as a sample at once of the course pursued by the assailants, and the completeness of the defence.  The reverend authors in proof of their unqualified assertion, that Thomas Clarkson and the Committee acted from the first under William Wilberforce’s directions, refer to “Ms. Minutes of the Committee” for their authority.  But the friend who so ably superintended the publication of Thomas Clarkson’s defence, and who added to that tract an appendix of singular merit and great interest (H.C.  Robinson), showed that the parts referred to by the reverend authors, in proof of their assertion, completely disproved it; and that six months after the Committee had been working, William Wilberforce applied to them for any information of which they might be possessed on the subject of the Slave Trade.

But the publication of the letters and the colour given to the transaction were far worse.  The preservation of that correspondence, at all, by the sons, could only be justified by the belief of its being accidentally kept by the father, but, of course, never intended to be made public; least of all without the usual precaution of asking the writer’s leave, and giving him the opportunity of explaining it.  The biographers printed it without any kind of communication with him, and he saw it for the first time in print.

Then, the attempt was made to represent this pure, and valuable, and disinterested man as a mendicant philanthropist, who, for his exertions in the cause of justice, stooped to the humiliating attitude of collecting a remuneration from his friends.  The words of William Wilberforce, and other Abolition leaders, prove that he had expended a very considerable portion of his own small patrimony in the cause, and that the subscription was to pay a debt,—­a just and lawful debt; not to confer a bounty, or reward, or remuneration for services performed.  It is also proved, that after being reimbursed to the amount of the sum contributed, or rather levied on those for whom the poorest of their body had advanced his own money, he remained out of pocket far more than others had ever given, after their share of the repayment was credited to them, in this debtor and creditor account.

But this is not all:  Mr. Wilberforce himself, then a man of ample fortune, and Member for Yorkshire, had in 1807, published a pamphlet in the cause.  The Minutes of the Committee for 6th June, 1811, contained an entry of an order to pay 83_l_. out of the subscription funds to Mr. Cadell, being Mr. Wilberforce’s share of the loss sustained by that publication.  There had been no mention at all of this in his life, by these reverend authors, who scrupled not to print the garbled letters, with the manifest design of lowering the character of their father’s friend, by ranking him among venal stipendiary pretenders to philanthropy, and jobbing mendicant patriots.