Yet those deeper principles would shortly emerge. It is unclear how long Wilberforce intended to stay in Nice, and even though the new session of Parliament was to begin on 25 January 1785, the happy party remained on the Riviera throughout that month. Wilberforce later remembered that ‘Many times during the month of January we carried our cold meat into some of the beautiful recesses of the mountains and rocks by which the place is surrounded on the land side and dined in the open air as we should here, in the summer.’16 Sometime that month, however, he would have received from Pitt a letter written on 19 December 1784 explaining that ‘as much as I wish you to bask on, under an Italian sun, I am perhaps likely to be the instrument of snatching you from your present paradise … A variety of circumstances concur to make it necessary to give notice immediately on the meeting of Parliament of the day on which I shall move the question of the Reform.’17 If Pitt as Prime Minister was making a major push for parliamentary reform, it was unthinkable for Wilberforce to be absent. Pitt had worked with Wyvill on a scheme which would abolish seventy-two seats in rotten boroughs and allocate them to newly populous towns and cities. Loyalty to Pitt and to Yorkshire demanded that Wilberforce be present to argue for such a proposal. As a result, it was decided that he and Milner would return to England, leaving the ladies where they were and coming back to join them in the summer. Just before leaving Nice on 5 February, Wilberforce asked Milner if a book he had happened to pick up, Doddridge’s The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, was worth reading. Milner responded: ‘It is one of the best books ever written. Let us take it with us and read it on our journey.’18
In the whole course of Wilberforce’s life, no volume would be more influential in determining his conduct than the book he so casually selected from among the possessions of his cousin, Bessy Smith. He would write thirty-two years later to his daughter, ‘You cannot read a better book. I hope it was one of the means of turning my heart to God.’19 Philip Doddridge had published the book in 1745, six years before his death at the age of forty-nine. Doddridge’s version of ‘vital Christianity’ was itself built on the seventeenth-century work of Richard Baxter, an English Puritan minister who had become a leading Presbyterian non-conformist. Baxter had urged Christians to concentrate on the fundamental points on which the wide spread of Christian denominations should be able to reach a consensus. In his turn, Doddridge advocated Christian unity and religious toleration, along with a practical faith and a powerful vision of heaven. It was thus in the course of an uncomfortable midwinter journey across France that Wilberforce sat in his carriage absorbing many of the essentials of English Puritanism. For Doddridge set out in his book a complete framework for religious observation, and a philosophy of how to live, which initially merely caused Wilberforce to think, but which would eventually provide the framework for his whole life. The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul emphasised the importance of daily self-examination, prayer, early-morning devotions, diligence in business, prudence in recreation, the careful observation of Providence, the importance of solitude, and the value of time. It stressed the certainty of death and judgement, and the need for humankind to show its usefulness throughout a lifetime. The message of the book was designed first to be worrying: ‘Thousands are, no doubt, already in hell, whose guilt never equalled thine; and it is astonishing, that God hath spared thee to read this representation of thy case;’20 and then to be uplifting: ‘You will wish to commence a hero in the cause of Christ; opposing with a rigorous resolution the strongest efforts of the powers of darkness, the inward corruption of your own heart, and all the outward difficulties you may meet with in the way of your duty, while in the cause and in the strength of Christ you go on conquering and to conquer.’21 Doddridge’s enjoinders would subsequently become Wilberforce’s prescription for life: ‘Be an advocate for truth; be a counsellor of peace; be an example of candour; and do all you can to reconcile the hearts of men, especially of good men, to each other, however they may differ in their opinions about matters which it is impossible for good men to dispute.’22
The immediate effect on Wilberforce, no doubt encouraged by Milner, was that ‘he determined at some future season to examine the Scriptures for himself and see if things were stated there in the same manner’.23 For the moment, more immediate events would break back into his mind, for both the journey home and the political situation on his return were more difficult than he might have anticipated. The return journey involved bad roads, filthy inns and terrible food, without any of ‘those things which in England we should deem indispensable for our comfort and even our health’.24 In heavy snow in Burgundy, when Milner and Wilberforce were walking behind their chaise it slipped on the ice, and looked like toppling over a precipice with the horses, had Milner not used all his strength to hold it. The weight of Milner’s luggage might not have helped, since he was ‘invariably carrying about with him an assortment which, to most persons, appeared uselessly large, of implements of a heavy kind – such as scissors of various sizes, pincers, files, penknives, razors and even hammers’.25 After these adventures, it was 22 February before they arrived in London and Wilberforce ‘took up my quarters for a short time under the roof of Mr Pitt’,26 which literally meant lodging in 10 Downing Street, where the maid accidentally burned about fifty of his letters, many unopened: ‘I dreaded the effects on my reputation in Yorkshire but happily no bad consequence ensued.’27
Wilberforce showed no resentment that the haste of his return proved unnecessary when the great debate on Reform was put off until late March, and then again until 18 April. He threw himself back into London’s political and social whirl, and was soon noting in his diary that he was ‘sitting up all night singing’, and had ‘danced till five in the morning’.28 When the Reform debate finally took place Wilberforce was in his place to support Pitt and to speak up for Yorkshire, but his speech, however much it accorded with his own views and ideals, was not calculated to win over sceptical MPs. Showing his disdain for political parties, he argued that the abolition of rotten boroughs would ‘tend to diminish the progress of party and cohesion in this country from which … our greatest misfortunes arose … By destroying them the freedom of opinion would be restored, and party connexions in a great measure vanish.’29 MPs with less secure parliamentary seats than Wilberforce might well have considered as they listened to him that if party connections vanished, they might well vanish themselves. Even this modest measure of reform was thrown out, by 248 votes to 174, and one of Pitt’s most cherished projects among ‘his good hopes of the country, and noble, patriotic heart’,30 in Wilberforce’s words of that time, went down to defeat. Wilberforce’s diary for that day said it all: ‘To town – Pitt’s – house – Parliamentary Reform – terribly disappointed and beat – extremely fatigued – spoke extremely ill, but commended. – Called at Pitt’s – met poor Wyvill.’31
The following month he was again on his feet in the House of Commons supporting Pitt, this time even against the wishes of some of his constituents. Pitt’s so-called ‘Irish Propositions’ were designed to create freer trade between Ireland and England, with the object of reducing discontent in Ireland and strengthening England’s security. They were opposed, however, by many manufacturers, including the woollen businesses of the Yorkshire West Riding. It was either his efforts to reconcile these conflicting views or his general lifestyle which caused Wilberforce physical discomfort and even disorientation in the debate of 12 May. He noted that he ‘cannot preserve the train as some could do, and too hot and violent’,32 and it was reported that ‘overcome with sensibility, the fatigue of having sat in the House so many hours, and with the pressure of infirmity, he sunk upon his seat’.33 It was not an easy session for him. As he wrote to one dissatisfied constituent, ‘The situation of a Representative disagreeing with his constituents on a matter of importance must ever be a situation of pain and embarrassment,’34 but he continued to admire Pitt, who he thought ‘spoke wonderfully’ on the same subject, and to be loyal to his old friend. Yet there were also the first signs of a developing dissatisfaction with the political and social scene. A letter from Pitt later in the year refers to Wilberforce’s ‘constant call for Something out of the Common Way’.35 At the same time, his disapproval of a variety of public habits was becoming evident in his diary.