Special Collections
Book of the Month, April 2007
.“God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners”, wrote William Wilberforce in his diary on 28 October, 1787. His Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, addressed to members of his parliamentary constituency, was six years in the writing and represents the fruits of twenty years of campaigning against the African slave trade from that time. Wilberforce had hoped to finish it by the time Parliament opened on 15 December 1806, scribbling away, in his own words in a letter to Lord Grenville, “far too hastily and therefore unsatisfactorily” in order to achieve his purpose. He finally completed it on 28 January 1807 and it was published just three days later, on 31 January 1807. Wilberforce had intended it as a pamphlet; in fact, it grew to a volume of 396 pages, intended to inform the final stage of his campaign.
In the introduction, Wilberforce describes the slave trade as “the foulest blot that ever stained our National character”, and he concludes by warning divine retribution if “a continued course of wickedness, oppression, and cruelty, obstinately maintained in spite of the fullest knowledge and the loudest warnings” continues. In between, he describes the degradation of the slaves, ending with a section listed in the contents as “Decisive Proof that Slaves’ State is miserable”, and lists and refutes arguments against abolition.
The success of Wilberforce’s work is evident from the fact that in February 1807 Parliament voted by 283 votes to 16 to abolish and prohibit all manner of dealing and trading in the purchase of slaves or their transport from Africa to the West Indies or any other territory.
The copy here is a presentation copy from Wilberforce to the Swiss economist and historian Simonde de Sismondi, a supporter of his cause, with an inscription in his hand.
Illustration: from Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, vol. 4 (London: J. Murray, 1838)
specialcollections@shl.lon.ac.uk 
020 7862 8470 shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk 020 7862 8470
