28 LORD MACATTLAY. 



the Clapham Sect. This society was composed of men whom England 

 and humanity will ever hold in high esteem ; for they were united in a 

 holy bond to remove a huge <\TOng, to wipe ofp what was then the foulest 

 blot on England's fair escutcheon — the traffic in human blood ; and it is to 

 the efforts of these men that this infamous A\Tong was removed so far as 

 England was concerned, and that we can now boast of being foremost in 

 the work of negro emancipation. 



Pen and pencil have made us familiar with Johnson and his con- 

 temporaries. Who will sing the Clapham Sect? Let us for a moment 

 call lip a few of their names — 



V\'e are in the house of Henry Thornton, a wealthy banker, who 

 for many years represented South wark ui parliament. Here in a 

 saloon projected and decorated by William Pitt, in his leisure hours, the 

 guests assemble. Therein the centre is William Wilberforce, the apostles of 

 the brotherhood, with a body so small and limbs so spare that one wonders 

 how his mighty soul was compressed within him. He is in glorious spirits 

 to-night. After an electioneering struggle, the remembrance of which is 

 still alive in Yorkshire, and which is said to have cost the defeated 

 candidates £200,000 William Wilberforce is now again M.P. for the 

 county of York, lie is fairly abandoned to-night to the current of his 

 own joyous fancy, for one step in his life-labour had been gained, the act 

 for the abolition of slava trade had become the law of the land. 

 William Smith, M.P., for Norwich is among the group. 



In the corner vender sits Granville Sharp (in his letters to his 



3" 



friends he often facetiously signed himself h j: —M a man of chivalrous 



goodness — stern to indignation against every form of wrong — originally a 

 draper's apprentice he left employment for a clerkship in the Ordnance- 

 offi^'e, and it was while occupying this comparatively humble situation 

 that he curried on in his hours of leisr.r: the work of negro Emancipation. 

 For f.v'o years he gave all his spare time as well as hom-s snatched from 

 sleep to the study of the laws of England affeeting personal liberty — 

 Avading through an immense mass of dry and repulsive matter, without an 

 adviser, assistant or instructor. In fact he could find no lawyer favourable 

 to his undertaking He had his reward. For at the close of his labours 

 he thanked God that he coidd find not a single law on the statute book 

 which justified the enslaving others. He now prosecuted his laboiurs in 



