The astonishment of the world was at its pitch when the champion of Abolition, the steady ally of Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharpe, the Edinburgh Review, was seen attempting to rescue these parties, and taking part against the injured man, the patriarch of a cause defended by that celebrated Journal during a brilliant period of much above thirty years.  The boldness displayed in its pages on this occasion was excessive.  As if feeling that the weak and indefensible part in the assault was the publishing of the letters, it had the confidence to affirm, that this proceeding was called for in justice to Wilberforce’s memory.  So daring an attempt upon the integrity of facts has not often been witnessed.  What!  The publication of these letters, which had no possible connexion with Wilberforce’s character, (a character, indeed, that no one had assailed,) letters which were absolutely foreign even to the question of priority in the abolition cause,—­the publication of these necessary to the defence of Wilberforce?  Then, upon what ground necessary?  How had he been attacked?  Where was he to be defended?  But, if attacked, how did the letters aid,—­how connect themselves with,—­how, in any manner of way, bear upon the defence, or any defence, or any portion of Wilberforce’s character and life?  They showed him to have contributed towards the payment of a debt he had contracted to Clarkson.  But who had ever charged him with refusing to pay his debts?  With his merits as to the Abolition, (if that be what is meant by his character,)—­merits which it was a mere fabrication to pretend that Clarkson had ever been slow to acknowledge,—­those letters had absolutely no possible connexion; and whoever, on this score, affects to defend this publication, is capable of vindicating the printing any private letter upon the most delicate subject, by any man who writes the history of any other affair, or who writes on any subject from which the correspondence is wholly foreign.  It is proper to add, that the editors of this Journal have most properly published a retractation of the charges made, in their ignorance of the whole facts of the case.

The acute and sagacious editor of T. Clarkson’s vindication, has given his reasons for suspecting that this criticism, in the Edinburgh Review, must have proceeded from some party directly concerned in the publication of Wilberforce’s life.  We enter into no discussion of the circumstantial evidence adduced in favour of this supposition.  The editors of the Journal are the parties to whom we look; and as they, after being to all appearance misled by some partial writer, have made the best reparation for an involuntary error, by doing justice to the injured party, we can have no further remark to make upon the subject.