Wilberforce, William

born Aug. 24, 1759, Hull, Yorkshire, Eng.

died July 29, 1833, London

British politician.

Entering the House of Commons in 1780, he supported parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. Converted to evangelical Christianity (1785), he agitated against the slave trade and cofounded the Anti-Slavery Society. His sponsorship of antislavery legislation led to the passage of a bill abolishing the slave trade in the British West Indies (1807). From 1821 he agitated for emancipation of all slaves and was joined in Parliament by Thomas F. Buxton (1786–1845), who continued to sponsor legislation after Wilberforce retired in 1825. The Slavery Abolition Act was passed one month after Wilberforce's death in 1833.

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▪ British politician

born Aug. 24, 1759, Hull, Yorkshire, Eng.

died July 29, 1833, London

 British politician and philanthropist who from 1787 was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself in British overseas possessions.

      He studied at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge, where he became a close friend of the future prime minister William Pitt the Younger (Pitt, William, The Younger) and was known as an amiable companion rather than an outstanding student. In 1780 both he and Pitt entered the House of Commons, and he soon began to support parliamentary reform and Roman Catholic political emancipation, acquiring a reputation for radicalism that later embarrassed him, especially during the French Revolution, when he was chosen an honorary citizen of France (September 1792). From 1815 he upheld the Corn Laws (Corn Law) (tariffs on imported grain) and repressive measures against working-class agitation.

      Wilberforce's abolitionism was derived in part from evangelical Christianity, to which he was converted in 1784–85. His spiritual adviser became John Newton, a former slave trader who had repented and who had been the pastor at Wilberforce's church when he was a child. In 1787 Wilberforce helped to found a society for the “reformation of manners” called the Proclamation Society (to suppress the publication of obscenity) and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade—the latter more commonly called the Anti-Slavery Society. He and his associates—Thomas Clarkson (Clarkson, Thomas), Granville Sharp (Sharp, Granville), Henry Thornton (Thornton, Henry), Charles Grant, Edward James Eliot, Zachary Macaulay, and James Stephen—were first called the Saints and afterward (from 1797) the Clapham Sect, of which Wilberforce was the acknowledged leader.

      In the House of Commons, Wilberforce was an eloquent and indefatigable sponsor of antislavery legislation. In 1789 he introduced 12 resolutions against the slave trade and gave what many newspapers at the time considered among the most eloquent speeches ever delivered in the Commons. The resolutions were supported by Pitt (who was by then prime minister), Charles Fox (Fox, Charles James) (often an opponent of Pitt's), and Edmund Burke (Burke, Edmund), but they failed to be enacted into law, and instead the issue was postponed until the next session of Parliament. In 1791 he again brought a motion to the House of Commons to abolish the slave trade, but it was defeated 163 to 88. In 1792 Wilberforce, buttressed by the support of hundreds of thousands of British subjects who had signed petitions favouring the abolition of the slave trade, put forward another motion. However, a compromise measure, supported by Home Secretary Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (Melville, Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount, Baron Dunira), that called for gradual abolition was agreed and passed the House of Commons, much to the disappointment of Wilberforce and his supporters. For the next 15 years, Wilberforce was able to achieve little progress toward ending the slave trade (in part because of the domestic preoccupation with the war against Napoleon). In 1807, however, he finally achieved success: on Feb. 23, 1807, a bill to abolish the slave trade in the British West Indies was carried in the Commons 283 to 16, and it became law on March 25.

      The 1807 statute did not, however, change the legal position of persons enslaved before its enactment, and so, after several years in which Wilberforce was concerned with other issues, he and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, 1st Baronet) urged (from 1821) the immediate emancipation of all slaves. In 1823 he aided in organizing and became a vice president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions—again, more commonly called the Anti-Slavery Society. Turning over to Buxton the parliamentary leadership of the abolition movement, he retired from the House of Commons in 1825. On July 26, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by the Commons (it became law the following month); three days later Wilberforce died. He was interred at Westminster Abbey.

Additional Reading

Biographies include Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, 5 vol. (1838, reprinted 1972); Reginald Coupland, Wilberforce (1923, reprinted 1968); Oliver Warner, William Wilberforce and His Times (1962); Robin Furneaux, William Wilberforce (1974); John Pollock, Wilberforce (1977, reissued 1986); Garth Lean, God's Politician: William Wilberforce's Struggle (1980); Kevin Charles Belmonte, Hero for Humanity: A Biography of William Wilberforce (2002); Robin Furneaux, William Wilberforce (2006); and Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery (2007).

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