The Martyrdom of Man - Winwood Reade (golden son ebook txt) 📗
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produced before a Court of Justice that Lord Mansfield might
decide to whom it belonged. The case was argued at three
sittings, and excited much interest throughout the land. It
ended in the liberation of the slave.
Several hundred negroes were at once bowed out by their masters
into the street, and wandered about, sleeping in glass-houses;
seated on the door-steps of their former homes, weeping, and
cursing Granville Sharp. It was resolved to do something for
them, and a grant of land was obtained from the native chiefs
at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River: a company was formed;
four hundred destitute negroes were sent out; and, as if there
were no women in Africa, fifty “unfortunates” were sent out
with them. The society of these ladies was not conducive to the
moral or physical well-being of the emigrants, eighty-four of
whom died before they sighted land, and eighty-six in the first
four months after landing. The philanthropists thus produced a
middle passage at which a slave trader would have been aghast.
In a short time the white women were dead, and the Granvilles,
as they are traditionally called upon the coast, adopted savage
life. But the settlement was re-peopled from another source. In
the American Revolutionary War, large numbers of negroes had
flocked to the royal standard, attracted by the proclamations
of the British generals. These runaway slaves were sent to Nova
Scotia, where they soon began to complain; the climate was not
to their taste, and they had not received the lands which had
been promised them. They were then shipped off to Sierra Leone.
They landed singing hymns, and pitched their tents on the site
of the present town. The settlement was afterwards recruited
with negroes in thousands out of slave ships; but the American
element may yet be detected in the architecture of the native
houses and in the speech of the inhabitants.
In the meantime the slave-trade was being actively discussed.
Among those who felt most deeply on the question was Dr.
Peckard, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, who, being in 1785
Vice-Chancellor, gave as a subject for the Latin essay, “Anne
liceat invitos in servitutem dare?” — Is it right to make men
slaves against their will?
Among the candidates was a certain bachelor of arts, Mr. Thomas
Clarkson, who had gained the prize for the best Latin essay the
year before, and was desirous of keeping up his reputation. He
therefore took unusual pains to collect materials respecting
the African slave-trade, to which he knew Dr. Peckard’s
question referred. He borrowed the papers of a deceased friend
who had been in the trade, and conversed with officers who had
been stationed in the West Indies. He read Benezet’s Historical
Account of Guinea, and was thence guided to the original
authorities, which are contained in the large folios of Hakluyt
and Purchas. These old voyages, written by men who were
themselves slavers, contain admirable descriptions of native
customs, and also detailed accounts of the way in which the
man-trade was carried on. Clarkson possessed a vivid
imagination and a tender heart: these narratives filled him
with horror and alarm. The pleasure of research was swallowed
up in the pain that was excited by the facts before him. It was
one gloomy subject from morning to night. In the day-time he
was uneasy; at night he had little rest. Sometimes he never
closed his eyes from grief. It became not so much a trial for
academical reputation as for the production of a work which
might be useful to injured Africa. He always slept with a
candle in the room that he might get up and put down thoughts
which suddenly occurred to him. At last he finished his painful
task, and obtained the prize. He went to Cambridge, and read
his essay in the Senate House. On his journey back to Lon don
the subject continually engrossed his thoughts. “I became,” he
says, “very seriously affected upon the road. I stopped my
horse occasionally, and dismounted and walked. I frequently
tried to persuade myself, in these intervals, that the contents
of my essay could not be true. Coming in sight of Wades Mill,
in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the
road-side and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind,
that if the contents of the essay were true, it was time that
some person should see these calamities to their end.”
On arriving in London he heard for the first time of the
labours of Granville Sharp and others. He determined to give up
his intention of entering the Church, and to devote himself
entirely to the destruction of the slave-trade. At this time a
Committee was formed for the purpose of preparing the public
mind for abolition. Granville Sharp, to whom more than to any
other individual the abolition of the slave-trade is due,
became the president, and Clarkson was deputed to collect
evidence. He called on the leading men of the day and
endeavoured to engage their sympathies in the cause. His
modest, subdued demeanour, the sad, almost tearful expression
of his face, which the painter of his portrait has fortunately
seized, the earnestness and passion with which he depicted the
atrocities of the slave-hunt in Africa and the miseries of the
slave hold at sea, secured him attention and respect from all;
and among those with whom he spoke was one whose fame is the
purest and the best that parliamentary history records.
William Wilberforce was the son of a rich merchant at Hull, and
inherited a large fortune. He went to Cambridge, and was
afterwards elected member for his native city, an honour which
cost him £8,OOO. He became a member of the fashionable clubs,
and chiefly frequented Brooks’, where he became a votary of
faro till his winnings cured him of his taste for play. He soon
obtained a reputation in the House and the salon. He had an
easy flow of language, and a voice which was melody itself.
He was a clever mimic and an accomplished musician. He
possessed the rare arts of polished raillery and courteous repartee.
Madame de Stael declared that he was the wittiest man in England.
But presently he withdrew from her society and that of her friends,
because it was brilliant and agreeable. He also took his name
off all his clubs. He was travelling on the Continent with
Pitt, who was his bosom friend, when a change came over him. In
the days of his childhood he had been sent to reside with an
aunt who was a great admirer of Whitfield’s preaching, and kept
up a friendly connection with the early Methodists. He was soon
infected with her ideas, and “there was remarked in him a rare
and pleasing character of piety in his twelfth year.” This
excited much consternation among the other members of his
family. His mother at once came up to London and fetched him
home. “If Billy turns Methodist,” said his grandfather, “he
shall not have a sixpence of mine.” We are informed that
theatrical diversions, card parties, and sumptuous suppers (at
the fashionable hour of six in the evening) obliterated these
impressions for a time. They were not, however, dead, for the
perusal of Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress” was sufficient to
revive them. This amiable and excellent young man became the
prey of a morbid superstition. Often in the midst of enjoyment
his conscience told him he was not in the true sense of the
word a Christian. “I laughed, I sang, I was apparently gay and
happy, but the thought would steal across me, What madness is
all this: to continue easy in a state in which a sudden call
out of the world would consign me to everlasting misery, and
that when eternal happiness is within my grasp?” The sinful
worldling accordingly reformed. He declined Sunday visits; he
got up earlier in the morning; he wrestled continually in
prayer; he began to keep a common place book, serious and
profane, and a Christian duty paper. He opened himself
completely to Pitt, and said he believed the Spirit was in him.
Mr. Pitt was apparently of a different opinion, for he tried to
reason him out of his convictions. “The fact is,” says Mr.
Wilberforce, “he was so absorbed in politics that he had never
given himself time for due reflection in religion. But amongst
other things he declared to me that Bishop Butler’s work raised
in his mind more doubts than it had answered.” Now if that was
the character of Pitt’s intellect we must venture to think that
the more he reflected on religion the less he would have
believed in it.
Superstition intensifies a man. It makes him more of what he
was before. An evil-natured person who takes fright at hell-fire becomes the most malevolent of human beings. Nothing can
more clearly prove the natural beauty of Wilberforce’s
character than the fact that he preserved it unimpaired in
spite of his Methodistic principles. It would be unjust to deny
that after he became a Methodist he became a wiser and a better
man. His intellect was strengthened, his affections were
sweetened, by a faith the usual tendency of which is to harden
the heart and to soften the head. He endeavoured to control a
human, and therefore sometimes irritable, temper; he laid down
for himself the rule to manifest rather humility in himself
than dissatisfaction at others; and so well did he succeed
that a female friend observed, “If this is madness I hope that
he will bite us all.”
Yet there was a flaw in Wilberforce’s brain, or he could never
have supposed that a man might be sent to hell for playing the
piano. He soon showed that in another age he might have been an
excellent inquisitor; and inquisitors there were not less pure-hearted, not less benevolent in private life than Wilberforce
himself. He desired to do something in public for the glory of
God, and he believed it was his mission to reform the manners
of the age. When a man of fashion was always a gambler, and
when all the clubs in St. James’ Street were hells; when
speeches were often incoherent in the House after dinner; when
comic songs were composed against Mr. Pitt, not because he had
a mistress, but because he had none; when ladies called
adultery ” a little affair “; when the Prince of Wales was a
young man about town, grazing on the middle classes, it cannot
be questioned that, from the royal family downwards, there was
room for improvement. The reader will perhaps feel curious to
learn in what manner Mr. Wilberforce commenced his laudable but
difficult crusade. He obtained a royal proclamation for the
discouragement of vice and immorality; and letters from the
secretaries of state to the lords-lieutenant, expressing his
Majesty’s pleasure, that they recommend it to the justices
throughout their several counties to be active in the execution
of the laws against immoralities. He also started a society, to
assist in the enforcement of the proclamation, as a kind of
amateur detective corps, to hunt up indecent and blasphemous
publications. And that was what he called reforming the manners
of the age!
Happily, the slave-trade question began to be discussed, and
Mr. Wilberforce obtained a cause which was worthy of his noble
nature. The miseries of Africa had long attracted his
attention: even in his boyhood he had written on the subject
for the daily journals. Lady Middleton, who had heard from an
eye-witness of the horrors of slavery, had begged him to bring
it before parliament. Mr. Pitt had also advised him to take up
the question, and he had agreed to do so whenever an
opportunity should occur. This happened before his acquaintance
with Clarkson, to whom
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