Private Papers of William Wilberforce Collected and Edited, with a Preface, by A. M. Wilberforce With Portraits   LONDON 1897...

William Wilberforce is remembered on account of his long and successful efforts for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In a House of Commons that counted Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan amongst its members, he held a front rank both as a speaker and debater. Of one of his speeches in 1789 Burke said, "it equalled anything he had heard in modern times, and was not, perhaps, to be surpassed in the remains of Grecian eloquence." And Pitt said, "Of all the men I ever knew Wilberforce has the greatest

LETTERS FROM PITT. THE first of Pitt's letters to Wilberforce is "perhaps the only one extant that is racy of those rollicking times when the 'fruits of Pitt's earlier rising' appeared in the careful sowing of the garden beds with the fragments of Ryder's opera hat." [2] " Grafton Street , " July 31, 1782 . " Dear Wilberforce ,—I shall not have the least difficulty in applying immediately to Lord Shelburne in behalf of your friend Mr. Thompson, and the favour is not such as to require a great ex

SKETCH OF PITT BY W. WILBERFORCE. Considering the effect of party spirit in producing a distrust of all that is said in favour of a public man by those who have supported him, and the equal measure of incredulity as to all that is stated of him by his opponents, it may not be without its use for the character of Mr. Pitt to be delineated by one who, though personally attached to him, was by no means one of his partisans; who even opposed him on some most important occasions, but who, always pres

The letters which follow are from friends of Wilberforce between the years 1786-1832: they touch on a variety of subjects. George Rose [24] writes in 1790 in the full flush of excitement on the news of "peace certain and unequivocal on the very terms prescribed from hence." LETTERS FROM FRIENDS Right Hon. George Rose to Mr. Wilberforce. " Old Palace Yard , " November 4, 1790 . " My dear Wilberforce ,—I was shocked this morning in putting my papers in order on my table to find a letter I wrote to

HOME LETTERS. The family letters which follow are some of a religious character, while others turn on more general topics. Four letters written by Wilberforce to his daughter Elizabeth, aged fifteen at the date the correspondence begins, show the care with which he instilled into her mind all that he considered of most moment; also how he exercised "the privilege of a friend," for such he considered himself to his daughter, and "told her frankly all her faults." Mr. Wilberforce to his daughter E