What we can learn from Wilberforce

Since William Wilberforce is pretty popular right now with the release of the movie about his life, I thought I would point you to this interesting article from the The Christian History Institute. It is entitled, "William Wilberforce: The fight against slavery and what we can learn from it". It's an interesting read and concludes with some moving words from Wilberforce that I'll reprint here:

Having now disposed of the first part of this subject, I must speak of the transit of the slaves in the West Indies. This, I confess, in my opinion, is the most wretched part of the whole subject, So much misery condensed in so little room is more then the human imagination had ever before conceived...Let anyone imagine to himself six or seven hundred of these wretches chained two and two, surrounded with every object that is nauseous and disgusting, diseased, and struggling under every kind of wretchedness! How can we bear to think of such a scene as this? One would think it had been determined to heap on them all the varieties of bodily pain, for the purpose of blunting the feelings of mind…when the surgeons tell you the slaves are stowed so close that there is not room to tread among them, and when you have it in evidence from Sir George Younge, that even in a ship which wanted two hundred of her complement the stench was intolerable... What shall we say when we are told that their songs are songs of lamentation upon their departure, which, while they sing, are always in tears, insomuch that one captain (more humane, as I should conceive him, therefore, then the rest) threatened one of the women with a flogging, because the mournfulness of her song was too painful for his feelings? In order, however, not to trust too much to any sort of description, I will call the attention of the House to one species of evidence, which is absolutely infallible. Death, at least, is a sure ground of evidence, and the proportion of deaths will not only confirm, but, if possible, will even aggravate our suspicion of their misery in the transit. It will be found upon an average...not less then twelve and one half per cent perish in the passage. Besides these, the Jamaica report tells you that not less then four and one half per cent die on shore before the day of sale, which is only a week or two from the time of landing. One third more die in the seasoning, and...upon the whole, however, here is a mortality of about fifty per cent, and this among Negroes who are not bought unless quite healthy at first, and unless (as the phrase is with cattle) they are sound in the wind and limb. How, then, can the House refuse its belief to the multiplied testimonies, before the privy council, of the savage treatment of the Negroes in the middle passage? Nay, indeed, what need is there of any evidence? The number of deaths speaks for itself, and makes all such inquiry superfluous. As soon as ever I had arrived thus far in my investigation of the slave-trade, I confess to you, sir, so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its wickedness appear, that my own mind was completely made up for the abolition. A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished, let the policy be what it might. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition.