There was something incongruous in their position; and as time went on they began to perceive the incongruity.  They gradually learned that measures dear to philanthropy might be expected to result from the advent to power of their opponents; while their own chief too often failed them at a pinch out of what appeared to them an excessive, and humiliating, deference to interests powerfully represented on the benches behind him.  Their eyes were first opened by Pitt’s change of attitude with regard to the object that was next all their hearts.  There is something almost pathetic in the contrast between two entries in Wilberforce’s diary, of which the first has become classical, but the second is not so generally known.  In 1787, referring to the movement against the slave-trade, he says:  “Pitt recommended me to undertake its conduct, as a subject suited to my character and talents.  At length, I well remember, after a conversation in the open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring the subject forward.”  Twelve years later Mr. Henry Thornton had brought in a bill for confining the trade within certain limits upon the coast of Africa.  “Upon the second reading of this bill,” writes Wilberforce, “Pitt coolly put off the debate when I had manifested a design of answering P.’s speech, and so left misrepresentations without a word.  William Smith’s anger;—­Henry Thornton’s coolness;—­deep impression on me, but conquered, I hope, in a Christian way.”

Besides instructing their successors in the art of carrying on a popular movement, Wilberforce and his followers had a lesson to teach, the value of which not so many perhaps will be disposed to question.  In public life, as in private, they habitually had the fear of God before their eyes.  A mere handful as to number, and in average talent very much on a level with the mass of their colleagues;—­counting in their ranks no orator, or minister, or boroughmonger;—­they commanded the ear of the House, and exerted on its proceedings an influence, the secret of which those who have studied the Parliamentary history of the period find it only too easy to understand.  To refrain from gambling and ball-giving, to go much to church and never to the theatre, was not more at variance with the social customs of the day than it was the exception in the political world to meet with men who looked to the facts of the case and not to the wishes of the minister, and who before going into the lobby required to be obliged with a reason instead of with a job.  Confidence and respect, and (what in the House of Commons is their unvarying accompaniment) power, were gradually, and to a great extent involuntarily, accorded to this group of members.  They were not addicted to crotchets, nor to the obtrusive and unseasonable assertion of conscientious scruples.  The occasions on which they made proof of independence