physicians declaring that he could not last a fortnight. He recovered by ‘a moderate use of opium,’ which he afterwards found it necessary to take for twenty years, though without increasing the dose. Meanwhile Pitt undertook the cause. A resolution moved by him was passed (9 May), pledging the house to deal with the slave trade in the following session; and an act imposing some restrictions upon the traffic was also passed, in spite of some opposition from Thurlow, in the House of Lords. As soon as he was better, Wilberforce prepared himself to carry on the struggle. On 12 May 1789 he moved twelve resolutions condemning the slave trade in an elaborate speech of three hours and a half. They were supported by Pitt, Burke, and Fox, and carried without a division. The planters, however, obtained leave to produce evidence at the bar, and the matter was postponed till the next session. During the following months Wilberforce was in constant consultation with his friends, kept open house for his supporters, had the committee to dine with him weekly, and, with William Smith (1756–1835) [q. v.], conducted the examinations personally in the session of 1790. In the summer he stayed with his friend Thomas Gisborne (1758–1846) [q. v.] at Yoxall Lodge, and worked nine hours a day at getting up the evidence. In 1791 he received a dying message from John Wesley (d. 2 March) encouraging him to persevere. On 18 April 1791 he asked leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave trade, but, after a debate lasting till 3.30 a.m., the motion was rejected by 163 to 88. The abolitionists were much discouraged, and Wilberforce proposed an out-of-doors agitation by county meetings. He also joined in the Sierra Leone Company, suggested by Granville Sharp, of which Henry Thornton was chairman. Zachary Macaulay, afterwards Wilberforce's most energetic lieutenant, was the first governor. The alarm caused by the troubles at St. Domingo in the autumn of 1791 was unfavourable to the abolitionists. Wilberforce spent the later months of the year at Yoxall Lodge and Rothley Temple, the seat of Thomas Babington. He came to town at the end of the year, and prepared for his motion. Pitt had been startled by the St. Domingo troubles; and the king, who had been previously favourable, was now strongly opposed to a measure which would be approved by the Jacobins. His opposition made it impossible that the question should be taken up by the ministry. Wilberforce, however, was strengthened by meetings and petitions, and proposed a motion for abolition on 2 April. The debate lasted till a.m., and Pitt spoke with such eloquence that for ‘the last twenty minutes he seemed to be really inspired.’ A motion for gradual abolition was carried by 238 to 85. Dundas accepted this proposal, and on 23 April it was decided by 151 to 132, after a sharp debate, that the date of abolition should be 1 Jan. 1796. The tactics of the opponents were now confined to delay. The resolution was finally communicated to the House of Lords in May. There, however, it was decided to hear evidence at the bar of the house, which involved a postponement to the next session. This session, according to Wilberforce, ended the first assault upon the slave trade. Although the supporters of the trade had been forced to take to a policy of delay, the zeal of its opponents rather slackened. The war had raised other questions of absorbing interest, and fears of the revolution strengthened the obstructionists.
In 1793 Wilberforce proposed a motion with a view to hastening the action of the House of Lords, but it was rejected by sixty-one to fifty-three (26 Feb.) A measure for abolishing the supply of slaves to foreign powers was thrown out (12 June) on the third reading by thirty-one to twenty-nine. Wilberforce succeeded in 1794 in carrying this limited measure through the House of Commons; but it was thrown out in the lords (2 May), on the excuse of waiting for the result of the general inquiry, in which, however, no progress was made. In 1795 leave to bring in a bill for abolition was refused in the commons by seventy-eight to sixty-one; and in 1796, though he succeeded in carrying the same measure to a third reading, it was then rejected (15 March) by seventy-four to seventy. Enough of his supporters to have carried it were, as he complains, attending a new comic opera.
Wilberforce had been deeply grieved by the war, and was forced for a time to oppose his friends. He thought that Pitt, though not desirous of war, had not been sufficiently pacific in his conduct of negotiations. A personal appeal from Pitt prevented him from speaking in this sense in the debate upon the king's message at the beginning of 1793. After the fall of Robespierre in 1794 he considered peace to be possible. In the debate on the address (30 Dec. 1794) he proposed an amendment in favour of peace, and he spoke again on behalf of Grey's motion for peace on 26 Jan. 1795. Pitt was much affected by this desertion, and his sleep, it is said, was never broken except upon this occasion and by the mutiny at the
