THE

MODERN ATHENIANS

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

IN THE JEFFREY YEARS, 1802-1829

Tag Archives: Thomas Clarkson

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

leading abolitionist, social reformer, and politician.

WILBERFORCE was born into a wealthy merchant family in Hull and received a BA and MA at St. John’s College at Cambridge, where he became close friends with William Pitt the Younger. He was elected MP for Hull as an independent at the age of twenty one. Four years later, he converted to evangelical Christianity and briefly contemplated renouncing politics for the church, but instead refocused his political efforts on social reform, forming a group within the Parliament known affectionately as ‘The Saints’. Outside Parliament, he allied himself with leading abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, Charles Middleton, and Hannah More. He presented his first speech opposing the slave trade on 12 May 1789, and continued to press for the abolition of the slave trade until the bill’s final passage on 23 February 1807. His other political efforts focused on education, prison and capital punishment reform, improvements in working conditions, and moral reform. Wilberforce retired from Parliament due to poor health in 1825 and died on 29 July 1833, three days after learning that Parliament would fully abolish slavery.

The Edinburgh Review frequently came out in support of the abolition of the slave trade against its equally frequent defence, puzzling over ‘the temerity of the slave traders in venturing upon another round, where the odds are so stacked against them’ (ER 8:358). Wilberforce himself contributed a review of one such defence in 1804 (ER 5:209-41).

Brian Robert Wall, IASH, University of Edinburgh

SOURCES

David Brion Davis, ‘The Preservation of English Liberty, I’, in The Antislavery Debate, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

Seymour Drescher, ‘Public Opinion and Parliament in the Abolition of the British Slave Trade’,” in The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People, ed. Stephen Farrell, Melanie Unwin, and James Walvin (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007).

William Hague, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London: Harper Press, 2007).

Robert and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce by his Sons (London: John Murray, 1838).

 

Abolition of the Slave Trade

, the popular campaign and parliamentary debate process that culminated in the 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which illegalized the transatlantic sale of slaves across the British Empire.

CRITIQUES of the practice of slavery and the slave trade were printed as early as the late seventeenth century. Notable Scottish intellectuals such as Adam Smith, George Wallace, and Adam Ferguson offered legal and philosophical justification for ending the slave trade, as did English jurist William Blackstone and American physician Benjamin Rush. Official efforts to abolish the slave trade began with the 1787 formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, led by the popular campaigning of Thomas Clarkson and the parliamentary action of William Wilberforce. The Committee’s efforts took twenty years to come to fruition and resulted in the 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. While the Act eliminated the trade, it did not illegalize slavery or emancipate those held as slaves; complete British emancipation came with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

The Edinburgh Review consistently attacked the slave trade up to the Act of 1807, with Jeffrey and Brougham, especially vigorous in favour of its abolition, taking the Review with them. In July 1808, Samuel Taylor Coleridge contributed a review of Thomas Clarkson’s The History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade which caused controversy because Jeffrey altered it to highlight the contribution of William Wilberforce, who had himself contributed a review on the topic in 1804.

BRW

 

SOURCES

David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987).

The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People, ed. Stephen Farrell, Melanie Unwin, and James Walvin (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007).

Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 – 1870 (London: Papermac, 1997).

 

 

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

WILBERFORCE was born into a wealthy merchant family in Hull and received a B.A. and M.A. at St. John’s College at Cambridge, where he became close friends with William Pitt the Younger. He was elected as MP for Hull as an independent at the age of twenty-one. He converted to evangelical Christianity in 1785 and briefly contemplated renouncing politics for the church, but instead refocused his political efforts on social reform. Wilberforce allied with leading abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, Charles Middleton, and Hannah More. He presented his first speech opposing the slave trade on 12 May 1789, and continued to press for the abolition of the slave trade until the bill’s final passage on 23 February 1807. His other political efforts focused on education, prison and capital punishment reform, improvements in working conditions, and moral reform. Wilberforce retired from Parliament due to poor health in 1825 and died on 29 July 1833, three days after learning that Parliament would fully abolish slavery.

 

In July 1806, the Edinburgh Review published an open letter addressed to Wilberforce from Robert Heron “on the Justice and Expediency of Slavery and the Slave Trade, and on the best Means to improve the Manners and Condition of the Negroes in the West Indies.” After Wilberforce’s death, the Review advertised the 1838 biography of Wilberforce by his sons.

 B.W.

Abolition of the Slave Trade

Critiques of the practice of slavery and the slave trade were printed as early as the late seventeenth century. Notable Scottish intellectuals such as Adam Smith, George Wallace, and Adam Ferguson offered legal and philosophical justification for ending the slave trade, as did English jurist William Blackstone and American physician Benjamin Rush. Official efforts to abolish the slave trade began with the 1787 formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, led by the popular campaigning of Thomas Clarkson and the parliamentary action of William Wilberforce. The Committee’s efforts took twenty years to come to fruition and resulted in the 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. While the Act eliminated the trade, it did not illegalize slavery or emancipate those held as slaves; complete British emancipation came with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

The Edinburgh Review published letters from those in favor and those opposed to the abolition of the slave trade from 1802 until the 1807 Act. Francis Jeffrey was in favor of abolition and the April 1804 volume of the Review carried his article “Considerations on the Abolition of the Slave Trade.” In July 1808, Samuel Taylor Coleridge reviewed Thomas Clarkson’s The History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

B.W.