Wherefore, it may be asked, was this matter at all dragged forth to light, except to effect that unworthy purpose, and to give pain to a man as eminently as deservedly respected and beloved?  The false pretext is, the vindication of their father’s memory.—­But it had never been attacked.  They affect to suppose such an attack, that they may have a pretext for inflicting a wound in a fictitious and almost a fraudulent defence.—­But if it had been ever so rudely attacked, the letters are no defence.  For the only possible pretence of attack was the notion of Thomas Clarkson having assumed the priority, and these letters can have no earthly relation to that point.  Whether Wilberforce, or Clarkson, or neither of them, first began the abolition struggle, is a question as utterly wide of the subscription as any one private matter in the life of either party can be of any one public transaction in which both were engaged.

The indignation of mankind was awakened by this disgraceful proceeding, and it was in vain that the friends of the Wilberforces urged, as some extenuation of their offence, the zeal which they naturally cherished for the memory of their parent.  Men of reflection felt that no well-regulated mind can ever engage in slandering one person for the purpose of elevating another.  Men of ordinary discernment perceived that the assaults on Clarkson’s reputation had no possible tendency to raise Wilberforce’s reputation.  Men of observation saw at once that there lurked behind the wish to praise the one party, a desire to wound the other; and gave them far less credit for over-anxiety to gratify their filial affections than eagerness to indulge their hostile feelings.  It was plain, too, that they sought this gratification at the hazard of bringing a stain upon the memory of their father; for what could be more natural than the suspicion that they had obtained from him the materials out of which their web of detraction was woven?  And what more discreditable to the author of the affectionate and familiar letters of Wilberforce to Clarkson than their discrepancy with the charges now urged against him?  It is due to the memory of this venerable man, now gone to his rest, to say that no one who knew him, ever so slightly, could believe in the possibility of his holding one language to his friend and another to his children:  far less of his bequeathing to them anything like materials for the attack upon one to whom he professed the most warm and steady attachment.  But if such be the conclusion of all who knew the man, assuredly in arriving at it they have derived no help from the lights afforded by his family.

The vindication of Thomas Clarkson has been triumphant; the punishment of his traducers has been exemplary.  His character stands higher than ever; his name is lofty and it is unsullied; they have a character to retrieve,—­a name which they have tarnished since it descended upon them, they have to restore by their own future deserts.