesses, and when Mr. Wilberforce had, with difficulty, succeeded in transferring the inquiry from the bar of the House of Commons to the less dilatory tribunal of a select committee, he had to

by assenting, in the decline of life, to the introduction of the law for the abolition of slavery.

Thus far the difficulties of the contest had chiefly arisen from the influence or the arts of his enemies; but Mr. Wilberforce had now to sustain the more depressing weight of the secession of one of his most effective auxilia

influenced by other motives, of which an expla nation is to be found in his "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade," Mr. Clarkson was reluctantly compelled to retire from the field. With what deep regret he abandoned the contest may be learnt from his own volumes; and earnest as must have been his aspiration for its success, he was unable, during the eleven years which followed, to resume his place amidst the champions of the cause, though he lived to witness and to share in the triumph.

struggle laboriously for permission to produce | house, who lived to redeem his early error, testimony in refutation of the evidence of his antagonists. It was not, therefore, till April, 1791, that the question was directly brought to issue; when a proof was given of the foresight with which the Guinea merchants had calculated on the gradual subsidence of the public indignation. Ominous were the forebodings with which the friends of Mr. Wilber-ries. Suffering under nervous debility, and force looked forward to the approaching debate. By the master of St. John's College, Cambridge, his position was compared to that of "Episcopius in the infamous Synod of Dort;" while John Wesley exhorted him to proceed to the conflict as a new "Athanasius contra mundum." They had well divined the temper of the times. The slave traders triumphed by an overwhelming majority. In the political tumults of those days, the voice of humanity was no longer audible, and common sense had ceased to discharge its office. The bad faith and fickleness of the French government had involved St. Domingo in confusion and bloodshed; and because the elements of society had broken loose in that colony, it was judged dangerous to arrest the accumulation of the materials of similar discord within our own! Even Mr. Pitt avowed his opinion that it was wise to await more tranquil times before the slave trade should be abolished. It was in vain that Mr. Wilberforce urged on the House of Commons, in 1792, the true inference from the calamitous state of St. Domingo. His measure for the immediate abolition of the slave trade was again defeated. Those were days in which every change was branded as a revolution-when the most sacred rules of moral or political conduct, if adduced in favour of any reform, were denounced and abhorred as "French principles."

Reason, however, having gradually regained her dominion, the procrastinating system of the slave traders assumed a new shape, and obtained, in the person of Mr. Dundas, its most formidable advocate. With perverse ingenuity, he proposed to substitute a gradual for an immediate abolition; fixing a remote period for the entire cessation of the trade. Yet even in this cautious form the bill found a cold reception in the House of Peers, where, after consuming the session in the examination of two witnesses, their lordships postponed the measure till the following year. With the arrival of that period, Mr. Wilberforce had to sustain three successive defeats. The House of Commons rejected first, the main proposal of an immediate abolition of the trade; then, a motion restricting the number of slaves to be annually imported into our colonies; and, finally, a plan for prohibiting the employment of British capital in the introduction of slaves into foreign settlements. His perseverance, however, was not fruitless. A deep impression had been made by his past efforts; and, in 1794, the House of Commons, for the first time, passed a bill of immediate abolition. The defenders of the slave trade were again rescued from the impending blow by the interposition of the peers; amongst whom a melancholy pre-eminence was thenceforth to be assigned to a member of the royal

Providence had gifted Mr. Wilberforce with greater nervous energy; and though sustaining labours not less severe, and a public responsibility incomparably more anxious than that under which the health of his colleague had given way, he returned to the conflict with unabated resolution. In 1795, and in the following year, he again laboured in vain to induce the House of Commons to resume the ground which they had already taken; nor could his all-believing charity repress the honest indiguation with which he records that a body of his supporters, sufficient to have carried the bill, had been enticed from their places in the House, by the new opera of the “Two Hunchbacks," in which a conspicuous part was assigned to the great vocalist of that day, Signior Portugallo. A rivalry more formidable even than that of the Hay-Market had now arisen. Parodying his father's celebrated maxim, Mr. Pitt was engaged in conquering Europe in the West Indies; and, with the acquisition of new colonies, the slave trade acquired an increased extent, and its supporters had obtained augmented parliamentary interest. The result was to subject Mr. Wilberforce, in the debate of 1797, to a defeat more signal than any of those which he had hitherto endured. His opponents eagerly seized this opportunity to render it irreparable. On the motion of Mr. Charles Ellis, an address to the crown was carried, which transferred to the legislative bodies of the different colonies the task of preparing for the very measure which they had leagued together to frustrate. It was with extreme difficulty, and not without the most strenuous remonstrances, that Mr. Wilberforce dissuaded Mr. Pitt from lending his support to this extravagant project. To increase the value of his Transatlantic conquests, he had thrown open the intercourse between our colonies and those of Spain, and had offered, in the newly acquired islands, fresh lands, on which the slave traders might effect further settlements; and though, by ceaseless importunity, Mr. Wilberforce obtained the revocation of the first of these measures, and the suspension of the second, yet the cupidity of the slave traders, and their influence in the national councils were largely

increased by these new prospects of gain. | all these encouragements, Mr. Wilberforce Their augmented powers were attested by ill success which attended Mr. Wilberforce's annual motions in 1798 and 1799.

again appealed to the House of Commons, and carried the bill with overwhelming majorities, Cordial were now the congratulations of his friends, of every class, from the aged John Newton, of St. Mary Woolnoth, to Jeremy Bentham, whose celebrity as the most original thinker of his age was then in its early dawn. But the peers had not yet yielded to the influence of Christian or moral philosophy. "The debate," says Mr. Wilberforce's Diary, "was opened by the chancellor in a very threatening speech, because overrating property, and full of all moral blunders. He showed himself to labour with feelings as if he was the legiti mate guardian of property-Lord Stanhope's a wild speech-Lord Hawkesbury spoke honourably and handsomely.-Westmoreland like himself, coarse and bullying, but not without talent. Grenville spoke like a man of high and honourable principles, who, like a truly great statesman, regarded right and politic as identical." Blunders and bullying, however, prevailed; and the question was adjourned to the following session.

Before its arrival, Lord Brougham, then travelling on the continent as an American, and even "venturing to pass a week in the same house with several French generals," had offered Mr. Wilberforce his assistance in pursuing various collateral inquiries throughout Holland and Germany, and in "the great scenes of bondage (as it is called) Poland, Russia, and Hungary." To this most potent

The contest had now endured for twelve years. Ten successive efforts had been fruitlessly made to obtain the concurrence of the legislature in arresting this gigantic evil. Hopeless of success by perseverance in the same tactics, and yet incapable of retiring from the duty he had assumed, Mr. Wilberforce now addressed himself to the project of effecting, by a compromise, the end which seemed unattainable by direct and open hostilities. The year 1800 was accordingly consumed in negotiations with the chief West India proprietors, of which the object was to win their concurrence in limiting the duration of the trade to a period of five or at most seven years. Delusive hopes of success cheered him for awhile, but it was ere long apparent that the phalanx of his enemies were too firm to be penetrated. The peace of Amiens had brought to the court of London a minister from the French republic, who encouraged the hope that it might be possible to arrange a general convention of all the European powers for the abandonment of the traffic. Long and anxious were the endeavours made by Mr. Wilberforce for maturing this project. It is needless to say that they were unavailing. The season of 1801 was about to close, and the end in view appeared more distant than at any former time. Mr. Addington seems to have regarded the great expedition to St. Do-ally many others were added. Mr. Stephen mingo as a kind of sedative, which would paralyze the resistance of the oppressed negroes throughout the West Indies; and feared to check the operation of this anodyne. The charm which these medical analogies exercised over the then occupant of the treasury bench, did not, however, extend its influence to Mr. Wilberforce. He announced his purpose to resume the parliamentary contest in the year 1802, when the attempt was accordingly made, though under the most discouraging circumstances. The wit and eloquence of Mr. Canning, remonstrating against the settlement of new lands in Trinidad, had been repelled by the passive resistance of the then minister, and the time occupied in this discussion had delayed, until the dissolution of Parliament interrupted the further progress of the Abolition Act. The tumult of war in the succeeding year silenced every other sound; and the advocate of the slaves was condemned to a reluctant silence, whilst every voice was raised in reprobation of Bonaparte, and in resentment for the insult offered to Lord Whitworth. At length the auguries of success became distinct and frequent. Mr. Pitt had returned to office, the dread of Jacobinism no longer haunted the public mind, but above all, the proprietors in the Carribbean Islands had made the discovery, that by encouraging the slave trade, they were creating in the planters of the conquered colonies the most dangerous rivals in the monopoly of the British market. The union with Ireland had added a new host of friends. Not a single representation from that country withheld his assistance. Amidst

and Mr. Macaulay were unremitting in the use of the pen and press. The classical knowledge of Mr. Robert Grant was put under contribution, to illustrate the state of slavery in the ancient world; and even the daughters of Lord Muncaster were enlisted in the service of methodizing the contents of all African travels, ancient and modern. High and sanguine as were the hopes of Mr. Wilberforce, he had yet another disappointment to sustain. The House of Commons of 1805 receding from their former resolutions, rejected his bill, and drew from him in his private journals, language of distress and pain such as no former defeat had been able to extort.

The death of Mr. Pitt approached; an event which the most calm and impartial judgment must now regard as the necessary precursor of the liberation of Africa. For seventeen years since the commencement of the contest, he had guided the councils of this country. Successful in almost every other parliamentary conflict, and triumphing over the most formidable antagonists, he had been compelled, by the Dundases and Jenkinsons, and Roses, who on every other subject quailed under his eye, to go to the grave without obliterating that which he himself had denounced as the deepest stain on our national character, and the most enormous guilt recorded in the history of mankind. During that long period, millions of innocent victims had perished. Had he perilled his political existence on the issue, no rational man can doubt that an amount of guilt, of misery, of disgrace, and of loss, would have been spared to England, and

to the civilized world, such as no other man ever had it in his power to arrest.

The political antagonists of Mr. Pitt were men of a different temper; and although in the cabinet of Mr. Fox there were not wanting those who opposed him on this subject, yet it was an opposition, which, in the full tide of success, he could afford to disregard and to pardon. Had it endangered for a single session the abolition of the slave trade, these names, eminent as one at least of them was, would infallibly have been erased from the list of his administration. Mr. Fox's ministry had scarcely taken their places when Lord Grenville introduced into the House of Lords, and speedily carried two bills, of which the first abolished the slave trade with all foreign powers, and the second forbade the employment in that traffic of any British shipping which had not already been engaged in it; whilst the House of Commons, resolved that the slave trade was "contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound policy; and that they would proceed to abolish it with all practicable expedition." Faithfully was this pledge redeemed. The death of Mr. Fox did not even delay its fulfilment. Early in 1807 that great statesman, to whom at the distance of twenty-six years it was reserved to propose the abolition of slavery itself, introduced into the House of Commons a bill which placed on the British statute-book the final condemnation of the trade in slaves. Amidst the acclamations of Parliament, the enthusiastic congratulations of his friends, and the applauses of the world, Mr. Wilberforce witnessed the success of the great object of his life with emotions, and in a spirit, which could not have found admission into a mind less pure and elevated than his own. The friendly shouts of victory which arose on every side were scarcely observed or heeded in the delightful consciousness of having rendered to mankind a service of unequalled magnitude. He retired to prostrate himself before the Giver of all good things, in profound humility and thankfulness,-wondering at the unmerited bounty of God, who had carried him through twenty years of unremitting labour, and bestowed on him a name of imperishable glory.

There are those who have disputed his title to the station thus assigned to him. Amongst the most recent is to be numbered one whose esteem is of infinitely too high value to be lightly disregarded, and whose judgment will carry with it no common authority. Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, in his life of Charles Lamb, referring to an interview which took place between Lamb and Mr. Clarkson, uses the following expressions:-"There he also met with the true annihilator of the slave trade, Thomas Clarkson, who was then enjoying a necessary respite from his stupendous labours in a cottage on the borders of Ulswater. Lamb had no taste for oratorical philanthropy, but he felt the grandeur and simplicity of Clarkson's character."

The contrast which is thus drawn between "the true annihilator of the slave trade,” and the oratorical philanthropist who declaimed

against it, does not rest merely on the authority of Mr. Talfourd. The great names of Wordsworth and Southey, with many minor writers, may be quoted in support of the same opinion. Nay, Mr. Clarkson has claimed for himself a place in the history of this great measure which affords no light countenance to the pretensions thus preferred in his behalf. In a map prefixed to his "History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade," that gigantic evil is represented under the image of a mound placed at the confluence of four rivers, whose united force is bearing it away. Of these streams one takes, near its source, the name of Clarkson, into which the rivulet of Wilberforce is seen to fall much lower down. His sons reclaim against this hydrography, and propose to correct the map by converting the tributary flood into the main channel. The discussion has, we think, been inevitably forced upon them; but it is one into which we decline to enter. It may be sufficient to state what are the positions which the biographers of Mr. Wilberforce have asserted, and, as we think, substantiated. They maintain, then, that his attention had been directed to the abolition of the slave trade for some time before the subject had engaged Mr. Clarkson's notice-that he had been co-operating with Mr. Pitt for the advancement of the measure long before his acquaintance with Mr. Clarkson commenced, and for at least two years before the period at which Mr. Clarkson takes to himself the credit of having made a convert of that great minister-that many of Mr. Clarkson's exertions were undertaken at the instance and at the expense of Mr. Wilberforce, and conducted under his written instructions,-and that from 1794 to 1805, when the victory was already won, Mr. Clarkson did not in fact participate at all in any of the labours which were unceasingly pursued by Mr. Wilberforce during the whole of that period. Thus far there seems no ground for dispute. In these volumes will be found a correspondence, the publication of which we cannot condemn, although we think that nothing but the filial duty of vindicating their father's highest title to renown could have justified his sons in giving it to the world. The effect of it is to show that Mr. Clarkson's services were remunerated by a large subscription; and that his private interests on this occasion were urged on Mr. Wilberforce with an importunity of which it would be_painful to transfer the record to these pages. Remembering the advanced age, the eminent services, and the spotless character of that venerable and excellent man, we must be permitted to express our very deep regret that the ill-judged encomiums of his friends should have contributed to the publication of any thing which could for a moment disturb the serenity of the closing scenes of a life distinguished, as we believe, by the exercise of every social and domestic virtue, and the most unwearied beneficence to men of every condition and every country.

Quitting the unwelcome contrast thus forced upon us, it is due to the memory of Mr. Wilberforce to state, that no man ever so little

in any detail the history of those exertions. But it is important to notice, that although declining strength compelled him to relinquish to others the chief conduct of the warfare against slavery itself, his efforts for its extinction were continued in every form, until the introduction into Parliament, of the law which declared, that from the 1st of August, 1834, "slavery should be utterly, and for ever abolished, and unlawful throughout the British colonies, possessions, and plantations abroad." The measure had already been received with acclamation in the House of Commons, ere he was summoned to his final reward; and it was one of the subjects of the last conversation in which he ever engaged.

merited that condemnation which the language | less watchfulness over the interests of the of Mr. Talfourd must be supposed to convey. African race. Our space forbids us to pursue He was indeed associated with those whose aid would have insured the triumph of energies incomparably inferior to his. To mention no humbler names, he was aided by the genius and philanthropy of Henry Brougham, and by the affection and self-denial and unexampled energy of his brother-in-law Mr. Stephen, and of Mr. Zachary Macaulay. It may farther be admitted, that systematic and very continuous labours were not consonant with his intellectual character or with the habits of his life. But to the office which he had undertaken, he brought qualifications still more rare, and of far higher importance. It was within the reach of ordinary talents to collect, to examine, and to digest evidence, and to prepare and distribute popular publications. But it required a It would have not been compatible with the mind as versatile and active, and powers as character of Mr. Wilberforce, nor a fulfilment varied as were those of Mr. Wilberforce, to of the mission with which he believed himself harmonize all minds, to quicken the zeal of to be invested, if he had concentrated his efforts some, and to repress the intemperance of for the good of mankind on any single object, others; to negotiate with statesmen of all however arduous. "God has set before me political parties, and, above all, to maintain the reformation of my country's manners," is for twenty successive years the lofty princi- the solemn persuasion which he recorded in ples of the contest unsullied even by the seem- his twenty-seventh year, and from which, to ing admixture of any lower aims. The politi- the last hour of his life, he never swerved. cal position assigned to him by his constituency During that period Great Britain underwent in Yorkshire, the multitude and intimacy of internal changes more important than had ochis personal friendships, the animal spirits curred during any two preceding centuries. which knew no ebb, the insinuating graces of Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, revehis conversation, the graceful flow of his natu-nue, and population expanded with unexamral eloquence, and an address at once the pled elasticity. Never before had the physical gayest, the most winning, and the most affec- powers of nature been so largely subjugated tionate, marked him out as the single man of to the physical wants of mankind, and never his age, to whom it would have been possible was the necessity more urgent for some corto conduct such a struggle through all its responding increase of the moral powers of ceaseless difficulties and disappointments.- the conqueror. The steam-engine would have These volumes abound in proofs the most con- been a curse rather than a blessing, if the age clusive that, not merely in the House of Com- which it has enriched had continued stationary mons, but in every other society, he lived for in religious and intellectual improvement. this great object that he was the centre of a Watt and Arkwright would have been but vast correspondence, employing and directing equivocal benefactors of their fellow-countryinnumerable agents-enlisting in his service men without the co-operation of Bell and Lanthe whole circle of his connexions, surrounded caster. England would have used like a giant by a body of secretaries (called by Mr. Pitt the giant's strength which she was acquiring. his "white negroes,") preparing or revising Wealth and sensuality, hard-heartedness, on publications of every form, from folios of re- the one side, must have been brought into a ports and evidence to newspaper paragraphs fearful conflict with poverty, ignorance, and -engaged in every collateral project by which discontent, on the other. But the result has his main end could be promoted-now super- been otherwise, and these islands have beintending the deliberations of the Voluntary come not merely the hive of productive inSociety for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,dustry, but the centre of efforts of unequalled and then labouring from session to session in parliamentary committees, and occasionally passing (in opposition to his natural temper) weeks of the most laborious seclusion, to prepare himself for his most public labours. A life of more devoted diligence has scarcely been recorded of any man; unless, indeed, we are to understand all mental industry as confined to those exertions which chain the la

magnitude to advance the highest interests of the human race. If in elevating the moral and religious character of our people during the last century, the first place be due to the illustrious founder of methodism, the second may be justly claimed for Mr. Wilberforce. No two men can be named who in their respective generations exercised an influence so extensive, permanent, and beneficial over public opinion. In walks of life the most Though Mr. Wilberforce survived the aboli- dissimilar, and by means widely different, they tion of the slave trade for more than twenty- concurred in proposing to themselves the same five years, he did not retain his seat in the great end, and pursued it in the same spirit. House of Commons for much more than half Their views of Christian doctrine scarcely of that period. The interval between the differed. They inculcated the same severe, enactment of this law, and the close of his though affectionate, morality; and were aniparliamentary labours, was devoted to a cease-mated by the same holy principles, fervent

bourer to his desk.

B

« PreviousContinue »