William Mason, Aston, to William Wilberforce, 20 February 1792.

Mason presses Wilberforce to pursue another motion to abolish the slave trade but warning him that the time may be too late. 

Dear Sir,

   I am sorry you had the trouble of franking the Cambridge Sermon. Your time is too precious, & your Eyes unfit to be so employed. When I know for certain that your prejudiced Collegue [sic] is returned I shall (if I have occasion for a like favour) employ him as having use to do.

   I perceive you have heard ev’ry thing relative to the York petition. I left the Place the day after I had moved it, &, after resting with my relations at Wadsworth on the Sunday, I arrived at Rotherham on the Monday, time enough to second our friend Tooker. But here matters went not off so unanimously. One of the Quakers, by name Payne, no relation of the Rights of Man Paine, but full as violent as his namesake, had prepared a violent Paper not in the least couched in petitionary terms, wch he wished either to supercede [sic] or at least be engrafted into Tooker’s. With much difficulty we persuaded him, that it had better come in the form of a resolution, & I withdrew in a committee to arrange it in that mode. It is still too flaming, but Payne seemed to value his own composition too much to bear with greater alterations, & Tooker chose to give his signature only to the Petition. The Resolution in question is printed in Gale’s Sheffield Register. I hear that at that place three Petitions were produced at the first meeting, & that disputes ran high concerning wch were to be preferred. [f. 23v] These it is hoped, will be decided at a second meeting to be held this day, & one of the three finally adopted.

   With respect to the momentous Question you put to me, I can only say, that after the Petitionary Spirit has spread so much throughout the Kingdom, you cannot with any face of Propriety avoid making your motion again in this sessions. Yet I with sorrow own to you that I have the greatest fears for its success. The St Domingo business, tho’ it certainly ought not, has & will affect the Sentiments of many in the house, as it has certainly done of many out of it. Men in almost ev’ry decision must be acted upon by moving their first feelings. Procrastination is the bane of just Sentiments. When the generality begin to reason they usually employ that faculty not in confirming but combating these feelings. Evidence however strong fails to convince them, & sophistry however weak tends to puzzle, if not to absolutely mislead them. To strike the moment the Iron is hot, is the only time to strike, & that moment is unhappily over.  You would be astonished to know, as I do, how many there are, after all that has been adduced on the subject, that either will not or cannot discriminate the Abolition of the Slave Trade from the Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies. With these the flimzy Prate of a Scotch Reviewer, or a Mercenary Paragraph writer in the Newspapers, will outweigh all the Eloquence as well as all the Evidence brought before Parliament.— After all this, it must rest with your Prudence whether you will move the Question [f. 24r] early or late in the Sessions, but move it I think you must.  

   Many I find are ready, if the Question fails to lay all the blame on the Minister, “who with such a majority as he has can carry any thing,” not discriminating, as you see, the liberal Spirit of the Chatham, from the despotic one of the Walpolean & Pelham schools. If the said minister acted as the Papers say he did in a late interview, I revere him, as far as I can on this side of Idolatry – but I will please you from the fatigue of reading my scrawl, with an assurance how perfectly I am Dear Sir

                     Your most sincere friend

                                 W Mason

I wish your amanuensis would write me a single line to tell me when your Collegue is returned

Text: MSS. Wilberforce, d. 17, fols. 23-24, Bodleian Library. William Mason (1724-97) was an Anglican divine (Canon of York Minster) and a popular poet, artist, writer, and friend of Wilberforce. "Tooker" might be ‘Tooke’, a prominent Quaker family in York.