means, in the persons of those who, whether as sailors, soldiers, or scientific men, had become acquainted with Western Africa.  In the work of reducing these masses of facts to a system, making them available for purposes of public debate, a most efficient aid was found in Mr. Zachary Macaulay.  The father of the celebrated historian was most unrelaxing in his zeal for Abolition, and, possessing a memory of singular tenacity, he came to be regarded, in this peculiar department of knowledge, as a very perfect encyclopedia.  Nor, in mentioning the advocates of the suppression of the monster evil, should we ever forget one who to an overflowing goodness of heart added an inimitable richness and delicacy of humor,—­James Stephen.  His influence in Parliament was always given in favor of Abolition, and he was also the author of several able pamphlets on the subject.  He had been at one period of his life a resident in the West India Colonies, and the hatred of the slave-system which he there imbibed remained unchanged through life.

While, as has been seen, these labors were becoming complicated and arduous, the opposition was growing not only strong, but violent.  Anti-slavery petitions, intended for presentation in Parliament, must be sent in strong boxes, addressed, not to the leaders of the cause, but to private persons, lest they should be opened and their contents destroyed.  Mr. Wilberforce is requested, when writing to a friend in Liverpool, not to frank his own letter, lest it should never be received.  Correspondence on this subject must be carried on anonymously, and addressed to persons not known to be interested.  This was not the worst.  To random words of defiant opposition were added threats of personal violence.  For a space of two years the friends of Mr. Wilberforce were annoyed by a desperate man who had declared that he would take the life of the Yorkshire member.  But, to do justice to the advocates of the trade, there was one form of violence which they appear never to have contemplated:—­secession.  The injured slave-merchants of that time never thought of conspiring against the government under which they lived.  That was reserved for a later day.

Yet, while appearances were so dark, the cause was actually gaining ground.  The moral sense of the nation was becoming aroused.  The scattered sympathies of the religious classes were concentrating.  Already public sentiment in certain quarters was outgrowing the movements of Parliament, and the impatient friends of the negro declared that the leaders of the cause had given up!

In rebutting this charge, Mr. Wilberforce took high ground.  He declared that for himself his aim in this thing was the service of God, and, that having committed himself to this enterprise, he was not at liberty to go back.  Believing that these efforts on behalf of an injured people were in accordance with the will of the Almighty, he expressed himself confident that the divine attributes were enlisted