Note 9 — Chapter XV · “I DID DESTROY THEIR POWER TO ROB US, ANY LONGER, WITHOUT THE ROBBERY BEING PERCEIVED.”

Even Mr. Wilberforce, busied with the wrongs of distant races, had remarkably low and narrow views concerning the lower orders of his own country, as he called them. In 1801, he “nearly resolves” to move in Parliament for a grant of one million for their relief! At another time he thinks Government should relieve, privately, some of the distress, “and afterwards allege that they did not do so publicly for fear of producing a mischievous effect abroad.” And one’s patience is almost exhausted at hearing him call the people “tainted” with disaffection, when everybody knows they are starving. Vide his “Life, &c.,” iii., 3, 6, 13.