William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner

Wilberforce showed no resentment that the haste of his return proved unnecessary when the great debate on Reform was put off until late March, and then again until 18 April. He threw himself back into London’s political and social whirl, and was soon noting in his diary that he was ‘sitting up all night singing’, and had ‘danced till five in the morning’.28 When the Reform debate finally took place Wilberforce was in his place to support Pitt and to speak up for Yorkshire, but his speech, however much it accorded with his own views and ideals, was not calculated to win over sceptical MPs. Showing his disdain for political parties, he argued that the abolition of rotten boroughs would ‘tend to diminish the progress of party and cohesion in this country from which … our greatest misfortunes arose … By destroying them the freedom of opinion would be restored, and party connexions in a great measure vanish.’29 MPs with less secure parliamentary seats than Wilberforce might well have considered as they listened to him that if party connections vanished, they might well vanish themselves. Even this modest measure of reform was thrown out, by 248 votes to 174, and one of Pitt’s most cherished projects among ‘his good hopes of the country, and noble, patriotic heart’,30 in Wilberforce’s words of that time, went down to defeat. Wilberforce’s diary for that day said it all: ‘To town – Pitt’s – house – Parliamentary Reform – terribly disappointed and beat – extremely fatigued – spoke extremely ill, but commended. – Called at Pitt’s – met poor Wyvill.’31

The following month he was again on his feet in the House of Commons supporting Pitt, this time even against the wishes of some of his constituents. Pitt’s so-called ‘Irish Propositions’ were designed to create freer trade between Ireland and England, with the object of reducing discontent in Ireland and strengthening England’s security. They were opposed, however, by many manufacturers, including the woollen businesses of the Yorkshire West Riding. It was either his efforts to reconcile these conflicting views or his general lifestyle which caused Wilberforce physical discomfort and even disorientation in the debate of 12 May. He noted that he ‘cannot preserve the train as some could do, and too hot and violent’,32 and it was reported that ‘overcome with sensibility, the fatigue of having sat in the House so many hours, and with the pressure of infirmity, he sunk upon his seat’.33 It was not an easy session for him. As he wrote to one dissatisfied constituent, ‘The situation of a Representative disagreeing with his constituents on a matter of importance must ever be a situation of pain and embarrassment,’34 but he continued to admire Pitt, who he thought ‘spoke wonderfully’ on the same subject, and to be loyal to his old friend. Yet there were also the first signs of a developing dissatisfaction with the political and social scene. A letter from Pitt later in the year refers to Wilberforce’s ‘constant call for Something out of the Common Way’.35 At the same time, his disapproval of a variety of public habits was becoming evident in his diary. He found the laughing at a christening ‘very indecent’, considered a dance at the opera ‘shocking’, and after talking with one wealthy friend thought it ‘strange that the most generous men and religious, do not see that their duties increase with their fortune, and that they will be punished for spending it in eating, etc’.36

The change in his sentiments was to gather pace when he and Milner resumed their travels once Parliament had risen at the end of June. Heading first for Genoa for a reunion with the ladies, they then travelled to Switzerland, where Wilberforce was overcome by the beauty of the mountains: ‘I have never since ceased to recur with peculiar delight to its enchanting scenery, especially to that of Interlaken, which is a vast garden of the loveliest fertility and beauty stretched out at the base of the giant Alps.’37 He wrote to Muncaster on 14 August that ‘I have never been in any other part of the world, for which I could quit a residence in England with so little regret,’ but while retaining his normal good humour – ‘If you read on thus far, I am sure your patience will hold out no longer, and my letter goes into the fire, which in your cold part of the world you will certainly be sitting over when my packet arrives’ – he said he was in despair at ‘the universal corruption and profligacy of the times’, which had now ‘extended its baneful influence and spread its destructive poison through the whole body of the people. When the mass of blood is corrupt, there is no remedy but amputation.’38 While in Geneva he happily entertained the many contacts and friends, such as de Lageard, Wyvill and Earl Spencer, who turned up there; but others were evidently noticing a distinct change in his behaviour. When they reached Spa in the Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium), he noted: ‘Mrs Crewe cannot believe that I think it wrong to go to the play. – Surprised at hearing that halting on the Sunday was my wish and not my mother’s.’39 When he wrote to congratulate Eliot on his marriage to Pitt’s sister Harriot, he expressed his growing contempt for the pursuit of money, saying that if a man had enough, then ‘to torment himself for fresh acquisitions as delusive in this enjoyment and uncertain in their possession as these are, seems to me a perfect madness’.40

Closeted in his carriage with Milner and the Greek version of the New Testament, to the point that the ladies complained of him paying them insufficient attention, Wilberforce was becoming gradually convinced of the Evangelical Christian case. He always liked to examine a question before pronouncing his view on it; now Milner’s arguments left him intellectually convinced by, but not yet emotionally committed to, the need for a new approach to life. Much later he would recall: ‘I got a clear idea of the doctrines of Religion, perhaps clearer than I have had since, but it was quite in my head. Well, I now fully believed the Gospel and was persuaded that if I died at any time I should perish everlastingly. And yet, such is man, I went on cheerful and gay.’41 Very soon, however, he was to be overwhelmed by the force of what he now believed to be true. ‘What madness is all this,’ he began to think, ‘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!!’ By the time he was preparing to return to England in late October 1785, ‘the deep guilt and black ingratitude of my past life forced itself upon me in the strongest colours, and I condemned myself for having wasted my precious time, and opportunities, and talents’.42 The ‘great change’ was upon him.

In the autumn of 1785 Wilberforce experienced a classic conversion to Christian evangelicalism, a mental and spiritual experience of enormous power. When it came, the climax of his conversion was neither as dramatic nor as seemingly supernatural as in many other documented cases of the eighteenth century. Charles Wesley had experienced his conversion in 1738 when his sleep was interrupted by someone entering his room and saying, ‘In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise, and believe …’, the speaker turning out to be a friend’s sister who had dreamt that Christ had knocked at her door and told her to do this.43 The celebrated Colonel James Gardiner, who was killed in battle with the Jacobites in 1745 but immortalised in a biography written by Doddridge, experienced his conversion when a ‘blaze of light’44 fell upon a book he was reading and he lifted up his eyes to see a vision of Christ on the Cross, causing him ‘unutterable astonishment and agony of heart’,45 with the result that ‘the whole frame and disposition of his soul was new-modelled and changed; so that he became, and continued to the last day of his exemplary and truly Christian life, the very reverse of what he had been before’.46

Many other famous conversions can be pinpointed to a single day. John Wesley could trace his own such moment to 8.45 p.m. on 14 May 1738, when ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that he had taken my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’47 John Newton’s conversion followed a near shipwreck in which he ‘dreaded death now, and my heart foreboded the worst, if the Scriptures which I had long since opposed, were indeed true’.48 His survival and recovery from a subsequent fever led him ‘from that time’ to be ‘delivered from the power and dominion of sin … I now began to wait upon the Lord.’49 William Huntington, whose conversion led to him building his own chapel in London after a dissolute youth, also had a sudden conversion – one day, he became intensely conscious of sin: ‘I leapt up, with my eyes ready to start out of my head, my hair standing erect, and my countenance stained with all the horrible gloom and dismay of the damned. I cried out to my wife, and said, “Molly, I am undone for ever; I am lost and gone; there is no hope or mercy for me; you know not what a sinner I am; you know not where I am, nor what I feel!”’ He later saw a vision of the Holy Ghost and ‘heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto me in plain words, “Lay by your forms of prayers, and go pray to Jesus Christ; do you not see how pitifully he speaks to Sinners.”’50

It is not possible to pinpoint Wilberforce’s own conversion to a single day, nor did he report the intervention of an other-worldly vision or voice. Yet the time which elapsed between him going about his normal business in the late spring of 1785 and the adoption of an entirely new and rigorous approach to life that December was unusually short. Many such conversions followed years of intellectual doubt and agonising. Gardiner had kept his religious side subordinate for eleven years before his conversion burst through; the ‘awakening’ of the Wesleys also took place over many years; Newton endured periods of internal conflict spread over twelve years; and the great George Whitefield experienced his conversion crisis six years after being deeply affected by listening to a sermon. In another documented case, that of William Grimshaw, the son of a poor farmer from Lancashire who became second only to the Wesleys in Methodist authority, his final conversion took place eight years after he had first been ‘powerfully awakened and alarmed’.51 Wilberforce was clear in later life that true religious conviction could only emerge after a period of self-examination, doubt, and often agony. Writing of his son Samuel’s expectation of his own ‘great change’, he said: ‘I come again and again to look to see if it really be begun, just as a gardener walks up again and again to his fruit trees to see if his peaches are set; if they are swelling and becoming larger, finally they are becoming ripe and rosy.’52 Away from the daily cares of Westminster that summer, and with a companion in Milner who had ‘doctrines of religion in his head though not then I think in his heart’,53 Wilberforce found that his own period of doubt and awakening was relatively short.

A role model of the kind Isaac Milner provided for Wilberforce could be crucial in providing reassurance that conversion was both attainable and desirable. Wilberforce had always been struck by Milner’s intellect, coherence and equanimity; he had a quiet strength to which it is not surprising that the sometimes erratic and overheated young Member of Parliament aspired. There are clear parallels with the cases of others: the conversion of the great Scottish preacher Ebenezer Erskine followed on from ‘his realisation that others have found an experience which he lacked’,54 and that of Lady Huntingdon, founder of a radical Calvinistic movement within Methodism, apparently came about because ‘the happiness of her sister-in-law induced a longing for the same condition’.55 Wilberforce had this factor and many others in common with those who underwent a similar religious experience. For instance, many of them had been exposed to strong religious influences in childhood. Gardiner, Whitefield, the Wesleys and Newton all had mothers with strong personalities who managed to give their children a religious inclination even if it did not become apparent until much later in life. Wilberforce’s own acceptance of religious teaching from his aunt and uncle at the age of nine is a different but comparable case. Yet it is also true that those who experienced conversion were not ‘weak-minded’ or ‘over-suggestible’,56 but tended to be particularly thoughtful, as well as eloquent, individuals: John Berridge, vicar of Everton, was a prolific hymn-writer; William Cowper became one of the most popular poets of his time; John Fletcher became a foremost theologian and Methodist leader; Thomas Halyburton was a Professor of Divinity; the Countess of Huntingdon was a formidable figure who founded sixty-four chapels and a training college for Methodist ministers; Legh Richmond was a curate, later influenced by Wilberforce, who became a prolific author, with works translated into nineteen languages;* Thomas Scott was a biblical scholar who wrote widely read books such as The Force of Truth; and Henry Venn was a highly active vicar who wrote The Complete Duty of Man. Isaac Milner was, of course, an outstanding academic who was to become Master of Queens’ College Cambridge.

Since Wilberforce’s life followed or overlapped with those of these and comparable figures, he knew at the time of his conversion that he was in good company. Those who had embraced varying forms of Methodism and evangelicalism and experienced a crisis of religious conversion were often persuasive, well connected and, as in the case of his kinsman John Thornton, a leading figure in the Evangelical revival of the time, comfortingly rich. Nevertheless, they were a small minority, still open to the strong suspicions and hostility which Wilberforce had witnessed in his mother in earlier years, and in most cases they saw their newly crystallised religious duty as being to spread the word of God through preaching and missions rather than to try to pursue Christian principles through the political world. The tumult going on in Wilberforce’s mind that summer would therefore have embraced serious doubts about the viability of the political career he had recently done so much to advance.

In spite of these considerations, Wilberforce clearly felt an ineluctable pull towards an enthusiasm for Christianity which would guide and dictate all his future actions in every aspect of life. While he attributed his new feelings to the intervention of Providence, in common with the experience across faiths of nearly all kinds of religious conversion, with a sense of being controlled from above and accepting Divine Grace, there were many personal factors which could have affected him. His effortless possession of great wealth, and the long period of relative leisure which it had permitted, may have helped to create in him a feeling of guilt towards other people. Certainly, one of his early resolutions as he adopted a new regimen of life was to live more frugally. His diary for 25 November recorded, ‘Walked, and stagecoach, to save the expense of a chaise,’57 and he would become increasingly generous towards a wide range of charitable causes. In addition, there are signs that he was suffering a twinge of disillusionment with conventional politics by the middle of 1785. His call to Pitt for ‘something out of the common way’ almost certainly reflects his disappointment that Pitt’s triumph of the earlier year had failed to elevate the conduct of politics as a whole. Reform had been defeated, rotten boroughs remained, idealism on Ireland had been frustrated, the culture of place-seeking, patronage and parties remained. As time and travel separated him from the intense partisanship of the 1784 election, his disdain for fixed party loyalties may already have been resurfacing. He had always idealised the exercising of independent judgement, and a fresh philosophical framework for such judgement must have had its appeal.

It is impossible to know what other subconscious forces pushed William Wilberforce that November into the agony of his conversion crisis. Such was the effect, he later wrote, of the ‘sense of my great sinfulness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour … that for months I was in a state of the deepest depression … nothing which I have ever read in the accounts of others exceeded what I then felt’.58 Having attained the great heights of becoming a Member for Yorkshire, but having no expectation of becoming a minister, did he reflect, at the age of twenty-six, that his personal ambitions had already reached their limit? Was it that the excesses of the London clubland he inhabited, with its gambling, womanising, gluttony and prostitution, had finally revolted him? Had the enormous amount of time he had spent travelling, and the futility of his recent efforts in the Commons, given him a stronger than usual sense of waste and lack of purpose? Or was it that having discovered that attaining his ambitions and satisfying all his material needs did not lead to satisfaction, he was predisposed to search for something which could represent for him the highest ambition of them all? By November 1785 some mixture of these influences, added to his early receptiveness towards religion, the guidance of Doddridge’s writing, and the force of Milner’s arguments, produced in William Wilberforce a true conversion crisis.

In his book The Psychology of Religion, published at the end of the nineteenth century, E.D. Starbuck identified the mental attributes of a full-blown conversion crisis: ‘struggle after the new-life: prayer, calling on God; sense of estrangement from God; doubts and questioning: tendency to resist conviction; depression and sadness; restlessness, anxiety, and uncertainty; helplessness and humility; earnestness and seriousness … The central fact in it all is the sense of sin.’59 For a time, such a crisis could produce a state of deep dissatisfaction and a divided personality, the individual concerned oscillating between aiming for new ideals and believing that he cannot attain them. The more the prospective convert struggled to be free of sin, the more he would become conscious of his past sins and his unworthiness. The stricter he tried to become about religious devotion, observances and prayer, the more likely he was to be tempted away by the various attractions of human society, and to feel that he was trying to adopt a standard which could not be maintained. Such internal conflict, well documented by John Wesley, Whitefield, Fletcher and Henry Venn, eventually produces a mental breaking point, resulting in conversion, retreat or collapse. The honesty and thoroughness of Wilberforce’s diary-keeping meant that he left behind him a clear and revealing account of this agony:

25th. Up at six – private devotions half an hour – Pascal three quarters* – to town on business. I feel quite giddy and distracted by the tumult, except when in situations of which I am rather ashamed, as in the stage coach: the shame, pride; but a useful lesson …

Sunday 27th. Up at six – devotions half an hour – Pascal three quarters – Butler** three quarters – church – read the Bible, too ramblingly, for an hour – heard Butler, but not attentively, two hours – meditated twenty minutes – hope I was more attentive at church than usual, but serious thoughts vanished the moment I went out of it, and very insensible and cold in the evening service – some very strong feelings when I went to bed; God turn them to account, and in any way bring me to himself. I have been thinking I have been doing well by living alone, and reading generally on religious subjects; I must awake to my dangerous state, and never be at rest till I have made my peace with God.

My heart is so hard, my blindness so great, that I cannot get a due hatred of sin, though I see I am all corrupt, and blinded to the perception of spiritual things.

28th. I hope as long as I live to be the better for the meditation of this evening; it was on the sinfulness of my own heart, and its blindness and weakness. True, Lord, I am wretched, and miserable and naked. What infinite love, that Christ should die to save such a sinner and how necessary is it He should save us altogether that we may appear before God with nothing of our own! God grant I may not deceive myself, in thinking I feel the beginnings of gospel comfort. Began this night constantly family prayer, and resolved to have it every morning and evening, and to read a chapter when time.

Tuesday 29th. I bless God I enjoyed comfort in prayer this evening. I must keep my own unworthiness ever in view. Pride is my greatest stumbling block; and there is danger in it in two ways – lest it should make me desist from a Christian life, through fear of the world, my friends, &c.; or if I persevere, lest it should make me vain of so doing. In all disputes on religion, I must be particularly on my guard to distinguish it from a zeal for God and his cause. I must consider and set down the marks whereby they may be known from each other. I will form a plan of my particular duty, praying God to enable me to do it properly, and set it before me as a chart of the country, and map of the road I must travel …

November 30th. Was very fervent in prayer this morning, and thought these warm impressions would never go off. Yet in vain endeavoured in the evening to rouse myself. God grant it may not all prove vain; oh if it does, how will my punishment be deservedly increased! The only way I find of moving myself, is by thinking of my great transgressions, weakness, blindness, and of God’s having promised to supply these defects. But though I firmly believe them, yet I read of future judgement, and think of God’s wrath against sinners with no great emotions …60

It was all there: doubt, shame, and sometimes near despair, all in an atmosphere of agonising introspection. He would always regard this as the most difficult experience of his life: ‘I was filled with sorrow. I am sure that no human creature could suffer more than I did for some months. It seems indeed it quite affected my reason; not so as others would observe, for all this time I kept out of company. They might see I was out of spirits.’61

Astonishingly, when he did appear in public he gave no sign of his inner torment, Pitt’s sister writing on 10 November that she had been ‘agreeably surprised by a visit from Mr Wilberforce who has come home remarkably well’.62 But although he complained to his diary that ‘all religious thoughts go off in London’,63 he was finding that he could no longer see the great men of the political world in the same light as before. Dining with the cabinet at Downing Street, he ‘was often thinking that pompous Thurlow [the Lord Chancellor] and elegant Carmarthen would soon appear in the same row with the poor fellow who waited behind their chairs’.64 By the end of November he felt he had to explain to his closest friends what was happening to him, but on a confidential basis so as to avoid any public reaction. The letter in which he explained himself to Pitt has not survived, but he later recalled that ‘I told him that though I should ever feel a strong affection for him, and had every reason to feel that I should be in general able to support him, yet I could no more be so much a Party man as I had been before.’65 Pitt’s reply, written from Downing Street on 2 December 1785, suggests that Wilberforce had raised the idea of withdrawing from general society and possibly from the political world. His immediate response was to affirm his friendship, begin to argue, and seek a discussion, in a letter which was all the more remarkable for having been written by a busy Prime Minister. He began by saying that he was ‘too deeply interested in whatever concerns you not to be very sensibly affected by what has the appearance of a new era in your life, and so important in its consequences for yourself and your friends. As to any public conduct which your opinions may ever lead you to, I will not disguise to you that few things could go nearer my heart than to find myself differing from you essentially on any great principle.’66 He went on to say that whatever happened, ‘it is impossible that it should shake the sentiments of affection and friendship which I bear towards you … They are sentiments engraved in my heart and will never be effaced or weakened.’67 But he followed this up with the first gentle advice to Wilberforce from any quarter to use his religious convictions for wider purposes: