A life spent in works of genuine philanthropy, alike standing aloof from party, and retiring with genuine humility from the public gaze, might have well hoped to escape that detraction, which is the lot of those who assume the leading stations among their contemporaries, and mingle in the contentious scenes of worldly affairs.  Or, at least, it might have been expected that his traducers would only be found among the oppressors of the New World, or the slave-traders of 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 the field after his valued friend.  But a striking fact may be cited,