Day One Publications London, 1817. The Italian statesman Count
Pecchio was present for the start of a new session of
Parliament. As he watched, one event fastened itself upon his
memory: the arrival of William Wilberforce. ‘When Mr.
Wilberforce passes through the crowd,’ Pecchio observed, ‘every
one contemplates this little old man, worn with age, and his
head sunk upon his shoulders, as a sacred relic; as the
Washington of humanity.’ Wilberforce had led the twenty year
fight to end the British slave trade. It was a victory known the
world over. He had persevered despite death threats, chronic
illness and the long war against Napoleon’s France. Yet
Wilberforce was no dour, stodgy icon. Rather, friends and family
were hard put to adequately describe his winsome personality.
Historian Sir James Mackintosh perhaps said it best: ‘I never
saw anyone who touched life at so many points.’ Mackintosh was
commenting three years before Wilberforce’s death. He had, along
with so many others, witnessed Wilberforce’s uncea