his imagination. By night and day they haunted him; and he has
described in lively colors the intense pain which this composition,
undertaken solely in the spirit of honorable rivalry, inflicted on
him. He gained the prize, but found it impossible to discard the
subject from his thoughts. In the succeeding autumn, after great
struggles of mind, he resolved to give up his plan for entering the
Church, and devoted time, health, and substance (to use his own
words) to "seeing these calamities to an end." In sketching the
progress of this great measure, the name of Wilberforce alone will
be presented to view; and it is our duty, therefore, in the first
place, to make honorable mention of him who first roused Wilberforce
in the cause, and whose athletic vigor and indomitable perseverance
surmounted danger, difficulties, fatigues, and discouragements which
few men could have endured, in the first great object of collecting
evidence of the cruelties habitually perpetrated in the slave trade.

In the first stage of his proceedings, Mr. Clarkson, in the course
of his application to members of Parliament, called on Mr.
Wilberforce, who stated that "the subject had often employed his
thoughts and was near his heart." He inquired into the authorities
for the statements laid before him, and became not only convinced
of, but impressed with, the paramount duty of abolishing so hateful
a traffic. Occasional meetings of those who were alike interested
were held at his house; and in May, 1787, a committee was formed, of
which Wilberforce became the Parliamentary leader. Early in 1788 he
gave notice of his intention to bring the subject before the House;
but, owing to his severe indisposition, that task was ultimately
undertaken by Mr. Pitt, who moved and carried a resolution, pledging
the House in the ensuing session to enter on the consideration of
the subject. Accordingly, May 12, 1789, Mr. Wilberforce moved a
series of resolutions, founded on a report of the Privy Council,
exposing the iniquity and cruelty of the traffic in slaves, the
mortality which it occasioned among white as well as black men, and
the neglect of health and morals by which the natural increase of
the race in the West India islands was checked; and concluding with
a declaration that if the causes by which that increase was checked
were removed, no considerable inconvenience would result from
discontinuing the importation of African slaves. Burke, Pitt, and
Fox sup