William Wilberforce

English politician and social reformer

• Born: August 24, 1759
• Birthplace: Hull, Yorkshire, England
• Died: July 29, 1833
• Place of death: London, England

Guided by his Evangelical views, Wilberforce led the fight to end the slave trade and later slavery in the British Empire. He also sought to reform the morals of his country. As a result of his struggles throughout a long parliamentary career, he and his supporters developed a number of techniques designed to mobilize public opinion that have become standard to modern British political life.

Early Life

William Wilberforce was born into a prosperous merchant family from Hull. An only son, he was small, frail, and plagued with poor eyesight. In 1768, shortly after his father’s death, he went to live with relatives in London. There, to the horror of his family, he was converted to Methodism. Hastily, his mother brought him back to Hull, where he soon gave up his religious “enthusiasm” and settled into the frivolous social life of his class. He was educated in a series of boarding schools of varying quality and entered Cambridge in 1776 at the age of seventeen. Although he did not devote much of his time to learning there, he did come to know a number of people who, like himself, would be Great Britain’s future leaders.

Wilberforce left Cambridge in 1781 to enter Parliament as a member for Hull. As the social life in London was exhilarating, he quickly joined five political clubs and became an avid patron of the opera and the theater. He was slower to become involved in parliamentary life, but in the campaign of 1783, he demonstrated the remarkable oratorical gifts which came to be his hallmark and which secured for him a prestigious county seat in Yorkshire in place of his borough seat for Hull. Although successful and popular, Wilberforce was unhappy. On a trip to the Continent shortly after his victory, Wilberforce reached a turning point in his life: He read The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745), by Philip Doddridge, and began to think again of religion.

For months after his return, his mind was in turmoil. He was especially influenced by a movement in the Anglican Church, the Evangelicals, who, like the Methodists of his youth, claimed that God expected Christians to be “serious” about their lives and would not spare them from judgment if they were not. They must constantly strive for self-improvement, perform good works, and above all, avoid the frivolous and empty pleasures Wilberforce had so avidly pursued up to this time. Wilberforce wondered what such a commitment would require. Would he have to resign his parliamentary seat? With some assistance from John Newton, a Methodist and former slave captain, Wilberforce came to believe that his social position, oratorical gifts, and seat in Parliament were instruments through which he was to do God’s work in England. He resigned his clubs, gave up gambling and dancing as well as attending the opera and the theater, and began a period of careful study and reflection until, as he recounted in his diary for October 28, 1787, he came to see that God had given him two tasks: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of the morals of England.

Life’s Work

The suppression of the slave trade occupied much of Wilberforce’s attention for the next twenty years. To most of his contemporaries, this trade was a vital form of commerce and a training ground for young seamen. The slavers themselves painted a picture of joyous slaves dancing on the decks of ships that carried them to the West Indies, happy to be leaving Africa for “civilization,” even as slaves. Wilberforce and his Evangelical associates faced a difficult task.

In May, 1789, Wilberforce began his campaign to end the slave trade. He and his supporters, who came to be known as the Clapham sect, from the suburb outside London where they lived and worked, had gathered enough evidence on the evils of the trade to present a formidable case against it. Wilberforce was confident of an easy victory. He was greatly mistaken. The West Indies planters controlled a number of seats in Parliament. They also had persuaded many members that the proposal would be dangerous for England unless France and Spain went along as well. Finally, the Crown quietly opposed the measure.

The years that followed were often frustrating for Wilberforce and the Clapham sect. Twice his life was threatened by irate sea captains. For a time, the country seemed to be less supportive with each passing year, in part because Wilberforce and his associates were blamed for a series of slave revolts in the West Indies. Events in France, however, did the most damage to their cause.

In 1792, the French Revolution entered its radical, or Jacobin, phase. Soon afterward, Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. Throughout this period, England was locked in a life or death struggle with France. A numbing reaction pervaded the country’s ruling class, who viewed all proposals that sought any kind of change with suspicion. Wilberforce and his supporters were often accused of supporting Jacobinism or even atheism.

Year after year, the Evangelicals introduced their bills to end the slave trade, only to see them voted down. Yet, gradually they educated, molded, and mobilized public opinion against the trade, often using religious periodicals such as The Christian Year to bring their case to the people. No serious Christian, they maintained, could rest easy so long as this blight upon the nation’s conscience survived. Readers were encouraged to gather petitions and write to the members of Parliament expressing their concerns. These techniques were novel in England’s political history. By 1807, the Evangelicals’ persistence produced results. The final bill, introduced in January, passed the House of Lords on March 23. Two days later, with the consent of the king, it became law.

The slave trade had not been the only issue with which Wilberforce and the Clapham sect had been occupied over the previous two decades. They had also been busy with Wilberforce’s other life project, the reformation of the morals of the country. According to the Evangelicals, there was much in England that needed reform. The wealthy lived elegant but morally lax lives. They drank heavily and gambled, often ruinously. Corruption was basic to political life, and the established clergy seemed to be more concerned about its social position than the care of the souls in its charge.

The poor were in an infinitely worse position. They, too, drank heavily—gin, which was cheap. It was also much higher in alcohol content than beer or wine and often disastrous to their health and to the health of their children. Those who could find employment labored for twelve to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for meager wages when there was work. The many who could find no work in the towns, on the farms, or in the mines could only become beggars, vagabonds, or thieves. They made the roads notoriously unsafe for the well-to-do. Parliament had tried to deal with the problems of the poor by passing ever stricter laws. The offenses punishable by death rose from thirty in 1688 to more than two hundred by the eighteenth century.

To rescue England from this moral quagmire, Wilberforce and the Evangelicals, with the blessing of George III, organized the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which sought to curb excessive drinking and to prevent“blasphemy,” swearing, cursing, and “lewdness and other dissolute practices.” The society also sought to outlaw what its members regarded as cruel sports: bearbaiting and cockfighting. They did not, however, find fox hunting cruel. As critics have noted, the poor suffered most from the righteous efforts of the committee.

The Evangelicals’ campaign did have some influence upon the privileged. Churchgoing among this group increased. Furthermore, many began to employ Evangelicals as tutors for their children. Evangelical pastors acquired parishes, a few became bishops, and one even became the archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of the Church of England.

Wilberforce and his supporters also attacked dueling and the use of press gangs and “chimney boys.” They supported the first factory act. They even supported Catholic emancipation, which is surprising, as they were suspicious of “popery” otherwise. Finally, the Evangelicals were interested in assisting the needy, although in ways they found compatible with laissez-faire capitalism. They believed that the poor would profit from being able to read the Bible, so they began the Sunday School movement. They also sought the passage of Sabbatarian laws, in part to allow them to attend the classes. They spent a large amount of money on Bibles, prayer books, and tracts to give to the poor.

The aristocrats and established clergy criticized Wilberforce and his associates for these efforts because they were fearful that a literate poor would either be disenchanted with their work or, worse still, read anti-Christian propaganda assumed to be coming from France and so become atheists. In truth, they were fearful that the Evangelicals were more concerned about influencing their students’ religious ideas than teaching them to read, and they were correct.

As serious Christians were expected to be charitable toward the poor, the Evangelicals were not stingy in their giving. At times, Wilberforce gave away more than he earned in a year. Some Evangelicals left their children almost penniless. They supported a society to keep debtors out of prison, education for the blind, foundling hospitals, prison reform, and the relief of widows, to name but a few causes.

In part because of their religious outlook, but also because of their laissez-faire attitudes, the Evangelicals, Wilberforce among them, opposed strongly either the labor movement or socialism as means of assisting the poor. Indeed, they proved to be as fearful of popular unrest as the rest of the ruling class and regularly supported all repressive measures taken by the government against it. Critics to the left of Wilberforce and the Evangelicals have long used these aspects of their policies to discredit the entire reform effort. To these critics, the Clapham sect’s blindness to the economic nature of poverty prevented their reforms, however well-intentioned, from being of much lasting value.

Wilberforce and the Evangelicals had originally decided to attack the slave trade rather than slavery because they feared that the latter could not be defeated. Furthermore, they expected that defeat of the trade would inevitably lead to an end of the institution itself. By 1820, they came to realize that their assumptions were incorrect. They had not even stopped the trade; they had made it illegal, which was all the worse for the slaves. Wilberforce was too old to lead the campaign, but he found in Thomas Fowell Buxton the person to take his place. Wilberforce also supported the effort inside Parliament until his retirement in February, 1825, and then outside until ill health prevented him from any further speaking. Although he did not live to see the Slavery Abolition Act become law, he did see it pass the second reading, at which time Parliament appropriated œ20 million with which to compensate slave owners. At that point, he knew that it would become law. Four days later, just before its final passage, he died.

Much of Wilberforce’s success can be attributed to his speaking ability. He also had a winning personality. He was charming, witty, and always considerate of other people’s attitudes. Politically, he was always prepared to work with any group which would advance his objectives. He worked with the most thoroughly secular members of the Commons as well as with the Evangelicals in securing the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. Yet in his personal life he was reserved. On one occasion, he was maneuvered into dining with the famous novelist Madame de Staël, who was not noted for her religious seriousness. She, too, was charming and witty, and they both enjoyed themselves. Yet the next morning Wilberforce felt quite guilty and would never dine with her again. Wilberforce believed that one must always be on guard against the lure of frivolous pleasures, especially when dealing with one whose religious ideas are insufficiently “serious.”

Wilberforce remained a bachelor until he was thirty-eight, at which time he married Barbara Spooner. She bore him six children, ran his household, and looked after his health. A serious Christian, she supported him in his political endeavors. To his Evangelical friends, she was as much the ideal wife as he was the ideal husband, father, and statesman.

Significance

William Wilberforce dedicated his life to the suppression of the slave trade in the British Empire and the reformation of the morals of his fellow countrymen. In the former endeavor he was eminently successful. Indeed, he became internationally renowned as an opponent of slavery even during his lifetime. While he was assisted by men and women of like mind, it remains true that without his leadership and parliamentary skills it would have been difficult if not impossible for them to have achieved their goal so early in the nineteenth century. In the process, he and his party introduced parliamentary tactics that in the future became commonplace.

Wilberforce also enjoyed considerable success in his campaign to reform public morality. England underwent monumental changes in its attitudes toward moral behavior during his lifetime. The “age of elegance” in which he was born slipped into the “age of Victoria” by the time of his old age. Although Evangelicalism itself declined rapidly after his death, its continuing influence was evident in the moral earnestness, the concern for charitable works and family life, and the fastidiousness associated with the age of England’s illustrious nineteenth century queen. Thus, as the acknowledged leader of Evangelicalism, Wilberforce deserves to be remembered not only as the person who freed the slaves but also as the father of the Victorians.

Bibliography

Belmonte, Kevin. Hero for Humanity: A Biography of William Wilberforce. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Navpress, 2002. One of several updated biographies that portray Wilberforce as having strong moral character and religious convictions.

Bradley, Ian. “William Wilberforce, the Saint.” History Today 33 (July, 1983): 41-44. A good place to begin studying Wilberforce and his work.

Brown, Ford. Fathers of the Victorians. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Connects Wilberforce with the emerging Victorian moral outlook.

Furneaux, Robin. William Wilberforce. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974. A balanced study of all aspects of Wilberforce’s life that takes into account the critical studies of the 1960’s.

Gratus, Jack. The Great White Lie. New York: Hutchinson, 1973. Attacks Wilberforce and the Clapham sect. Suggests that the radicals deserve more credit for the defeat of slavery than they have received.

Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Wilberforce is featured in this acclaimed history of the British abolition movement. Hochschild describes the tactics movement leaders developed to win popular support for their cause.

Howse, Ernest Marshall. Saints in Politics. London: Allen & Unwin, 1952. A study of the Clapham sect, of which Wilberforce was the leader.

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963. Sharply critical of Wilberforce and his associates for their part in the suppression of popular movements in the reaction of the Napoleonic era.

Vaughn, David J. Statesman and Saint: The Principled Politics of William Wilberforce. Nashville, Tenn.: Highland Books, 2002. Admiring biography describing how Wilberforce’s religious beliefs led him to be a crusading statesman and a philanthropist.

Wilberforce, William. Correspondence of William Wilberforce. Edited by Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce. Miami, Fla.: Mnemosyne, 1969. A reprint of the original 1840 edition, the letters give a picture of Wilberforce and his circle and cover the gamut of his concerns.