It was 1814. Britain had been at war, or preparing for war, with Napoleon for a generation. Now, Napoleon was locked into Elba; there was a king in France. The new treaty with France was brought into the House of Commons to resounding cheers. Every member of Parliament but one was on his feet. When the cheers ended and people had resumed their seats, the one member who had not cheered rose and spoke.
"I could not cheer this treaty," said William Wilberforce. "It permits the slave trade."
With the vast majority cheering, and only one member opposed, why did that very House of Commons refuse to ratify that treaty when it finally came up for a vote?
Because between the presentation and the vote the Antislavery Society had presented a petition against it containing a million signatures. Now, getting a million signatures on a petition in the modern America would be an achievement. At that time, there were merely 14 million people -- including babes in arms -- in Great Britain as a whole. There was no radio, telegraph, or telephone, no cars or even railroads. The population was overwhelmingly rural. If you wanted to get a petition to somebody to sign it, you had to ride a horse -- or walk on foot -- out to where he was. Then you had to persuade him face-to-face and bring with you a bottle of ink and a quill. This was probably the single greatest achievement in the entire history of organizing in the English-language world.
Who was Wilberforce, and how did he come to be the spokesman against the slave trade? After the jump.
Wilberforce was a young man from a quite rich family when he first ran for Parliament as an independent. There were a half dozen clubs in London to which rich gentlemen belonged, but few belonged to all of them as Wilberforce did. Parliament at that time paid no salary, and was a reasonable occupation for a young man who had a large independent income.
The elections were a hodgepodge; the "boroughs," as election districts were called, were ancient. One borough could have lost its population -- or even sunk beneath the waves -- and fallen under one man's ownership, called a "rotten borough." Another might have become a fairly large city. The qualifications for the franchise were not uniform, and -- while every member had one vote -- members were quite conscious of whether the person speaking spoke for a rotten borough or for an entire county -- often called a "shire."
For each county could elect two "knights of the shire." These were the representatives of the entire county, although the men electing them might also vote in the election in a particular borough.
Wilberforce won election as a knight of the shire for Yorkshire.
Then he underwent a conversion experience. He resigned from all of the clubs at once. As an evangelical Anglican, he associated with other evangelical Anglicans, many of whom were already opposing slavery as unChristian, Wilberforce became the parliamentary spokesmen for that movement about 1787.
When he began, slavery was already illegal in England itself. But English colonies in the Caribbean used slaves to grow sugar, and English ships carried millions of slaves across the Atlantic.
With popular agitation and Wilberforce leading the way in Parliament for 20 years, England prohibited the slave trade in 1807. They got this to be international law in 1816. The English navy patrolled the coast of Africa and searched any ship (except those flying the American flag) for slaves.
England abolished slavery in the colonies in 1833. Wilberforce had left parliament by that time, but lived to see the report of that last accomplishment. He died three days later -- at 73.