But after the nineteenth century had arrived, the prospective impolicy of the trade,[4] the prevalence of democratic and Jacobin opinions imported from France, the shame inspired by the example of Virginia, with (we would fain hope) some influences of the Christian religion upon the better spirits, began to create a powerful party against the trade. First, Clarkson published in Latin, and then in English, his work against the slave trade, exposing its unutterable barbarities, as practised by Englishmen, and arguing its intrinsic unrighteousness. The powerful parliamentary influence of Wilberforce was added, and afterwards that of the younger Pitt. The commercial classes made a tremendous resistance for many years, sustained by many noblemen and by the royal family; but at length the Parliament, in 1808, declared the trade illicit, and took measures to suppress it. Since that time, the British Government, with a tardy zeal, but without disgorging any of the gross spoils with which it is so plethoric, wrung from the tears and blood of Africa, has arrogated to itself the special task of the catchpole of the seas, to "police" the world against the continuance of its once profitable sin. Its present attitude is in curious contrast with its recent position, as greedy monopolist, and queen of slave traders; and especially when the observer adverts to her activity in the Coolie traffick, that new and more frightful form, under which the Phariseeism of this age has restored the trade, he will have little difficulty in deciding, whether the meddlesome activity of England is prompted by a virtuous repentance, or by a desire to replace the advantages of the African commerce with other fruits of commercial supremacy. [Footnote 4: Speeches of Pitt and Fox, in Clarkson's Hist., pp. 315, 339.]