The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

>with its panting, shuddering, hopeful, fearful soul inside, was

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