the field after his valued friend. But a striking fact may be cited, as
a sample at once of the course pursued by the assailants, and the
completeness of the defence. The reverend authors in proof of their
unqualified assertion, that Thomas Clarkson and the Committee acted from
the first under William Wilberforce's directions, refer to "MS. Minutes
of the Committee" for their authority. But the friend who so ably
superintended the publication of Thomas Clarkson's defence, and who
added to that tract an appendix of singular merit and great interest
(H.C. Robinson), showed that the parts referred to by the reverend
authors, in proof of their assertion, completely disproved it; and that
six months after the Committee had been working, William Wilberforce
applied to them for any information of which they might be possessed on
the subject of the Slave Trade.

But the publication of the letters and the colour given to the
transaction were far worse. The preservation of that correspondence, at
all, by the sons, could only be justified by the belief of its being
accidentally kept by the father, but, of course, never intended to be
made public; least of all without the usual precaution of asking the
writer's leave, and giving him the opportunity of explaining it. The
biographers printed it without any kind of communication with him, and
he saw it for the first time in print.

Then, the attempt was made to represent this pure, and valuable, and
disinterested man as a mendicant philanthropist, who, for his exertions
in the cause of justice, stooped to the humiliating attitude of
collecting a remuneration from his friends. The words of William
Wilberforce, and other Abolition leaders, prove that he had expended a
very considerable portion of his own small patrimony in the cause, and
that the subscription was to pay a debt,--a just and lawful debt; not to
confer a bounty, or reward, or remuneration for services performed. It
is also proved, that after being reimbursed to the amount of the sum
contributed, or rather levied on those for whom the poorest of their
body had advanced his own money, he remained out of pocket far more than
others had ever given, after their share of the repayment was credited
to them, in this debtor and creditor account.

But this is not all: Mr. Wilberforce himself, then a man of ample
fortune, and Member for Yorkshire, had in 1807, published a pamphlet in
the cause. The Minutes of the Committee for 6t