and classical disquisition, and the business before them was adjourned.

No opportunity was lost by Mr. Wilberforce to impress on his friend the importance of Christianity as he himself perceived and felt it. Pitt used to say, "Every thing sits so well on Wilberforce, that even his religion appears becoming in him." The influence of Mr. Prettyman, Mr. Pitt's private secretary, and of Mr. Dundas, was considered by Mr. Wilberforce as unfriendly with respect to his views of religion. "Prettyman," said the minister on one occasion to Mr. Wilberforce, "gives me a totally different view of these things." The hurry of public life, the increasing piety of Mr. Wilberforce's mind, and his abstraction from party politics, (at first Mr. Wilberforce was one of the constant and most powerful supporters of Mr. Pitt's administration, which he continued in a certain measure to be during Mr. Pitt's life,) withdrew the two friends from each other by degrees; and when Mr. Wilberforce married, in 1797, the intimacy, as I conjecture, ceased. But to the close of life, Mr. Wilberforce always spoke of him with affection, as of an old friend, and with the most unqualified admiration of his talents, integrity, and love of his country. He began, indeed, "A Life of Mr. Pitt," intending to make it a vehicle of observations on the times in which they both lived; but it was never prosecuted. 1 remember his lamen ng the view Mr. Pitt took of Lord Brownlow's (now Marquis of Westminster) motion for checking the publication of Sunday papers, about the year 1796, when they might have been discouraged with the utmost ease; whereas the one error of despising them then, allowed the evil to take root, and to become one of the national sins of Great Britain. And on another occasion, I recollect Mr. Wilberforce saying, that he once laboured for hours in endeavouring to convince Mr. Pitt of the real spirituality of Christianity, and of the value of those clergymen whom

F

the world at that day upbraided with extravagance. He succeeded, however, in one important effort. Some project had been nearly carried with the minister by Mr. Prettyman, (afterwards Tomline, and successively Bishop of Lincoln and Winchester,) but Wilberforce hearing of it, took such pains to inform Mr. Pitt of the real bearings of the case, that it was abandoned. Mr. Wilberforce, thirty years afterwards, told the writer, he did not know that he had in any thing been more really serviceable to the cause of true religion than by that private interposition.

It was at the suggestion of this minister that Mr. Wilberforce, in 1787 or 1788, was encouraged to bring first before parliament the question of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. They were at Mr. Pitt's country retreat, (Holrood House, I think was the name,) when Granville Sharpe's proceedings in favour of the slaves, and some other public occurrences relating to them, became the topic of conversation. Pitt said, "Why should you not be the man to bring the whole question before parliament ?" This led to that train of measures which terminated in the abolition of the slave trade under Lord Grenville's administration in 1807, and the emancipation of the slaves in the colonies themselves in the year 1833, just before his death. The writer has heard many distinguished members say, that some of Mr. Wilberforce's speeches on the slave trade were of the highest species of eloquence-instructive, convincing, persuasive, powerful, overwhelming; and that also one of Mr. Pitt's most admirable speeches was delivered in 1791, on the same topic. That great minister, they said, excelled himself on that occasion. Mr. Windham, then in opposition, declared after, that if Mr. Pitt always spoke in that way, he would seldom fail of convincing his opponents.

It may fairly be said, upon reflecting on Mr. Wilberforce's labours for this cause, including the thirty-seven years that he

was in parliament after he brought it forward, and the nine years of retirement afterwards, during which he continued to aid and direct in the conduct of it, that there has been no statesman in our memory who has proposed to himself so great an object, pursued it with such perseverance, and been crowned during his own lifetime with such complete success. Other names should, indeed, be associated with his own on this subject

Sharpe, Clarkson, Buxton, Lushington, and eminently Z. Macaulay, but the leader, in and out of parliament, was Wilberforce.

His extreme benevolence contributed largely to this success. I have heard him say, that it was one of his constant rules, on this question especially, never to provoke an adversary-to allow him fully sincerity and purity of motive-to abstain from irritating expressions—to avoid even such political attacks as would indispose his opponents for his great cause. In fact, the benignity, the gentleness, the kind-heartedness of the man, disarmed the bitterest foes. Not only on this question did he restrain himself, but generally. Once he had been called during a whole debate, by a considerable speaker of the opposition, "the religious member,” in a kind of scorn. The impropriety had been checked by the interference of the house. Mr. Wilberforce told me afterwards, that he was much inclined to have retorted by calling his opponent "the irreligious member," but that he refrained, as it would have been a returning of evil for evil.

I may as well insert here another observation of Mr. Wilberforce, which was, that he had constantly observed that public men would never attend to him about religion, unless they found he knew as much as themselves on other topics.

His tact in bringing forward the sacred subject of religion was inimitable. It was never obtruded upon the house: when it was touched on, it was done naturally, boldly, and with a

reference only to the broad commanding principles of Christianity: never foolishly, inopportunely, harshly, or theologically, if I may so speak.

He was accustoined to prepare himself for every great debate not by composing or writing his speech, but by examining most closely and deliberately the question which was to be discussed, and calling in two or three friends, perhaps, to consult with.

His constant attendance to his parliamentary duties struck every one. Wilberforce was always in his place, discharging to

his utmost the obligations of a statesman and legislator.

He was never in office. Early in his career he disavowed party, and resolved to follow his own unbiassed conviction on each question. In the first French war he supported generally Mr. Pitt, but on one occasion he moved an amendment to the address, and headed the opposition to the minister, (about the year 1795 or 1796,) because he thought further endeavours for peace should have been made. I remember the astonishment this step created: in Yorkshire it almost lost him his seat.

To go on with the parliamentary recollections: A growing influence in the house was the result of his consistent, able, wise, sincere, engaging course of conduct. The writer was present, thirty-six years since, when the coarsest attack was made on him by an opposition member, soon after the publication of his book. Mr. Canning then defended him. Towards the close of his career such attacks were not often attempted, and if they were, were received with indignation by the whole house. Indeed, in 1813, at the period of the last renewal of the East India Charter, he was more than once listened to with attention for three hours on the necessity and duty of communicating Christianity to our native fellow-subjects in India. He had begun and completed, in the course of forty years

a silent revolution in the general estimate of religion in the House of Commons. His book, which, when published in 1797, was scouted and maligned on all hands, was very generally admired and esteemed in 1824, when he retired from public life, and the sentiments urged in it admitted to be true. His speeches were never well reported, any more than Mr. Pitt's; they were too refined, elegant, rapid, philosophical, religious, for the reporters of that day; and he never corrected them. or two published by himself, are just as defective.

One

I may as well say of his book, that it was published because he found it impossible to give his political friends a just conception of his real views of Christianity. They had some notions that he was peculiarly religious, but no explicit information. The book was dictated. He first arranged well his plan, then thought much over each topic; but when his ideas were in order, and his mind warmed, he poured out the chapters like a river's flow. It is one of the most eloquent books in the English language. The first two editions, of 2000 copies each, he gave away. The members of both houses of parliament first received presents. The effect was electric over the nation. The most prejudiced and irreligious paused at the beauty of the style and the force of the arguments. The incidental topics discussed were much admired by judges of composition; that upon the affections, for example, and the thoughts on the evidences, all admitted it deserved reading. It contributed very considerably to that revival of effective Christianity which the last forty years have witnessed.

The wisdom of his gradual retreat from parliamentary duties must be observed. For some years before he finally left the senate, (which was in 1824,) he had resigned his seat for Yorkshire, and represented the small borough of Bramber. This he quitted in time also. He sunk back into his family circle