Chapter 36

A BREAKER OF CHAINS

SOME men are extraordinarily fortunate in the hour of their appearance; the stage seems set for them. So was it with William Wilberforce, one of the most notable and picturesque social reformers of all time. It is scarcely too much to say that when he was born the Empire was born. The two sprang into existence simultaneously. ‘Never,’ says Green, ‘had England played so great a part in the history of mankind as in 1759’— the year in which Wilberforce appeared. It was the age of Wolfe and Clive and Capt. Cook. Thackeray says that during those memorable months every Englishman was drunk with the intoxication of exciting news. In one crowded and epoch-making year, the civilizations alike of the East and of the West were entirely recast and remodelled. It was as if the world were being made all over again.

The child was scarcely out of his cradle when it was realized that he was not as other children are. Weak and puny from his birth, his parents were horrified at the discovery that his frame was stunted and misshapen. It is one of the marvels of history that the hand that struck the shackles from the galled limbs of our British slaves was the hand of a hunch-back. From infancy he was an elfish, unsightly little figure. At the Grammar School at Hull the other boys would lift his tiny twisted form on to the table and make him go through all his impish tricks. For, despite his deformity, he was amazingly sprightly, resourceful and clever. A master of mimicry, a born actor, an accomplished singer and a perfect elocutionist, he was as agile also as a monkey and as full of mischief. Every day he added to his repertoire some new antics. His schoolfellows and his teachers were invariably convulsed by the whimsical audacity of each new turn.

Wilberforce is the most striking illustration that history can offer of a grotesque and insignificant form glorified by its consecration to an illustrious and noble cause. Recognizing the terrible handicap that Nature had so harshly imposed upon him, he set himself to redress the balance by acquiring a singular graciousness and charm of manner. As a result, his courtliness became proverbial. It was said of him that if you saw him in conversation with a man, you would suppose that the man was his brother, or, if with a woman, that he was her lover. He compelled men to forget his unshapely limbs. The splendour of his intellect eclipsed the ugliness of his body.

This extraordinary triumph was due in large measure to the purity of the cause that he espoused. On a day memorable in our annals, two young men-Wilberforce and Pitt lay sprawling on the grass under a grand old oak tree in the beautiful park at Hoi wood in Kent. A solid stone seat now stands beside the tree, bearing an inscription explaining that it was there that the two youths solemnly dedicated their powers to the task of abolishing slavery. Few of us realize the immense proportions that the British slave trade had then assumed. During the eighteenth century nearly a million blacks were transported from Africa-with much less consideration than would have been shown to cattle-to Jamaica alone. From his earliest infancy, the horror of the traffic preyed upon the sensitive mind of William Wilberforce. For fifty years he never rested. Through evil report and through good, he tirelessly pursued his ideal. At times the opposition seemed insuperable. But Pitt stood by him; the Quakers and a few others encouraged him to persist. Mr. Wesley, in his last hours of consciousness, wrote from his deathbed begging him never to give up.

After twenty years of incessant struggle, it was enacted that the export of slaves from Africa should cease, but no relief was offered to those already in bondage. A quarter of a century later, as Wilberforce lay dying, messengers from Westminster entered his sickroom to tell him that, at last, the Emancipation Bill had been passed. The slaves were free! ‘Thank God,’ exclaimed the expiring dwarf, ‘that I have lived to see this day!’ Like Wolfe at Quebec, like Nelson at Trafalgar, and like Sir John Franklin amidst Arctic snows, he died in the flush of triumph. His vivid fancy had involved him in all the tortures that oppressed the slaves, but he passed away rejoicing that their fetters were broken and gone.

The record of William Wilberforce presents us with the paramount example of a man, cruelly handicapped, bearing down all opposition, and surmounting all difficulties by the sheer force of his own unselfish passion. His transparent sincerity transfigured him. When he rose to address the House of Commons, he looked like a dwarf that had jumped out of a fairy-tale. When he resumed his seat he looked like the giant of the self-same story. His hearers declared that his face, when pleading for the slave, was positively seraphic: it resembled the face of an angel. The repulsiveness of his little frame seemed to disappear; and, under the magic of his inspired eloquence, his form became sublime. His death evoked a tribute that is without parallel. He was borne to his resting-place in the Abbey by the Peers and Commoners of England with the Lord Chancellor at their head. In imperishable marble it was recorded of him that he had ren loved from England the guilt of the slave trade and prepared the way for the abolition of slavery in every part of the world. In freeing the slaves he established the vital principle of the spiritual equality of man, and thus, unconsciously, he laid the foundations of our modern democracy. The people who mourned his passing may not have recognized this. They only knew that they had lost one who had served his generation with sublime devotion and with dramatic effect. And it is on record that, as the cortege made its sombre way through the crowded streets, all London was in tears, and one person in every three was garbed in deepest black.

By Dr. F. W. Boreham