WILBERFORCE AND "THE CLAPHAM SECT."

Evening Star, Issue 12208, 28 May 1904, Page 11

WILBERFORCE AND "THE CLAPHAM SECT."

A STUDY.—No. IV. r,By William Hutchison.] "Let us praise our famous men and the fathers who" begat us."—Ecclcsiasticus. "In the di-charge of thy place, set before thee the bes', examples, for imitation is a globe [a body] of precepts."—Bacon. —Thj Anti-Slavery Crusado—"After a conversation in the open air, at the root of an old tree at Hohvood, just above the steep descent into the vale of Keston," so the re ord runs, Pitt promised to support bis liie-long friend Wiiberforce in a meagre for negro emancipation. The opening words remind mo, by the mere tiick of verbal as ociation, of the dwelling of the prophetess, "u;n!cr the- palm tree' between Kamah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim." And her earnestness may at least be accepted as a chaructens'io of Wiiberforce Tie, brought in a Bill as suggested, but the Liverpool slave merchan.s were too many, or at leas: too powerful, for "the Clapbam sect," even when supported by Pitt and Fox. Mammon is great and has friends are ten thousand. In 1753 Wilbeiforce's Bill was defeated. But there was no sulking in the tent of tho leader. He strove hi:rd to win; he liked to win; we all like to do so: but majorities or minorities have often little to say to truth or right. Athanasius stood alone—"contra mundem"—men do not think the less of him to-day for the stand he took. And no Wiiberforce and his friends once more rallied their forces and pursued the tenor of their tray. They kept at it. "Instant ill season and out of season" —speaking here, writing then-!—the smallest concession taken advantage of and dung to with a hopeful tenacity. But I had better begin at the beginning, or rather at the beginning of the end. Whatever may lu'vo been the "windy sentimentalities " of the eighteenth century, as denounced by Carlyle, they certainly make small appearance" in the history of the antl-sl.iverv crusHe. In direct contradiction to C.tlv'o's dictum. Sir Leslie Stephen prefers to-'.'peak, in his latest and last book—'English literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century'—this same century as n period of "-min.-l .sense and growing toleration." The truth may be foand between the two opinion-. At all events, the people at such a lime were r.ot likely to concern themselves with men or things .it any grMt distance, and the condition of the negro did not trouble them. lie was out of Blight, and might well be out of mind, if only Wilberfoice and his following would seep quiet But they declined any such invitation. The abolition of slavery, at least, in so far as Dritish ru'o was' concerned, took po si-ssion of Wiiberforce at an early period of his public life, and gradually there gathered around him this and then the other notable philanthropist, unti 1 , as we have seen, the very district became notable by their presence. Hero, is I have said, these men labored in tho iaee of al! sorts of the strongest odds. Neither British law nor British institutions had at the time anything to fay against the trade with Africa in slaves, r.'r igainst the holding of (-laves in British possessions abroad. Not only so, but the church—the professedly " Chri ti.m Church—if it did not approve"of the trallic certainly did not disapprove of it. The negro was a slave, and should be not be ;o? Was he not tho des endaivt of Canaan, and predestined to be the slave of his brethren? "God shall" enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant," that is, slave. This was th<* position, and it might have been deemed impious to question the diFine decree. And so a public sentiment •ntirely opposed to this and other prevalent opinions had to be created, and this was the work which Wilberf---.-e and his friends <-et themselves to accomplish. It was lar-Telv sentimental, if you please; and even now sentimental legislation, I am told, is rot popular with the House of Commons. The friends of the negro might well have taken up the prayer so finely expressed on a later day by Cardinal Newman •. Lord! who thy thousand years dost wait To work the thousandth' part Of thy vast plan, for us create With zeal a patient heart. And indeed with a sweet patienct at 3 perseverance these men did wait, porforec had to wait. I have said that British law sj> well as British sentiment was opposed to negro emancipation. Yet it requires to be stated, curiously enough, that the Court of Queen's Bench, sixty-one years earlier, had pronounced a judgment to the effect that slaves were free from the moment they reached the British Isles. Such a? incident, like nn unexpected flowert m the desert, might be regarded as almost prophetic, but beyond stirring up a little generous sympathy here and there, it was soon forgotten. Slaves had no chance of effecting their manumission by visiting EnslSnd. A West Indian planter might perchance take one of his slaves across the sea with him as a valet, and such a thing might poss'b'y occur half a dozen times in a lifetime—but what was- that? The incident, however, is deservin" of notice in yet another :onnection. The Irish Bar has always been famous for an eloquence transcending that of either England or Scotland, and" John Philpot Curran,- one of its distinguished members, made the legal decision referred to the text of an impassioned appeal for universal liberty. The passage is perfectly in unison with my subject, but were it "only for contrasting the fervid oratory of a pist generation with the more measured tones of twentieth century addresses, it is well worth reproduction, and I reproduce it accordingly: "I speak in the spirit of British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil • which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment be sets his font upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced: no matter what* complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burned Upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities le ttay have been devoted upon the altar of jlavery—the first moment he {ouches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his sorj walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the m?astire of "lib chains, that burst from around him ; and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled "ty the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation."

One great obstacle to Wilberforre's movement was the African slave trade, which supplied both the British and American planters and cotton-nrowers with labor. It was a perfectly inhuman svstem. The nearoes were caniht in their inland African villages, marched to the coast with every species of barbarity, put on board poorlyequipped vessels, and confined in their filtiiv and arlejs holds during a passage acros» the Atlantic. The sufferings of °the pot* creatures in mid-ocean were hideous. \Lmv died; what of it? There were plenty more to be caught. The trade was profitab'e and formed a perfect buttress of the system. Until it was put down proves* in My other direction was all but fopeless Yet it was not till 1807 that the ParLiment passed a resolution condemnatory of tb-s traffic, which, largely hidden from public view exactly suited certain members ol- the great commun:tv of weed Pitf ln J Fcx both of whom Wilberforce had won over to combme for its suppression, had in 1,, J B V ? Parliamentary relation, a large Brtirn squndrcn was stationed the African const, and thereafter a va«t amour t of blood and came to be expended upon -ts maintenance. And to little purpose. With the utmost diligence and every precaution, the trade was"on'v scotched, not put a stop to. although ?t certainly intensified the suffering 0 f the captured nearoes. Stranue tales made the pcs-tion at last unendurable and m 1817 the British Parliament took a further step bv voting a sum of £400,000 to fcpam in order to obtain the consent of that country to aid in the suppression of

this trade north of the Equator. This measure had gradually the desired effect, but Wilberforce's battle had still to be fought. The emp'oyment of slave labor, with whip (irirl chain, within the dependencies of Great Br:ta ; n continued, and for lons years the emancipafonists had still to labor and to wait, ria'n patience, how good it is! "Duty, not glory; service, not a thrcn3." One appeal after another was forcing the nation to feel the continuance of colonial slavery to be an atroiity. a dWsrrace, and even an absurdity. Declamation on the dories of British freedom—do we not know its b'atant tones to this day? Declamation in this case had become a burlesque by the side of British slave-grown sugar. It is enid that if you dig in early spins beneath the snows of certain northern climes you will come upon the lowly violet putting forth its tiny blonm; and fo .it would appear that deep down in the popular heart, under the crust of mammon-worsh : p and plea-sure-lovirig there lies a sprinc of rich and kindly sentiment, which now and again wellp out and buhb'es to the surface —a fact which nt last beeame manifest to the del'vranee of the British nectro. On the 23th dav of August, 1833. King William TV. pave his assent to the Colonial Slavery Abolition Act, and within one year from that date the blackmail entered into the enjoyment, so far as he could realise it. of the mlit to dispose of his labnr as he chose, and could claim legal protection as a peer before the law of his white fellow-citi-zens. The ransom for his liberty—literally a bribe to his master—paid bv the Briti-h people to the West India planters, chiefly resident in England, was the handsome sum of twenty millions sterling more than handsome, a really large sum—but how small it was viewed in" the light of the deliverance _ it effected; how vcrv small compared with what the United States had to pay at a much later date—blood and treasure, State jealousies and racial hatred, in unstinted quantities—to effect a like desirable object. The story of this struggle already grows dim to human memory, yet, as it appear? to me. history records few achievement--; finer or more heroic. Its ultimate triumph might well call forth such minstrelsy as that of Mo-es and the children of Israel, when they sang over their deliverance from the bond ige of 1-lgvpt: "Th? Lord hja l h triumphed gloriously." Wiiberforce died on the 23th July—one month before the passing of the Abolition Act—srdliciently near it to know that his cause had triumphed. " Having received a good report through faith." he would be content. Perhaps his most fitting epitaph is written in the Royal signature to the Act of Parliament just mentio-i-d. On the 3rd of August the body of Wi'berforce was laid to rest in Westminster AbbeS', devout men carrying him to his burial.

And ne'er to those dwellings, where the mighty rest, Since their foundation, came a nobler guest.