William Wilberforce : Biography - 0 views
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At seventeen Wilberforce was sent to St. John's College. Following the deaths of his grandfather in 1776 and his childless uncle William in 1777, Wilberforce was an extremely wealthy man. Wilberforce was shocked by the behaviour of his fellow students at the University of Cambridge
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After leaving university he showed no interest in the family business, and while still at Cambridge he decided to pursue a political career
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"Wilberforce was little over five feet tall, a frail and elfin figure who in his later years weighed well under 100 pounds. His charm was legendary, his conversation delightful, his oratory impressive. He dressed in the colourful finery of the day and adorned any salon with his amiable manner.
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his object in life - no less than the transformation of a corrupt society through serious religion
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In 1784 Wilberforce became converted to Evangelical Christianity. He joined the Clapham Set,
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In 1787 Thomas Clarkson, William Dillwyn and Granville Sharp formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
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nine out of the twelve members on the committee, were Quakers.
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Wilberforce's nephew, George Stephen, was surprised by this choice as he considered him a lazy man: "He worked out nothing for himself; he was destitute of system, and desultory in his habits; he depended on others for information, and he required an intellectual walking stick."
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Charles Fox was unsure of Wilberforce's commitment to the anti-slavery campaign.
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In May 1788, Charles Fox precipitated the first parliamentary debate on the issue.
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writing, on the other hand, was to be discouraged, since it would open the way to rising above one's natural station."
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When you're starving, "half a loaf is beter than none"! And God seldom uses perfect people to advance His Kingdom!
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"Following the publication of the privy council report on 25 April 1789, Wilberforce marked his own delayed formal entry into the parliamentary campaign on 12 May with a closely reasoned speech of three and a half hours,
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"Everyone thought the hearing would be brief, perhaps one sitting. Instead, the slaving interests prolonged it so skilfully that when the House adjourned on 23 June, their witnesses were still testifying."
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on 10th July 1789: "Whether the bill goes through the House or not, the discussion attending it will have a most beneficial effect.
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Wilberforce initially welcomed the French Revolution as he believed that the new government would abolish the country's slave trade.
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the government published A Declaration of the Rights of Man asserting that all men were born and remained free and equal. However
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During this period he could only find twenty men willing to testify before the House of Commons. He later recalled: "I was disgusted... to find how little men were disposed to make sacrifices for so great a cause."
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the visit was a failure as Clarkson could not persuade the French National Assembly to discuss the abolition of the slave trade
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Wilberforce believed that the support for the French Revolution by the leading members of the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade was creating difficulties for his attempts to bring an end to the slave trade in the House of Commons.
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On 18th April 1791 Wilberforce introduced a bill to abolish the slave trade.
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"a war of the pigmies against the giants of the House".
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defeated by 163 to 88.
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In March 1796, Wilberforce's proposal to abolish the slave trade was defeated in the House of Commons by only four votes.
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a dozen abolitionist MPs were out of town or at the new comic opera in London.
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In 1804, Clarkson returned to his campaign against the slave trade and toured the country
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Note that Clarkson's 'rest' lasted about 8 years and Wilberforce is not here noted to have advanced the cause during Clarson's absence from the frey. But, who among avserage men has heard of Thomas Clarkson as winning the abolitionists cause against slavery?
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William Wilberforce introduced an abolition bill on 30th May 1804.
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t moved to the House of Lords.
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advised Wilberforce to leave the vote to the following year.
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In 1805 the bill was once again presented to the House of Commons. This time the pro-slave trade MPs were better organised and it was defeated by seven votes.
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In February, 1806 Lord Grenville was invited by the king to form a new Whig administration.
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Grenville's Foreign Secretary, Charles Fox, led the campaign in the House of Commons to ban the slave trade in captured colonies.
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was little opposition and it was passed by an overwhelming 114 to 15.
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In the House of Lords Lord Greenville made a passionate speech
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the bill was passed in the House of Lords by 41 votes to 20.
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In January 1807 Lord Grenville introduced a bill that would stop the trade to British colonies on grounds of "justice, humanity and sound policy".
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"Lord Grenville masterminded the victory which had eluded the abolitionist for so long...
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Wilberforce commented: "How popular Abolition is, just now! God can turn the hearts of men".
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However, the Bible itself does not make a strong case for the abolition of slavery and really only for the equality of men before God and in his Kingdom ...not in the world!
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The trade was abolished by a resounding 283 to 16.
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it was the largest majority recorded on any issue where the House divided.
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a generous tribute to the work of Wilberforce:
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Wilberforce made it clear that he considered the African Institution should do what it could to convert Africans to Christianity.
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In July, 1807, members of the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade established the African Institution, an organization that was committed to watch over the execution of the law, seek a ban on the slave trade by foreign powers and to promote the "civilization and happiness" of Africa.
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The African Institution carried the torch for antislavery reform for twenty years and paved the way for later humanitarian efforts in Great Britain."
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Some people involved in the anti-slave trade campaign such as Thomas Fowell Buxton, argued that the only way to end the suffering of the slaves was to make slavery illegal. Wilberforce disagreed, he believed that at this time slaves were not ready to be granted their freedom. He pointed out in a pamphlet that he wrote in 1807 that: "It would be wrong to emancipate (the slaves). To grant freedom to them immediately, would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom."
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we ought to rejoice in every opportunity of bringing them under their present sufferings, and secure for them a rich compensation of reversionary happiness."
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(Perronet Thompson) single-handedly abolished apprenticeship and freed the slaves. He filed scandalised reports to the colonial office. Wilberforce told him he was being rash and hasty, and he and his colleagues voted unanimously for his dismissal. Wilberforce advised him to go quietly for the sake of his career."
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the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Buxton eventually persuaded Wilberforce to join his campaign but as he had retired from the House of Commons in 1825, he did not play an important part in persuading Parliament to bring an end to slavery.
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William Wilberforce died on 29th July, 1833. One month later, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act that gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.
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How far the memoir was Christian, I must leave to others to decide. That it was unfair to Clarkson is not disputed. Where possible, the authors ignored Clarkson; where they could not they disparaged him. In the whole rambling work, using the thousands of documents available to them, they found no space for anything illustrating the mutual affection and regard between the two great men, or between Wilberforce and Clarkson's brother."
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Wilson goes on to argue that the book has completely distorted the history of the campaign against the slave-trade: "The Life has been treated as an authoritative source for 150 years of histories and biographies
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its treatment of Clarkson, in particular, a deservedly towering figure in the abolition struggle, is invalidated by untruths, omissions and misrepresentations of his motives and his achievements is not understood by later generations, unfamiliar with the jealousy that motivated the holy authors. When all the contemporary shouting had died away, the Life survived to take from Clarkson both his fame and his good name.
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left us with the simplistic myth of Wilberforce and his evangelical warriors in a holy crusade.
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Some key bibliographical background on the famous Englishman who, allegedly, was single-handedly responsible for the freeing of slaves in the British Empire after many years of fighting in thr English Parliament.
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So you thought William Wilberforce was responsible for getting England to abolish slavery, eh? Not so! gfp