"Rightly or wrongly, Wilberforce spoke and voted for repressing agitation; but at the same time he pleaded for positive measures to remedy the ills on which agitation fed—the destitution and the ignorance of the masses... [I]n 1802 Wilberforce ardently supported Sir Robert Peel (the elder) in establishing the first Factory Act, and only criticised the measure for not going far enough. In 1812 he was the prime mover in promoting "An Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor." In 1826, during a period of unrest and strikes, he directed a movement of private charity in Yorkshire to relieve the suffering of the people and to reconcile employers and employed. He took an active interest in prison reform, the abolition of the death penalty or transportation for minor offences, the protection of chimney-sweeps (the "climbing boys"), and the education of the poor. No other politician of his time had a more honourable record."
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Charles Smyth, The Church and the Nation: Six Studies in the Anglican Tradition (1962), p. 151
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce
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William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce (August 24 1759 – July 29 1833) was a British politician, philanthropist, theologian, and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. His third son was Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.
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