William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury

Abolition of the Slave Trade

Wilberforce led the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament, whilst the Abolition society collected evidence and organised petitions. Leaflets, songs and badges were distributed to rally public opinion. However, their opponents were also well organised and fought back with their own propaganda. The progress of abolition was halted by the outbreak of the French revolution and a slave rebellion in San Domingo, but in 1807 the Act to abolish the Slave trade was finally passed, a great victory for Wilberforce and his friends. They believed that slaves would now be treated more humanely as the supply of slaves dwindled, but the illegal slave trade flourished.

Five years later, Wilberforce resigned his Yorkshire seat in favour of a quieter constituency, preferring to spend more time with his family. During his final years in the Commons he was attacked for not helping the poor in Britain. In 1815 he supported the Corn Laws which raised the price of corn and three years later approved harsh laws following the Peterloo massacre.

Wilberforce died on 29 July 1833, believing the abolition of slavery to be within reach. On his deathbed he heard that the Bill to free all slaves in the British colonies had passed its second reading in the Commons. “Thank God”, he said “that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery”. A month after his death the Bill became law.

Search our online catalogue to find items relating to Wilberforce held at Hull History Centre.             Taken from a book in Hull History Museum,

Wilberforce was an Evangelical Christian.  He was supported by other Christian Evangelicals and then an organisation of other faiths and none fighting for the abolition of slavery.   Why is Wilberforce not mentioned in today's campaign for the rights of the black people.  

But let us turn to Lord Shaftesbury.        He died, aged 84, on I October 1885. His birth stirred no emotion in his grim, disagreeable parents. His death by contrast aroused immense feeling, particularly amongst those living in dire social conditions. The “people’s earl”, as he had become known, was widely mourned at the end of a life lived, as he had so frequently put it, in the service of the loving, redeeming Christ—the kind of life that ,in his view, could only be led properly by ardent Protestant evangelicals, of whom he had been the leading representative in public affairs. A vast outpouring of grief took place on the day of his funeral when the poor and the destitute packed the London streets from his large town house in Grosvenor Square to Westminster Abbey. They were also well represented that day within its walls where a statue was subsequently erected.

Shaftesbury was another Protestant Evangelical not mentioned in the present troubles.  Many were making money out of the slave trade and re-investing in the British Industrial Revolution where the workers were exploited, working from dawn to late evening in appalling and unhealthy conditions.   Even children were used, many of them going down pits which were far from safe.    In 1833 Shaftesbury passed the first of the Factory Acts which removed many abuses.   But more Factory Acts were to follow.