British schoolchildren probably know the name William Wilberforce better than American adults do (myself included), but the
earnest and upright new film "Amazing Grace" suggests we would all do well to remember the fellow. He did, after all, bring about the end of the British slave trade. England was never a slave-holding nation nearly as much as the United States was, probably due to the fact that England's class system ensured plenty of people were poor enough to work for near-slave wages without having to make it official. But the empire had a tremendous stake in the overseas trade, shipping slaves from Africa to Jamaica and other British colonies until the early 1800s. "Amazing Grace" covers two periods of time, commencing in 1797 with Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) in poor health both physically and emotionally. He has just spent the previous 15 years as a member of the House of Commons, trying to get Parliament to end the slave trade. While everyone is sympathetic to the horror stories of slave ships and the treatment of slaves in the West Indies, no one wants to see what will happen to the British economy when slavery is gone. It would ruin the empire, they say, and so Wilberforce has been shouted down every time. He is a defeated man.
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