One evening in 1787 a young MP pored over papers by candlelight in his home beside the Houses of Parliament. William Wilberforce had been asked to propose the Abolition of the Slave Trade, although almost all Englishmen thought the Trade necessary, if nasty, and that economic ruin would follow if it stopped.
He studied first the state of Negro slaves in the West Indies. He found it bad. Then, the harm to Africa. This disturbed him. Then he examined the conditions for the wretched men, women and children as they were shipped across the Atlantic and he was appalled. The death rate on this 'middle passage' was dreadful. Every dead slave meant loss to a slave ship's owner, yet hundreds died every year.
Wilberforce hesitated no longer. 'So enormous, so dreadful' he told the House of Commons later, 'so irremediable did the Trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.'
That was a key moment in British history. For a few months later, on Sunday October 28 1787, he wrote in his Journal the words which have become famous: 'God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the Suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners' - in modern terms, 'habits, attitudes, morals'. By achieving his first object - after a long battle - he made possible the second.
Sunny disposition
Wilberforce was a delightful character: an ugly little man with too long a nose, but he had a marvellous smile and laughed a lot. His voice made you long to hear him more. Underneath lay a deep penitence, but his over-riding quality was a sunshine of spirit. The poet Southey wrote: 'There is such a constant hilarity in every look and motion, such a sweetness in all his tones, such a benignity in all his thoughts, words and actions, that . . . you can feel nothing but love and admiration for a creature of so happy and blessed a nature.'
His father was a rich merchant in Hull who died young, and his mother was grateful when her Wimbledon brother-in-law and his childless wife, William and Hannah Wilberforce, had little William to stay for long periods.
They were despised evangelicals, friends of Whitefield and John Newton. This old sea-dog, ex-naval deserter, ex-lecher, ex-slave-trader, who had been slowly in and after a storm at sea, fascinated the boy with his yarns. And Newton showed little William 'How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds' until his mother, horrified that he was turning 'Methodist' took him away.
When Wilberforce was a young MP and 'man about town'. Newton said sadly that nothing seemed left of his faith except a more moral outlook than was usual among men of fashion.
For the good of the nation
But in 1784, aged 25, the bosom friend of the new and equally-young Prime Minister, William Pitt, and with a brilliant political career at his feet, Wilberforce underwent a deep, long-drawn-out experience of conversion, or rather, of re-dedication or re-discovery of Christ. And it was to John Newton he turned when his soul was in turmoil. Newton led him to peace. And Newton stopped him throwing up politics for the Church: 'It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of the nation'.
Abolition of the slave trade was perhaps the greatest moral achievement of the British people, putting right a horrible wrong. It took Wilberforce and his colleagues 20 years. First he was delayed when the strain of preparing the case broke his health. The doctors cured him by opium, in those days considered a 'pure' drug, no moral question involved.
Recovered, Wilberforce tried to abolish the Trade by international convention. This came to nothing; he must persuade the British Parliament to abolish while other nations continued. Wilberforce needed all his political skill, his patience, his sense of humour, his faith and prayer. Opponents complained that his enthusiastic spirit 'grows more vigorous from blows'.
The French revolution
Then war broke out with revolutionary France. Pitt, once hot for Abolition, cooled off. Friends tried to make Wilberforce cool off too, but he replied that although in politics there is a time to push and a time to wait, when it was a matter of guilt and shame, one who fears God cannot give up.
At last in 1807, after Pitt's death, a clever move by one of Wilberforce's colleagues outflanked the opposition. On February 23 1807 the Commons voted by a great majority to abolish the Slave Trade. One MP swept Members to their feet as he contrasted Napoleon the man of blood, with Wilberforce the man who had saved future millions from misery. The whole House turned towards the little liberator and cheered him to the echo. He sat with bowed head, tears streaming down his face.
Second campaign
Abolition gave Wilberforce unrivalled moral prestige to help forward the reformation of manners - his campaign to re-make England. This had arisen from his compassion. Too many men and women were hanged. The high crime rate arose from the general decadence, especially the corruption and irreligion of the trend-setters, the nobility and the gentry.
Knowing that many of these pretended to be worse than they were because it was fashionable to be loose in morals and sceptical in religion, he set out to make goodness fashionable.
He led many of his political friends to Christ, for he held that the destinies of a nation are best in the hands of deeply-committed Christians. He taught too, to the fury of the radicals, that social reform must have a Christian base, that reformers and educators who reject God will flaw their programmes and hurt the poor.
British probity
It was due to Wilberforce more than any other, that in the 19th century, British public life became renowned for its probity and British business for its integrity. There was a marvellous flowering of Christianity. The Bible became the best-loved book of the newly-literate. Christian attitudes moulded the British character, and a Christian social conscience attacked abuses left by the more pagan age which had coincided with the Industrial Revolution, and Christian compassion relieved its victims.
Wilberforce's own philanthropies were legion (including prison reform, hospitals, the poor, even animal welfare - he helped found the RSPCA). He was a founder of the Bible Society, promoted missions, worked for church unity.
But nearest to his heart was the cause of the slaves. He grew too old and ill to finish the struggle, but lived just long enough. As he lay on his deathbed in 1833, Parliament killed slavery throughout the Empire. He died knowing that every slave would be free.
John Pollock's Wilberforce has just been reissued by Lion with six others of his biographies, including Whitefield and Newton (Amazing Grace).
