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MR. WILBERFORCE.

CONTEMPORARY with Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt, whose intimate friend he was, and whose partizan for a time, appeared a man, in some respects more illustrious than either-one who, among the greatest benefactors of the human race, holds an exalted station— one whose genius was elevated by his virtues, and exalted by his piety. It is, unfortunately, hardly necessary to name one whom the vices and the follies of the age have already particularized, by making it impossible that what has been said could apply to any but Wilberforce.

Few persons have ever either reached a higher and more enviable place in the esteem of their fellow-creatures, or have better deserved the place they had gained, than William Wilberforce. He was naturally a person of great quickness and even subtilty of mind, with a lively imagination, approaching to playfulness of fancy; and hence he had wit in an unmeasured abundance, and in all its varieties; for he was endowed with an exquisite sense of the ludicrous in character, the foundation of humour, as well as with the perception of remote resemblances, the essence of wit. These qualities, however, he had so far disciplined his faculties as to keep in habitual restraint, lest he should ever offend against strict decorum, by introducing light matter into serious discussion, or be betrayed into personal remarks too poignant for the feelings of individuals. For his nature was mild and amiable beyond that of most men; fearful of giving the least pain in any quarter, even while heated with the zeal of con

troversy on questions that roused all his passions; and more anxious, if it were possible, to gain over rather than to overpower an adversary-to disarm him by kindness, or the force of reason, or awakening appeals to his feelings, rather than defeat him by hostile attack. His natural talents were cultivated, and his taste refined by all the resources of a complete Cambridge education, in which, while the classics were sedulously studied, the mathematics were not neglected; and he enjoyed in the society of his intimate friends, Mr. Pitt and Dean Milner, the additional benefit of foreign travel, having passed nearly a year in France, after the dissolution of Lord Shelburne's administration had removed Mr. Pitt from office. Having entered Parliament as member for Hull, where his family were the principal commercial men of the place, he soon afterwards, upon the ill-fated coalition destroying all confidence in the Whig party, succeeded Mr. Foljambe as member for Yorkshire, which he continued to represent as long as his health permitted him, having only retired to a less laborious seat in the year 1812. Although generally attached to the Pitt ministry, he pursued his course wholly unfettered by party connexion, steadily refused all office through his whole life, nor would lay himself under any obligations by accepting a share of patronage; and he differed with his illustrious friend upon the two most critical emergencies of his life, the question of peace with France in 1795, and the impeachment of Lord Melville ten years later.

His eloquence was of a very high order. It was persuasive and pathetic in an eminent degree; but it was occasionally bold and impassioned, animated with the inspiration which deep feeling alone can breathe into spoken thought, chastened by a pure taste, varied by extensive information, enriched by classical allusion, sometimes elevated by the more sublime topics of Holy Writ-the thoughts and the spirit

"That touch'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire."

Few passages can be cited in the oratory of modern times of a more electrical effect than the singularly felicitous and striking allusion to Mr. Pitt's resisting the torrent of Jacobin principles :-" He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed." The singular kindness, the extreme gentleness of his disposition, wholly free from gall, from vanity, or any selfish feeling, kept him from indulging in any of the vituperative branches of rhetoric; but a memorable instance showed that it was anything rather than the want of power which held him off from the use of the weapons so often in almost all other men's hands. When a well-known popular member thought fit to designate him repeatedly, and very irregularly, as the "Honourable and religious gentleman," not because he was ashamed of the Cross he gloried in, but because he felt indignant at any one in the British senate deeming piety a matter of a reproach, he poured out a strain of sarcasm which none who heard it can ever forget. A common friend of the parties having remarked to Sir Samuel Romilly, beside whom he sat, that this greatly outmatched Pitt himself, the great master of sarcasm, the reply of that great man and just observer was worthy to be remarked, "Yes," said he, "it is the most striking thing I almost ever heard; but I look upon it as a more singular proof of Wilberforce's virtue than of his genius, for who but he ever was possessed of such a formidable weapon, and never used it ?"

Against all these accomplishments of a finished orator there was little to set on the other side. A feeble constitution, which made him say, all his life, that he never was either well or ill; a voice sweetly musical beyond that of most men, and of great compass also, but sometimes degenerating into a whine; a figure exceedingly undignified and ungraceful, though the features of the face were singularly expressive; and a want of condensation, in the latter years of his

life, especially, lapsing into digression and ill calculated for a very business-like audience like the House of Commons-these may be noted as the only drawbacks which kept him out of the very first place among the first speakers of his age, whom, in pathos, and also in graceful and easy and perfectly elegant diction, as well as harmonious periods, he unquestionably excelled. The influence which the Member for Yorkshire always commanded in the old Parliament-the great weight which the head, indeed the founder, of a powerful religious sect, possessed in the country-would have given extraordinary authority in the senate to one of far inferior personal endowments. But when these partly accidental circumstances were added to his powers, and when the whole were used and applied with the habits of industry which naturally belonged to one of his extreme temperance in every respect, it is difficult to imagine any one bringing a greater force to the aid of any cause which he might espouse.

Wherefore, when he stood forward as the leader of the Abolition, vowed implacable war against Slavery and the Slave Trade, and consecrated his life to the accomplishment of its destruction, there was every advantage conferred upon this great cause, and the rather that he held himself aloof from party connexion. A few personal friends, united with him by similarity of religious opinions, might be said to form a small party; and they generally acted in concert, especially in all matters relating to the Slave question. Of these, Henry Thornton was the most eminent in every respect. He was a man of strong understanding, great powers of reasoning and of investigation, an accurate and a curious observer, but who neither had cultivated oratory at all, nor had received a refined education, nor had extended his reading beyond the subjects connected with moral, political, and theological learning. The trade of a banker, which he followed, engrossed much of his time; and his exertions both in Parlia

ment and through the press, were chiefly confined to the celebrated controversy upon the currency, in which his well-known work led the way, and to a bill for restricting the Slave Trade to part of the African coast, which he introduced when the Abolitionists were wearied out with their repeated failures, and had wellnigh abandoned all hopes of carrying the great measure itself. That measure was fated to undergo much vexatious delay, nor is there any great question of justice and policy, the history of which is less creditable to the British Parliament, or, indeed, to some of the statesmen of this country, although upon it the fame of others mainly rests.

When Mr. Wilberforce, following in Mr. Clarkson's track, had, with matchless powers of eloquence, sustained by a body of the clearest evidence, unveiled all the horrors of a traffic which, had it been attended with neither fraud nor cruelty of any kind, was, confessedly, from beginning to end, not a commerce but a crime, he was defeated by large majorities, year after year. When, at length, for the first time, in 1804, he carried the Abolition Bill through the Commons, the Lords immediately threw it out; and the next year it was again lost in the Commons. All this happened while the opinion of the country was, with the single exception of persons having West India connexions, unanimous in favour of the measure. At different times there was the strongest and most general expression of public feeling upon the subject, and it was a question upon which no two men, endowed with reason, could possibly differ, because, admitting whatever could be alleged about the profits of the traffic, it was not denied that the gain proceeded from pillage and murder. Add to all this, that the enormous evil continued to disgrace the country and its legislature for twenty years, although the voice of every statesman of any eminence, Mr. Windham alone excepted, was strenuously lifted against it, although, upon this only