Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/109

 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE 275 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 ex- cluding 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 frade, 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 min- isters, 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 en- chanted 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 ex- periment to disarm the prejudices of his more rational and disinterested oppo- nents, 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 ad- vocacy of his opinions. He was a supporter of Catholic emancipation and par- liamentary 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