grievances of
paupers or of children in factories. The conflict with morality, again,
was so plain as to need no demonstration. It seems to be a questionable
logic which assumes the merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the
flagrancy of the evil assailed. The more obvious the case, surely the
less the virtue needed in the assailant. However this may be, no one can
deny the moral excellence of such men as Wilberforce and Clarkson, nor
the real change in the moral standard implied by the success of their
agitation. But another question remains, which is indicated by a later
controversy. The followers of Wilberforce and of Clarkson were jealous
of each other. Each party tried to claim the chief merit for its hero.
Each was, I think, unjust to the other. The underlying motive was the
desire to obtain credit for the 'Evangelicals' or their rivals as the
originators of a great movement. Without touching the personal details
it is necessary to say something of the general sentiments implied. In
his history of the agitation,[118] Clarkson gives a quaint chart,
showing how the impulse spread from various centres till it converged
upon a single area, and his facts are significant.

That a great change had taken place is undeniable. Protestant England
had bargained with Catholic Spain in the middle of the century for the
right of supplying slaves to America, while at the peace of 1814 English
statesmen were endeavouring to secure a combination of all civilised
powers against the trade. Smollett, in 1748, makes the fortune of his
hero, Roderick Random, by placing him as mate of a slave-ship under the
ideal sailor, Bowling. About the same time John Newton (1725-1807),
afterwards the venerated teacher of Cowper and the Evangelicals, was in
command of a slaver, and enjoying 'sweeter and more frequent hours of
divine communion' than he had elsewhere known. He had no scruples,
though he had the grace to pray 'to be fixed in a more humane calling.'
In later years he gave the benefit of his experience to the
abolitionists.[119] A new sentiment, however, was already showing
itself. Clarkson collects various instances. Southern's Oroonoco,
founded on a story by Mrs. Behn, and Steele's story of Inkle and Yarico
in an early _Spectator_, Pope's poor Indian in the _Essay on Man_, and
allusions by Thomson, Shenstone, and Savage, show that poets and
novelists could occasionally turn the theme to account. Hutcheson, the
moralist, incidentally