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