William Wilburforce

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, skip to the end. He finishes his life just as his life’s work is complete. What a wonderful metaphor as we all trust we are here for exactly the amount of time we are needed. May we thrive in purpose, in love, unity and have all the divine support, divine love, divine protection, divine intervention, divine choreography, divine inspiration and divine grace to help us live fully and completely fully, our purpose for being here.

From The C.S. Lewis Institution

Today one of his full portraits hangs in a pub. Another in the same town, Cambridge, hangs in a hotel. Another still, in his old college, St. John’s. In each he peers at the world quizzically through small, bright eyes over a long, upturned nose. He was said to be “the wittiest man in England, and the most religious” (Madame de Stael), and one who possessed “the greatest natural eloquence of all the men I ever met” (William Pitt). When he spoke, another quipped, “The shrimp became a whale” (James Boswell). Historian G.M. Trevelyan called this “shrimp” the primary human agent for “one of the turning events in the history of the world.

Targeting the powerful as the agents of change, Wilberforce made common cause with Hannah More, the evangelical playwright, whose Thoughts on the Manners of the Great appeared in 1787. “To expect to reform the poor while the opulent are corrupt,” she wrote, “is to throw odors [perfume] on the stream while the springs are poisoned.”

In early 1786, Wilberforce had been tentatively approached by friends who were committed abolitionists. They asked him to lead the parliamentary campaign for their cause. Even Pitt prodded him in this direction: “Wilberforce, why don’t you give notice of a motion on the subject of the slave trade?” But Wilberforce hesitated.

The slave trade in the late 1700s involved thousands of slaves, hundreds of ships, and millions of pounds; upon it depended the economies of Britain and much of Europe. Few were aware of the horrors of the so called “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic, where an estimated one out of four slaves died.

Some Englishmen, including John Wesley and Thomas Clarkson, had taken steps to mitigate the evil. Yet few in England shared the abolitionists’ sense that slavery was a great social evil. Some presumed that slaves were a justifiable necessity or that they deserved their plight.

For Wilberforce light began to dawn slowly during his 27th year. His diary for Sunday, October 28, 1787, shows with extraordinary clarity the fruit of prolonged study, prayer, and conversation. He realized the need for “some reformer of the nation’s morals, who should raise his voice in the high places of the land and do within the church and nearer the throne what Wesley has accomplished in the meeting and among the multitude.

He also summed up what became his life mission: “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners” (i.e., morality).

Later he reflected on his decision about slavery: “So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would; I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.

Wilberforce’s spirit was indomitable, his enthusiasm palpable. As the slave owners’ agent in Jamaica wrote, “It is necessary to watch him, as he is blessed with a very sufficient quantity of that enthusiastic spirit, which is so far from yielding that it grows more vigorous from blows.

But Wilberforce continued to play a role. In 1823 he published An Appeal to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire on Behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies. Three months before his death he was found “going out to war again,” campaigning for abolitionist petitions to Parliament. He declared publicly, “I had never thought to appear in public again, but it shall never be said that William Wilberforce is silent while the slaves require his help.

On July 26, 1833, the final passage of the emancipation bill was insured when a committee of the House of Commons worked out key details. Three days later, Wilberforce died. Parliament continued working out details of the measure, and later Buxton wrote, “On the very night on which we were successfully engaged in the House of Commons in passing the clause of the Act of Emancipation…the spirit of our friend left the world. The day which was the termination of his labors was the termination of his life.

Here are two poems I wrote. Enjoy!