I would have omitted some of the words, only that it might have disturbed the measure and cadences, and have put me out. They are the very words my dearest father sang; and they are the last yet shame upon me! the nurse (the same who stood listening near, who attended me into this country) could remember them more perfectly: it is from her I have learnt them since: she often sings them, even by herself. Esop. Flattery often runs beyond Truth, in a hurry to embrace her; but not here. The dullest of mortals, seeing and hearing thee, could never misinterpret the prophecy of the Fates. If, turning back, I could overpass the vale of years, and could stand on the mountain-top, and could look again far before me at the bright ascending morn, we would enjoy the prospect together; we would walk along the summit hand in Esop. So shall others. There is much both in hand, O Rhodope, and we would only sigh at last them and in thee to render them memorable. when we found ourselves below with others. Rhodope. Who flatters now? ROMILLY AND WILBERFORCE. Romilly. Indeed, sir, I can not but suspect that the agitation of this question on the abolition of the slave-trade, is countenanced by Mr. Pitt chiefly to divert the attention of the people from crying Wilberforce. Leader! Mr. Romilly! leader! grievances nearer home. Our paupers are increas- Humble as I am, the humblest indeed of that ing daily both in number and in wretchedness; august assembly, on this question, on this alone our workhouses, our hospitals, and our jails, are perhaps, yes, certainly on this alone, I am acknowcrowded and overflowing; our manufactories are ledged, universally acknowledged, I know too well almost as stifling as slave-ships, and more immoral; how unworthily, yet I do know, and God has apprentices, milliners, dressmakers, work through- given me strength and grace to declare it before out the greater part of the night, and, at last dis-men, that I, the weakest of his creatures, there am abled by toil, take the sorrowful refuge of the street. After so many have coldly repeated that vice leads to misery, is there no generous man who will proclaim aloud that misery leads to vice? We all see it every day: we warn the wretched too late: we are afraid of warning the affluent too soon: we are prodigal of reproaches that make the crushed heart bleed afresh: we think it indecorous to approach the obdurate one, and unsafe to touch it.. barbarous and dastardly Romilly. Do you never doubt, however slightly, and only on one occasion, the fidelity of your leader? as we are. Wilberforce. Postponing all these considerations, not immediately applicable to the subject on which, Mr. Romilly, I have taken the liberty to knock at your door, I must assure you that my friend Mr. Pitt is not only the most unbending and unchanging, but also the most sincere man living. Romilly. It is happy when we can think so of any, especially of one in power. Wilberforce. Do you doubt it? Romilly. I never oppose, without reluctance, opinion to sentiment; or, when I can help it, a bad opinion to a good one. Wilberforce. O! if you knew him as I do! Romilly. The pride would rest entirely apart from me. It may be that coarse metals are less flexible than finer; certain it is that they do not well cohere. Wilberforce. But on this occasion you invariably vote together. Romilly. In the House of Commons. leader. It is I, a band of withy, who bind giants: it is I who keep together on this ground the two rival parties: it is I, a potter's vessel, who hold out across the Atlantic the cup of freedom and of fellowship. Romilly. Certainly you have seconded with admirable zeal the indefatigable Clarkson. Those who run with spirit and celerity have no breath for words: the whole is expended in action. Wilberforce. Just so with me. However, I can spare a speech of a few hours every session, in expounding the vexations and evils of slavery, and in showing how opposite it is to Christianity. Romilly. I am almost a believer in that doctrine. Romilly. I should be entirely, if many of the most orthodox men in both Houses, including a great part of the bishops, had been assenters. Wilberforce. Are they not? Romilly. Apparently no. Otherwise they would never be absent when the question is discussed, nor would they abstain from a petition to the Crown, that a practice so dangerous to salvation, so certain to bring down a curse on the country, be, with all expedient speed, abolished. Wilberforce. It is unnecessary for me to defend the conduct of my Right Reverend friends; men of such piety as no other country hath exhibited; but permit me to remark, Mr. Romilly, that you yourself betray a lukewarmness in the cause, when you talk of expedient speed. Expedient indeed! Gracious Jesu! Ought such a crime to be tolerated for one hour? Are there no lightnings in heaven.. Romilly. Probably there are: there were last Wilberforce. It is there we must draw up our summer. But I would rather see them purifying forces. the air than scorching the earth before me. My Romilly. Namely, the Abolition. good Mr. Wilberforce! abstain, I beseech you, | erroneous there only where you differed from from a species of eloquence in which Mr. Sheridan me on that subject, which I had examined attenand Mr. Pitt excell you, especially when it is late tively and minutely. in the evening: at that season such men are usually the most pious. The lightnings of heaven fall as frequently on granaries as on slave-ships. It is better at all times to abstain from expostulating with God; and more especially on the righteousness of his judgments and the delay of his vengeance. Wilberforce. Mr. Romilly! Mr. Romilly! the royal psalmist Romilly. Was too often like other royal personages, and, with much power of doing evil, was desirous of much more. Whenever we are conscious of such propensities, it would be wiser and more religious to implore of God to pardon than to promote them. Wilberforce. We must bow to authority in all things. Romilly. So we hear: but we may be so much in the habit of bowing as at last to be unable to stand upright. Before we begin at all, it is useful to inquire what is authority. We are accustomed to mistake place and power for it. Now the Devil, on this earth at least, possesses as much power as the Deity, and more place. Unless he did, we tell a manifest lie in every prayer and supplication. For we declare that we are, and always have been, miserable sinners, and that there is no truth in us. Wilberforce. Ah, my dear sir! you are no theologian, I see. Some of us, by the blessing of God, are under grace; and, once under grace, we are safe. But it is not on this business I visit you. Here we may differ; but on the Abolition we think alike. Romilly. I am not quite sure of that. Wilberforce. Indeed! Then, pray, my dear sir, correct your judgment. Romilly. I have been doing it, to the best of my ability, all my life. Wilberforce. If you had only clung to the Cross, you would have been sure and stedfast from your very childhood. Romilly. Alas! I see but one cross remaining on earth, and it is that of the unrepentant thief. What thousands of the most venomous wasps and hornets swarm about it, and fight for its putrescencies! The blessed one was pulled down long ago, indeed soon after its erection, in the scuffle of those who would sell the splinters. Great fortunes are daily made by it, and it maintains as many clerks and treasurers as the South-sea. The money-changers in the Temple of old did at least give change: ours bag the money and say call to-morrow. Wilberforce. Unholy as the gains may be, we must not meddle with vested rights and ancient institutions. Romilly. The clearers of ground in the forests of America clear first the places round about the homestead. On this principle I would begin to emancipate and enlighten the suffering laboure in my own vicinity. Look at the draught-horse now passing under the window. The first qu ter of their lives was given to their growi plentiful food came before painful service. Th are ignorant of our vices, insensible of our affee tions: ease is all in all to them; and while they want it most, and while it is most profitable or promissory to the master, they enjoy it. Wilberforce. We then put blinkers before their eyes, that nothing may make them swerve o the road. Here is another act of humanity. Romilly. If you attempt to put blinkers be fore the intellectual eye, you only increase i obliquity. Give as much clear-sightedness v possible, give reasonable leisure, or you never will conciliate affection to your institutions. Inflict | men the labour and privations of brutes, and you impress on them the brutal character: render them rationally happy, and they are already on the highway to heaven. No man rationally happy will barter the possession he enjoys for the most brilliant theory: but the unhappy will dream af daggers until he clutches them. If your friend Mr. Pitt wishes to retard the revolutionary move ment, he will not attempt to put the fetter on the white man while you are taking it off the black he will not bring forward a flogged soldiery confront an enthusiastical one: he will not dis play to the vigorous sons of starving yeome the sight of twenty farm-houses rising up from the ruins of one château. Peace is easier to retain than to recall. Wilberforce. Well, Mr. Romilly! we are depart ing a little from the object of my visit: and, we continue to digress, I am afraid you may not be so entirely at leisure to hear me repeat the speech I have prepared on the Abolition. You room appears to be well adapted to my voice. Romilly. Already I have had the benefit af your observations the three last sessions. Wilberforce. You will hear me again, I coef dently hope, with the same pleasure in a very crowded House. Romilly. You represent a Riding in the county of York. Wilberforce. I have that honour. Romilly. To represent a county is not in itse an honour; but it offers opportunities of earning many. Inform your constituents that the slavery in the West Indies is less cruel and pernicios than the slavery in their own parishes: that th condition of the Black is better on the whol than the condition of the pauper in England and that his children are incomparably Wilberforce. The fact is too true. You were comfortable and happy. Romilly. Then, worthy Mr. Wilberforce, let slavery continue; for certainly no institution is more ancient. In this also am I to correct my judgment? Wilberforce. Lord of mercy! do I hear this who starved others until now, began to be starved from a philanthropist? in turn, and incited the people to revolution, that there might be crime and change of property. England has now taken the sins of the world upon her, and pays for all. Romilly. I venture to assert, you do, however deficient I may be in the means of showing it. You might, in any Session of Parliament, obtain a majority of votes in favour of a Bill to diminish the hours of a child's labour in factories. Every country gentleman, every peer, would vote that none under his eighth year should be incarcerated in these pesthouses. Wilberforce. O Sir! is such a word applicable? Romilly. Precisely: although a pesthouse is usually the appellation of that building which excludes the malady and receives the endangered. From eight years to twelve, I would prohibit a longer daily work than of six hours, with two hours between each three, for food and exercise. After the twelfth year the sexes should not be confounded. Wilberforce. The first regulation would create much discontent among our wealthiest supporters; and even the parents would object to them. : Romilly. Two signal and sorrowful truths! There are also two additional. They who feel the least for others feel the most for themselves and the parents who waste away their own strength in gin-shops are ready to waste their children's in factories. If our inconsiderate war and our prodigal expenditure permitted the exercise of policy, we should bethink ourselves that manly hearts and sound bodies are the support of states, not creaking looms nor over-pressed cotton-bags in human shape. We have no right to break down the sinews of the rising generation: we have no right to devote the children of the poor either to Belial or to Moloch. I do care about the Blacks; I do care greatly and anxiously about them; but I would rather that slavery should exist for seven centuries longer in the West Indies, than for seven years longer in Lancashire and Yorkshire. If there be any sincerity in the heart of Mr. Pitt, why does he not order his dependents in both Houses (and nearly all are his dependents in both alike) to vote for your motion? Wilberforce. He wishes us well: but he is aware that a compensation must be made to the masters of the slaves; and he has not money for it. Romilly. Whose fault is that? He always has found money enough for extending the miseries of other nations and the corruption of his own. By his extravagance and the excess of taxation he is leading to that catastrophe which he avowed it was his object to prevent. Wilberforce. God forbid ! Romilly. God has forbidden; but he does not mind that. Wilberforce. You force me to say, Mr. Romilly, what I hope you will not think a personality. The French Revolution was brought about in great measure by the gentlemen of your profession. Romilly. The people were rendered so extremely poor by the imposts, that there were few litigations in the courts of law. Hence the lawyers, Wilberforce. Awful expression! Let us return to the Blacks. It is calculated that twenty millions are requisite to indemnify the slave-holders. Romilly. Do you wonder then that he is evasive? Wilberforce. I should wonder if a man of his integrity were so upon any occasion. But he has frankly told me that he does not see clearly at what time the measure may be expedient. We can Romilly. Everything can be calculated, except the hour for the abolition of injustice. It is not always in our power to retrace our steps when we have committed it. Nay, sometimes is it requisite not only to go on with it, but even to add fresh. We waged a most unnecessary, a most impolitic, a most unjust war against France. Nothing else could have united her people: nothing else could have endangered or have interrupted our commerce. Having taken the American islands from our enemy, we should have exported from them the younger slaves into our own, taking care that the number of females be proportional to the number of males. We should have granted our protection to Brazil and Cuba, on condition that the traffic in African slaves immediately cease, and that everyone belonging to Spaniard or Portuguese, who had served fourteen years, should be free. Unhappily we ourselves can do little more at present for our own, without a grievous injustice to a large body of our fellow-subjects. however place adequate power in the hands of the civil and military governors, authorising them to grant any slave his freedom who shall be proved to have been cruelly treated by his master. What a curse is it upon us, that at present we neither can make peace nor abolish slavery! We can decree, and we ought instantly, that the importation and sale of slaves do cease at this very hour throughout the world. We can decree, and we ought instantly, that husband and wife be united, and separated no more. We can decree, and ought instantly, that children from seven to ten years of age be instructed one hour daily. But, as things are now constituted, I think I have no right to deprive a proprietor of his property, unless he has forfeited it by a violation of law. To repay me for my protection, and for granting him a monopoly during the war, I would stipulate with him, that whoever had served him fourteen years should be emancipated. He should also be obliged to maintain as many females as males, or nearly, and to set apart a plot of ground for every emancipated slave, enough for his support, on lease for life, at such a rent as those deputed by the governor may think reasonable. proposition of granting twenty, or ten, or five millions to carry into execution the abolition of slavery, by way of indemnity to the slave-holders, is absurd. Abolish all duties of importation and The exportation; that will be sufficient. The abolition of the slave-trade is greatly more important than the abolition of slavery in our islands. The traffic can be terminated at once; the servitude but gradually. It is in politics as in diet. They who have committed excesses can not become quite temperate at the first perception of their perilous situation. The consequences of a sudden change might be fatal. Wilberforce. Religion teaches us that we should consent to no truce with Sin. Romilly. We should enter into no engagements with her but the union is easier than the divorce. There are materials which, being warped, are not to be set right again by a stroke of the hammer, but by temperance and time. Our system of slavery is in this condition. We have done wrong with impunity; we can not with impunity do right. We wound the state in stripping the individual. Wilberforce. I would not strip him; I would grant him a fair and full indemnity. Romilly. What! when all your property is mortgaged? When you are without a hope of redeeming it, and can hardly find wherewithal to pay the interest? If ever you attempt the undertaking, it can be only at the peace. Wilberforce. I am sorry to find you so despondent. Romilly. I am more despondent than I have yet appeared to be. Wilberforce. With what reason? Romilly. Hostilities having ceased, the people will be clamorous for the removal of many taxes; and some of the most productive will be remitted the first. In my opinion, unwise as was the war, and entered into for the gratification of an old madman, who never knew the difference between a battle and a review, and who chuckled at the idea of his subjects being peppered when they were shot; a war conducted by grasping men, outrageous at the extortion of their compliance, and at the alternative that either their places or their principles must be surrendered; we nevertheless ought to discharge the debt we contracted, and not to leave the burden for our children. If our affairs are as ill conducted in peace as they are in war, it is greatly to be feared that we may injure the colonist more than we benefit the slave. We may even carry our imprudence so far as to restore to our enemies the lands we have conquered from them, cultivated by blacks. Wilberforce. Impossible. Mr. Pitt has declared that peace is never to be signed without indemnity for the past, and security for the future. These are his very words. Romilly. Not as a politician, but as an arithmetician, he knew when he uttered these words that they never could be accomplished. War is alike the parent and the child of evil. It would surpass your ingenuity, or Mr. Pitt's, to discover any whatsoever which does not arise from war, or follow war, or romp and revel in the midst of war. It begins in pride and malice, it continues in cruelty and rapine, it terminates in poverty and oppression. Our bishops, who pray for success in it, are much bolder men than our soldiers who engage in it bayonet to bayonet. For the soldier fights only against man, and under the command of man: the bishop fights against the command of God, and against God himself. Every hand lifted up in prayer for homicide, strikes him in the face. Wilberforce. Mr. Romilly! I entertain a due respect for you, as being eminent in your profession, a member of Parliament, a virtuous and (I hope) a religious man: you would however rise higher in my estimation if you reverenced your superiors. Romilly. It must be a man immeasurably above me, both in virtue and intellect, whom, knowing my own deficiency, I could reverence. Seldom is it that I quote a verse or a sentiment, but there is in a poet not very original a thought so original that nobody seems ever to have applied it to himself or others : "Below the good how far! how far above the great!" Wilberforce. There is only one half of it I would hear willingly. When men begin to think themselves above the great, social order is wofully deranged. I deplore the absence of that self-abasement on which is laid the foundation of all Christian virtues. Romilly. Unless we respect ourselves, our respect for superiors is prone to servility. No man can be thrown by another from such a height as he can throw himself from. I never have observed that a tendency toward the powerful was a sufficient check to spiritual pride: and extremely few have I known, or heard of, who, tossing up their nostrils into the air and giving tongue that they have hit upon the trail to heaven, could distinguish humility from baseness. Mostly they dirty those they fawn on, and get kicked before they get fed. Wilberforce. Christianity makes allowances for human infirmity. Romilly. Christianity, as now practised by the highest of its professors, makes more infirmities than allowances. Can we believe in their belief who wallow in wealth and war? in theirs who vote subsidies for slaughter? who speed the slave-ship with their prayers? who bind and lacerate and! stifle the helpless wretches they call men and brethren? Wilberforce. Parliamentary steps must be taken before you can expect to mitigate the curses of war and slavery. Romilly. By whom first should the steps be taken? Persuade the bishops, if you can, to raise their voices for the double abolition. Let them! at least unite and join you in that which, apparently, you have most at heart. In order to effect it gradually, I am ready to subscribe my name to any society, of which the main object shall be the conversion of our spiritual lords to Christianity. The waters of Jordan, which were formerly used for bleaching, serve at present no other purpose than the setting of scarlet and purple. Wilberforce. There is danger in touching the altar. We may overturn the table and bruise the chalice in attempting any restoration of the structure. Romilly. Christianity is a plant which grows well from seed, but ill from cuttings: they who have grafted it on a wilding have sometimes succeeded; never they who (as we have) inoculated it on one cracked in the stem and oozing over with foul luxuriance. I do not deny that families and small communities have profited by secession from more corrupt religions: but as soon as ever cities and provinces have embraced the purer creed, ambitious men have always been ready to materialize the word of God and to raise houses and estates upon it. as Borromeo and Fénelon adhering to the religion they were born in, amidst the discussions and commotions of every land around. Wilberforce. My opinion is, that religion should be mixed up in all our institutions, and that it not only should be a part, but the main part of the state. Romilly. I am unwilling to obtrude my sentiments on this question, and even to answer any. For I always have observed that the most religious men become the most impatient in the course of discussion, calling their opponents weak wavering sceptics, or obstinate reckless unbelievers. But since the constitution of our country is involved in it, together with its present defects and future meliorations, I must declare to you my conviction that even the best government and the best religion should be kept apart in their ministries. In building a house, brick and lime are ingredients. Let the brick be imbedded in the Wilberforce. The prosperity of the labourers in Christ's vineyard has excited the envy of the ill-lime reduced to mortar: but if you mix it in the disposed. Romilly. What prosperity? Success in improving it? Wilberforce. No indeed, but their honest earnings. Romilly. Did the master pay such earnings to those whose work was harder? or did he command, or will, that such should be paid on any future day? Wilberforce. I am sorry, Mr. Romilly, that you question and quibble (pardon me the expression) just like those unhappy men, miscalled philosophers, who have brought down the vengeance of Heaven on France, Voltaire at the head of them. Romilly. No indeed; I never have sunned myself on the trim and short grass bordered by the papered pinks and powdered ranunculuses of Voltaire. His pertness is amusing: but I thought it pleasanter to bathe in the deep wisdom of wit running up to its banks through the romantic scenery of Cervantes. Wilberforce. Little better than infidelity. Romilly. But not, as infidelity generally is, sterile and flimsy. Christians themselves are all infidels in the sight of some other Christians; and they who come nearest to them are the most obnoxious. Strange interpretation of "Love your neighbour!" If there are grades of belief, there must also be grades of unbelief. The worst of unbelief is that which regrets the goodness of our heavenly Father, and from which there springs in us a desire of breaking what we can not bend, and of twisting wire after wire and tying knot after knot in his scourge. Christianity, as I understand it, lies not in belief but in action. That servant is a good servant who obeys the just orders of his master; not he who repeats his words, measures his stature, or traces his pedigree! On all occasions it is well to be a little more than tolerant; especially when a wiser and better man than our selves thinks differently from us. Religious minds will find an additional reason for their humility, when they observe such excellent men composition of the brick, it swells and cracks and falls to pieces in the kiln. Wilberforce. That is no argument. Romilly.* Arguments cease to be arguments the moment they come home. But this, acknowledge, is only an illustration. To detain you no longer, Mr. Wilberforce, I give you my promise I will attend at the debate, and vote with you. Neither of us can live long enough to see the Africans secure from bondage, or from the violence of tribe against tribe, and from the myriads of other calamities that precede it. Europe is semibarbarous at the present hour; and, even among the more civilized, one state is as suspicious of another as one Black is of another in the belligerents of Senegal and Gambia. For many years to come, no nation will unite with us in any work or project for the furtherance of our mutual wellbeing little then can we expect that Honour, now totally lost sight of on the Continent, will be recognised in a character so novel as the Knighterrant of Humanity. One more remark at parting; the only one by which in this business I can hope to serve you materially. Permit me to advise you, Mr. Wilberforce, to display as small a portion of historical research as you possibly can, consistently with your eloquence and enthusiasm. Wilberforce. Why so, Mr. Romilly? Romilly. Because it may counteract your benevolent intentions. Wilberforce. Nothing shall counteract them. * Parliament has been proved in our times, and indeed in most others, a slippery foundation for names, although a commodious one for fortunes. But Romilly went into public life with temperate and healthy aspirations. Providence, having blessed him with domestic peace, withheld him from political animosities. He knew that the sweetest fruits grow nearest the ground, and he waited for the higher to fall into his bosom, without an effort or a wish to seize on them. No man whosoever in our Parlia mentary history has united in more perfect accordance and constancy pure virtue and lofty wisdom. |