William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner. William Hague

may have become about money, his election for Yorkshire made it even less likely than before that he would embark on a ministerial career. Pitt, preoccupied in the summer of 1784 with his own India Bill and his first budget, did not in any event carry out a major reshuffle of his government that year. Nor is there any reason to suppose that he had changed his opinion of Wilberforce’s suitability for high office. And from Wilberforce’s point of view, the burdens of representing and attending to his constituents had just been made vastly greater. He would now be expected to make tours of the county during the summer recess, and to represent all year round a vast range of interests, from the clothiers of Halifax to the manufacturers of Sheffield and the merchants of many small towns. An eighteenth-century county constituency did not fit well with a ministerial career: not only did it require a good deal of attention and representation, but the compulsory requirement to fight a by-election when accepting appointment as a minister could have been ruinously expensive. Contrary to the suspicions of Mr Sykes, it is likely therefore that, in Wilberforce’s own mind, his decision to stand for Yorkshire was consistent with political ambitions which were parliamentary rather than governmental. He had indeed sought greater power and prestige, but it was the prestige of an MP with elevated status and an independent power base, rather than as a minister rising in the ranks of the government of his friend.

      Wilberforce was conscious from the beginning of the need to look after his new constituency. His first speech in the new Parliament, on 16 June 1784, was in favour of the principle of parliamentary reform, the much-cherished objective of the Yorkshire Association that had ensured his election. Once Parliament rose for the summer, he headed north to commune with his new constituents, becoming the ‘joy of York races’ and learning in detail about his new constituents – even years later he was still asking for lists of influential persons, graded according to their influence, ‘“Li” for little, – “Mi” for middling, – “Gr” for great, – and “V.Gr” for very great’,⁸⁸ together with useful observations such as, ‘Whether he likes the leg or wing of a fowl best, that when one dines with him one may win his heart by helping him, and not be taken in by his “just which you please, sir.” ’⁸⁹

      After all the trials of the political season Wilberforce’s mind was once again set on travel, this time on a full-scale Continental tour. The old friend he initially asked to accompany him was unable to go, but holidaying at Scarborough later that summer Wilberforce found himself in the agreeable company of Isaac Milner, his school usher of sixteen years earlier and younger brother of Joseph. Wilberforce decided to ask Isaac to accompany him on a tour of several months with all expenses paid. It would turn out to be one of the most important decisions of his life.

      ^* Fencing with a weapon designed for thrusting or lunging – but in this context meaning verbal fencing.

      ^* Frances Crewe was a highly fashionable hostess and was regarded as one of the greatest beauties of her time, much admired by Fox, Burke and Sheridan.

      ^* The counties of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Lincolnshire were divided into wapentakes, just as most of the remainder of England was divided into hundreds.

       4 Agony and Purpose

      I must awake to my dangerous state, and never be at rest till I have made my peace with God.

      WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, 27 November 1785¹

      Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple, and lead not to meditation only but to action.

      WILLIAM PITT TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, 2 December 1785²

      AFTER SUMMERING in York and Scarborough, Wilberforce set out over the Pennines in the early autumn of 1784 to visit his beloved Rayrigg, and ‘looked over all the old scenes again with vast pleasure’.³ His visit there had many frustrations: his eyes were in too poor a state for reading, no visitor of any interest passed through, and he failed to find a spot on which he could locate his ‘future residence’.⁴ By 20 October, after brief stops in London and Brighton, he had set out on his Continental tour and, in spite of the calm conditions, suffered from seasickness while sailing from Dover to Calais. His party travelled in two coaches. The first contained his mother, his sister and ‘a couple of sick cousins, very good girls, whose health we hope to re-establish by the change of air’.⁵ In the other were Wilberforce himself, a small mountain of neglected correspondence – ‘which, to my sore annoyance and discomfort, I have brought in my chaise to the heart of France’⁶ –and the even larger bulk of Isaac Milner.

      Feeling threatened by the prospect of several months with only women of his own family for company, Wilberforce had resorted to inviting on the tour a man he did not then know very well. Yet soon he would be describing Milner as ‘a most intelligent and excellent friend of mine’.⁷ Milner had a broad Yorkshire accent and was physically enormous, being described in later years by Marianne Thornton as ‘a rough loud and rather coarse man’, and ‘the most enormous man it was ever my fate to see in a drawing-room’,⁸ but he had a gentle nature and a ready wit which Wilberforce found highly congenial. He also happened to be intellectually brilliant: shortly after Wilberforce had known him as a school usher, having been plucked away from being a Leeds weaver by his elder brother Joseph, he had entered Queens’ College Cambridge, where he revealed an extraordinary intelligence. Many years later, Cambridge dons were still discussing his triumphant progress: by 1774 his academic performance was considered ‘incomparabilis’, and two years later he was a Fellow of his college, going on to become a tutor, rector and, at the age of thirty-two, the first Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy. Some observers were even moved to believe that ‘The university, perhaps, never produced a man of more eminent abilities.’⁹

      It says a lot for Wilberforce’s charm and reputation that such a man was happy to ask for leave of absence from his college and set off on a journey expected to last several months with the Wilberforce family in tow. Fortunately, Milner had always thought well of Wilberforce, and he presumably had the additional incentive of being able to visit foreign parts which, having never been wealthy himself, he did not expect to be able to visit on his own. Wilberforce found him ‘lively and dashing in his conversation’,¹⁰ and they were soon covering many subjects in the days and weeks they spent travelling south across France. On the journey they had much to enjoy: ‘the wines, Cote Rotie, Hermitage, &c. all strong’; along the Rhône to Avignon in a barge ‘without a cloud (in October)’; the Frenchmen ‘who always make you a bow where an Englishman would give you an oath’; the ‘large, quiet, sleepy’ town of Aix; Marseilles, ‘the most entertaining place I ever saw, all bustle and business’; and then the final journey towards Nice with ‘astonishing rocks hewn through, and ready to close over you’.¹¹ Inside the carriage, religion was only an occasional talking point, although if it came up Milner always gave a hint of holding powerful convictions. Even back in Scarborough early that year, when Wilberforce had described an Evangelical rector as one who took things too far, Milner had replied, ‘No, how does he carry them too far?’ and continued the argument. Similarly in France, as Wilberforce ridiculed the Methodist views of his aunt and John Thornton, having ‘quite forgotten the beliefs I had when a child’,¹² Milner eventually said to him, ‘Wilberforce, I don’t pretend to be a match for you in this sort of running fire. But if you really wish to discuss these topics in a serious and argumentative manner I should be most happy to enter on them with you.’¹³

      Such a considered discussion did not take place immediately. Their arrival in Nice brought the usual round of dinners, card parties and gambling in the company of a fair slice of London society. They even experienced one of the intriguing fads of the time when an operator of animal magnetisers^* ‘tried his skill upon Milner and myself but neither of us felt anything, owing perhaps to our incredulity’.¹⁴ While Mrs Wilberforce refused Sunday invitations, Milner had no such scruples: ‘he appeared