the French treaty, the impeachment of Hastings, and the regency question. Meanwhile John Newton (1725–1807) [q. v.] became his spiritual adviser.
In the session of 1786 he carried through the House of Commons a bill for amending the criminal law. It was rejected in the House of Lords after a sharp attack by Loughborough (Parl. Hist. xxvi. 195–202), though many compliments were paid to Wilberforce's benevolent intentions. The chief provision was that the bodies of all felons—not, as hitherto, those of murderers alone—should be given up for dissection. Hanging was to be substituted for burning in the case of women. Other changes of more importance were under consideration by his supporters; but his attention was soon directed to other subjects. He also carried through the House of Commons a bill for the registration of voters in county elections. After the session he spent some time in the country meditating and forming plans for his future life. He resolved to start a society for the reformation of manners, on the model of those at the end of the seventeenth century. He secured the co-operation of several bishops, obtained a royal proclamation (1 June 1787) against vice, and started a ‘society for enforcing’ it. He took an active part for many years in the proceedings of this society, of which Beilby Porteus [q. v.], bishop of London, was afterwards president. It was generally known as the ‘Proclamation Society,’ and instituted proceedings against blasphemous and indecent publications. The ‘Society for the Suppression of Vice’ (ridiculed by Sydney Smith) was founded in 1802 to carry out the same object. It apparently superseded the older society. In 1787 Hannah More made Wilberforce's acquaintance at Bath, and pronounced him to be a most extraordinary young gentleman for talent and piety.
The attention of philanthropists was beginning to be drawn to the question of slavery. Granville Sharp [q. v.] had won the Somersett case in 1772. Thomas Clarkson had written his prize essay in 1785, and was beginning to agitate. He applied to Wilberforce, who received him sympathetically, and finally, at a dinner party given by Bennet Langton [q. v.] to some of the persons interested, announced his willingness to take up the cause in parliament. A committee, chiefly of quakers, of which Sharp was president and Clarkson a member, was then formed on 22 May 1787. Wilberforce's biographers have sufficiently shown that he was already interested in the matter independently. He had, it is said, written about slavery in the papers ‘in his boyhood,’ and in 1783 had talked to James Ramsay (1733–1789) [q. v.], whose book on slavery in 1784 excited much interest. Christian Ignatius Latrobe [q. v.] testifies that Ramsay's friends, Sir Charles Middleton (afterwards Lord Barham) [q. v.] and his wife, had suggested to Wilberforce in 1786 to take up the question; and his friend John Newton had himself been a slave-trader. He was thus prepared to sympathise with the agitators, though modestly doubting his fitness for leadership. Wilberforce states that Pitt recommended him to take parliamentary action, and that he made up his mind at the foot of a tree in Holwood Park (Pitt's country place), where there is now a stone seat, placed by Lord Stanhope, with an inscription. Pitt told him (Hardford, p. 139) that he must not ‘lose time, or the question would be taken up by another.’ Both Fox and Burke had had intentions of doing something. This was in 1787. It is plain that, as Wilberforce himself said, many circumstances had turned his attention to a question already exciting interest; and it seems to matter very little how far the application from Clarkson and his friends affected or hastened his decision. It is also undeniable that, in accepting the parliamentary leadership of the cause, he was really accepting an honourable position in a movement approved by enlightened men of all parties. His true praise is not that he was the independent originator of the agitation, but that he was admirably fitted to represent and stimulate the national conscience. His independent position, his high principles, and the singular charm of character which made him popular even with his antagonists, marked him out as an ideal leader of the cause. The committee remained independent, and employed Clarkson to collect evidence. Wilberforce conducted the parliamentary campaign in harmony with the committee, but did not actually join it until 1794.
Pitt consented that evidence upon the African trade should be read before a committee of the privy council. At the end of 1787 Wilberforce endeavoured to procure the insertion of some provisions against the slave trade into the treaty which was then being negotiated at Paris by William Eden, first lord Auckland [q. v.] Though Pitt approved, nothing came of this (see letters in Lord Auckland's Journals, i. 239, 266, 285, 305–8). In January 1788 Wilberforce had a dangerous illness, which apparently implied ‘a total decay of all the vital functions.’ He retired to Bath in April, his
