THE LIFE OF

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE:

BY HIS SONS,

ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE, M. A.

ARCHDEACON OF THE EAST RIDING,

AND

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, M. A.

ARCHDEACON OF SURREY

NEW EDITION:

ABRIDGED.

PUBLISHED BY SEELEY, BURNSIDE, AND SEELEY;

FLEET STREET, LONDON.

MDCCCXLII.

PREFACE.

THE materials of the following Work are drawn principally from five sources:

1. Manuscript books, or detached sheets; the earliest bearing date 1783, the latest 1833, in which Mr. Wilberforce was accustomed to note down daily occurrences. These will be found referred to under the head 'Diary.'

2. A similar set, begun in 1785, and ended in 1818, devoted exclusively to religious reflections, and intended merely as a register of his internal state. These, the work principally of Sundays and other intervals of leisure, are here designated 'Journal.’

In these records he seems to have had no object except to give greater regularity and fixedness to his own mind. Those of earlier date bear upon them an order for their destruction, which it was only within the last years of his life that he so far recalled as to desire them to be submitted, with his other papers, to the judgment of his nearest relatives. Perhaps he was himself scarcely aware of the importance of the documents which he was thus laying open; for though he had upon succeeding

birth-days, and other times of more especial self-examination, referred to his Journal, yet the Diary seems in general never again to have met his eye; and much of it, dispersed indiscriminately and without date among his numerous papers, was wholly inaccessible.

When, on Mr. Wilberforce's decease, these stores were unexpectedly committed to the writers, their first feeling was an unwillingness to expose to the public gaze what was so plainly of a confidential character. 'A life which is worth reading,' was the pointed saying of Mackintosh, ought never to have been written.' But there are some characters fitted to exert so permanent an influence, and so clearly marked as examples to mankind, that in their case private delicacy yields to public good. Whether the present is one of these excepted instances, the readers of the following work must decide.

3. In noticing the private Correspondence which makes part of these volumes, the writers feel pleasure in warmly expressing their thanks to the many friends who have kindly supplied them with materials of the utmost value. Their first impression was to express here their obligation to the several contributors of letters nominatim; but the list swelled under their hands to such an inconvenient bulk that they reluctantly resort to this briefer, but far less expressive, declaration of their thanks.

4. The MS. Memoranda referred to in the following pages were notes dictated late in life by Mr. Wilberforce. He was often urged by his family and friends to draw up for their instruction some record of his 'Life