38 RIGHT REV. BISHOP E. GRAHAM INGHAM, D.D., ON 



of a dark stain. In order to understand and rightly appraise 

 this great moral triumph it is necessary to look further back 

 still. 



The one bright feature of the otherwise dreary eighteenth 

 century was the Evangelical Eevival, dating from 1734. That 

 awakening in many parts of England is judged to have saved 

 the Nation from revolution. It produced and inspired great 

 philanthropic and missionary enterprise. And all such move- 

 ments had more to do with Trafalgar and Waterloo, than England 

 has ever cared to guess. 



If Quakers and Puritans were concerned with the " May- 

 flower " enterprise, no less were they foremost in this matter. 

 The story is not as widely known as it deserves to be of how Mr. 

 Thomas Clarkson (a Quaker) happened to see on his college 

 notice-board at Cambridge, somewhere about 1782, that a prize 

 essay in Latin would be competed for at a given time on the rights 

 or wrongs of slavery, and was led to decide to enter his name. 

 He tells us that long before he sat for the prize he was far more 

 interested in the study than anything he might derive from it. 

 He got the prize, and when riding up to London a day or two 

 later he thought much and deeply, and said to himself : ''If 

 half the things I have written down are really happening in the 

 world, the sooner some one sees them to their end the 

 better. But what can I do ? " The answer came : " You 

 can at least translate your essay into English, publish it and 

 send a copy to all your friends." (The place where this 

 decision was reached on the road to London is still shown.) 



Among the friends who received a copy was this same William 

 Wilberforce, Member of Parliament for York, a churchman who 

 came more and more under evangelical influence. And this 

 essay had much to do with Mr. Wilberforce's resolve to dedicate 

 his life to this abolition movement. Nor may it be generally 

 known that one of the earhest results of the rising tide of dis- 

 cussion on this subject was a rush to London from the West 

 Indies of English slaveowners with their slaves to protest against 

 abolition. They thought that their slaves would be an object- 

 lesson of the beneficence of slavery. But, unfortunately for their 

 theory, the slaves became restive, and running away from their 

 masters, the matter got into the law courts, and a long period of 

 litigation went on, which terminated at length in the decision of 

 Lord Justice Mansfield that slaves ceased to be slaves on 

 landing on British soil. 



