ion from vexatious
liabilities to all catholics who took an oath of an unobjectionable
character. Pitt approved of the bill, and Fox supported it, though he
wished that it had gone further, and declared his dislike of all tests.
A bill placing Scottish catholics in virtually the same position as
their co-religionists in England was passed in 1793. The confiscation of
Church property in France strengthened the unwillingness of the commons
to weaken the position of the Church at home. A motion to relieve the
Scottish presbyterians from the obligation of the test act was lost by a
large majority, and a motion for the relief of unitarians, which must be
noticed later, also failed. Since 1789 Wilberforce had been working on a
committee for collecting evidence with respect to the slave trade. In
1791 he made a motion for its abolition which was supported both by Pitt
and Fox, but was defeated by 163 to 88. He repeated his motion in 1792.
The king had at first favoured the cause, but a shocking massacre of the
white population in the French portion of St. Domingo by the negroes,
who were excited by the preaching of the "rights of man," turned him
against it, and he thenceforward regarded abolition as jacobinical.
Thurlow, Hawkesbury, and Dundas were strongly opposed to it. Pitt could
not, therefore, make it a government measure without almost certainly
wrecking his administration. He supported the motion with a speech of
surpassing eloquence. Public opinion made a direct negative no longer
possible; but the West India merchants and planters and the shipping
interest were powerful, and the anti-abolitionists were strengthened by
the king's known dislike to the cause. The motion was met by arguments
for delay, and an amendment proposed by Dundas for gradual abolition was
carried. A resolution was finally adopted that the trade should cease in
1796. The lords postponed the question. Year after year Wilberforce,
supported by James Stephen, Zachary Macaulay, and others, carried on the
struggle for the abolition of the trade with noble persistency. The
victory was not attained until 1807.

Another measure on which Pitt and Fox were also in full accord was more
successful. Lord Mansfield's pronouncement in the action against Almon,
the bookseller, in 1770, which reserved the question of the criminality
of a libel for the decision of the court, was, it will be remembered,
widely condemned as an invasion of the rights of jurors. Of late