358 THE ROYAL PROCLAMATION. 



and Inquisitors there were not less pure-hearted, not 

 less benevolent in private life than Wilberforce himself. 

 He desired to do something in public for the glory of 

 God, and he believed it was his mission to reform the 

 manners of the age. When a man of fashion was 

 always a gambler, and when all the clubs in St James' 

 Street were hells ; when speeches were often incoherent 

 in the House after dinner; when comic songs were 

 composed against Mr Pitt, not because he had a mis- 

 tress, but because he had none ; when ladies called 

 adultery " a little affair ; " when the Prince of Wales 

 was a young man about town, grazing on the middle- 

 classes, it cannot be questioned that, from the Royal 

 Family downwards, there was room for improvement. 

 The reader will perhaps feel curious to learn in what 

 manner Mr Wilberforce commenced his laudable but 

 difficult crusade. He obtained a Royal Proclamation 

 for the discouragement of vice and immorality ; and 

 letters from the secretaries of state to the lords-lieu- 

 tenant, expressing his Majesty's pleasure, that they 

 recommend it to the justices throughout their several 

 counties, to be active in the execution of the laws 

 against immoralities. He also started a society, to 

 assist in the enforcement of the Proclamation, as a 

 kind of amateur detective corps, to hunt up indecent 

 and blasphemous publications. And that was what 

 he called reforming the manners of the age. 



Happily, the slave-trade question began to be dis- 

 cussed, and Mr Wilberforce obtained a cause which 

 was worthy of his noble nature. The miseries of 

 Africa had long attracted his attention : even in his boy- 

 hood he had written on the subject for the daily journals. 

 Lady Middleton, who had heard from an eye-witness 

 of the horrors of slavery, had begged him to bring it 

 before parliament. Mr Pitt had also advised him to 



