The History of the Abolition of African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament. Thomas Clarkson
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hesitate in acquitting the whole, on the ordinary principle of its being better five guilty should escape than five guiltless suffer? The same is still the state of the case in that most criminal settlement, which, having far surpassed all others in the enormity of its guilt, is now the only one where no attempt has been made to evince repentance by amendment of conduct. But the Government which has the power of compelling justice will share the crime which they refuse to prevent, and the Legislature must compel the Government, if their guilty reluctance shall continue, or it will take that guilt upon itself1.
The latest act of Thomas Clarkson's life has been one which, or rather the occasion for which, it is truly painful to contemplate; but this too must be recorded, or the present historical sketch would be incomplete. He whose days had all been spent in acts of kindness and of justice to others, was at last forced to exert his powers, supposed, by some, and erroneously supposed, to be enfeebled by age, in obtaining redress for his own wrongs. He whose thoughts had all been devoted to the service of his fellow-creatures, was now obliged to think of himself. A life spent in works of genuine philanthropy, alike standing aloof from party, and retiring with genuine humility from the public gaze, might have well hoped to escape that detraction, which is the lot of those who assume the leading stations among their contemporaries, and mingle in the contentious scenes of worldly affairs. Or, at least, it might have been expected that his traducers would only be found among the oppressors of the New World, or the slave-traders of the Old. This felicity has not been his lot; and the evening of his days has been overcast by an assault upon his character, proceeding from the quarter of all others the most unexpected and the most strange.
The sons of his old and dear friend William Wilberforce, — whose incomparable merits he had ever been the first to acknowledge, whom he loved as a brother, and revered as the great leader of the cause to which his whole life had been devoted, — in publishing a Life of their illustrious parent, thought fit to charge Thomas Clarkson with having suppressed his services while he exaggerated his own; and not content with bringing a charge utterly groundless, (as it was instantly proved,) they deemed it worthy of their subject and of their name, to drag forth into the light of day a private correspondence of a delicate nature, with the purpose of proving that their father and others had assisted him with money, and that he had been pressing in his demands of a subscription. Two extracts of Letters of his were printed by these reverend gentlemen, upon which a statement was afterwards grounded in the Edinburgh Review of their book, that the subscription was raised to remunerate him for his services in the Abolition. They further asserted, that their father was in the field before him, and that it was under their father's direction that he, and the Abolition Committee of 1786, acted. In the whole history of controversy, we venture to affirm, there never was an instance of so triumphant a refutation as that by which these slanderous aspersions were instantly refuted, and their authors and their accomplices reduced to a silence as prudent as discreditable.
The venerable philanthropist took up his pen, worn down in the cause of humanity and of justice. First, he showed, by incontrovertible evidence, the utter falsehood of the charge, that he had underrated the merits of others and exalted his own. These proofs were the references to his volumes themselves, which it really seemed as if the two reverend authors had never even looked into. He then proved to demonstration that he had taken the field earlier than William Wilberforce. This was shown, first, by known dates, matter of history; next, by letters from the friends of both parties, as Archdeacon Corbet and William Smith; but, lastly, by the words of William Wilberforce himself, as well privately as at public meetings, asserting that he (William Wilberforce) came into the field after his valued friend. But a striking fact may be cited, as a sample at once of the course pursued by the assailants, and the completeness of the defence. The reverend authors in proof of their unqualified assertion, that Thomas Clarkson and the Committee acted from the first under William Wilberforce's directions, refer to "MS. Minutes of the Committee" for their authority. But the friend who so ably superintended the publication of Thomas Clarkson's defence, and who added to that tract an appendix of singular merit and great interest (H.C. Robinson), showed that the parts referred to by the reverend authors, in proof of their assertion, completely disproved it; and that six months after the Committee had been working, William Wilberforce applied to them for any information of which they might be possessed on the subject of the Slave Trade.
But the publication of the letters and the colour given to the transaction were far worse. The preservation of that correspondence, at all, by the sons, could only be justified by the belief of its being accidentally kept by the father, but, of course, never intended to be made public; least of all without the usual precaution of asking the writer's leave, and giving him the opportunity of explaining it. The biographers printed it without any kind of communication with him, and he saw it for the first time in print.
Then, the attempt was made to represent this pure, and valuable, and disinterested man as a mendicant philanthropist, who, for his exertions in the cause of justice, stooped to the humiliating attitude of collecting a remuneration from his friends. The words of William Wilberforce, and other Abolition leaders, prove that he had expended a very considerable portion of his own small patrimony in the cause, and that the subscription was to pay a debt, — a just and lawful debt; not to confer a bounty, or reward, or remuneration for services performed. It is also proved, that after being reimbursed to the amount of the sum contributed, or rather levied on those for whom the poorest of their body had advanced his own money, he remained out of pocket far more than others had ever given, after their share of the repayment was credited to them, in this debtor and creditor account.
But this is not all: Mr. Wilberforce himself, then a man of ample fortune, and Member for Yorkshire, had in 1807, published a pamphlet in the cause. The Minutes of the Committee for 6th June, 1811, contained an entry of an order to pay 83l. out of the subscription funds to Mr. Cadell, being Mr. Wilberforce's share of the loss sustained by that publication. There had been no mention at all of this in his life, by these reverend authors, who scrupled not to print the garbled letters, with the manifest design of lowering the character of their father's friend, by ranking him among venal stipendiary pretenders to philanthropy, and jobbing mendicant patriots.
Wherefore, it may be asked, was this matter at all dragged forth to light, except to effect that unworthy purpose, and to give pain to a man as eminently as deservedly respected and beloved? The false pretext is, the vindication of their father's memory. — But it had never been attacked. They affect to suppose such an attack, that they may have a pretext for inflicting a wound in a fictitious and almost a fraudulent defence. — But if it had been ever so rudely attacked, the letters are no defence. For the only possible pretence of attack was the notion of Thomas Clarkson having assumed the priority, and these letters can have no earthly relation to that point. Whether Wilberforce, or Clarkson, or neither of them, first began the abolition struggle, is a question as utterly wide of the subscription as any one private matter in the life of either party can be of any one public transaction in which both were engaged.
The indignation of mankind was awakened by this disgraceful proceeding, and it was in vain that the friends of the Wilberforces urged, as some extenuation of their offence, the zeal which they naturally cherished for the memory of their parent. Men of reflection felt that no well-regulated mind can ever engage in slandering one person for the purpose of elevating another. Men of ordinary discernment perceived that the assaults on Clarkson's reputation had no possible tendency to raise Wilberforce's reputation. Men of observation saw at once that there lurked behind the wish to praise the one party, a desire to wound the other; and gave them far less credit for over-anxiety to gratify their filial affections than eagerness to indulge their hostile feelings. It was plain, too, that they sought this gratification at the hazard of bringing a stain upon the memory of their father; for what could be more natural than the suspicion that they had obtained from him the materials out of which their web of detraction was woven? And what more discreditable to the author of the affectionate and familiar letters of Wilberforce to Clarkson than their discrepancy with the charges now urged against him? It is due to the memory of this venerable man, now gone to his rest, to say that no one who knew him, ever so slightly, could believe in the possibility of his holding one language to his friend and another to his children: far less of his bequeathing to them anything like materials for the attack upon one to