SKETCH OF PITT BY W. WILBERFORCE 43 LETTERS FROM FRIENDS 83 HOME LETTERS 163 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 1. WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.P. FOR THE COUNTY OF YORK _Frontispiece._ (_From a picture by J. Rising._) 2. WILBERFORCE OAK _Facing page_ 17 (At the foot of an old tree at Hollwood, after a conversation with Pitt, Wilberforce resolved to give notice in the House of Commons of his intention to bring forward the Abolition of the Slave Trade.) 3. THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM PITT _Facing page_ 79 (_From a plate taken from an original drawing by the late Mr. Sayers._) 4. BIRTHPLACE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE AT _Facing page_ 163 5. SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, AGED 29 " 245 (_From a drawing by George Richmond._) _LETTERS FROM PITT_ LETTERS FROM PITT. THE first of Pitt's letters to Wilberforce is "perhaps the only one extant that is racy of those rollicking times when the 'fruits of Pitt's earlier rising' appeared in the careful sowing of the garden beds with the fragments of Ryder's opera hat."[2] "GRAFTON STREET, "_July 31, 1782_. "DEAR WILBERFORCE,--I shall not have the least difficulty in applying immediately to Lord Shelburne in behalf of your friend Mr. Thompson, and the favour is not such as to require a great exertion of interest, if there has been no prior engagement. I will let you know the result as soon as I can. Pray have no delicacy in mentioning to me whatever occurs of any kind in which I can be of any use to you. Whenever there is anything to prevent my doing as I should wish in consequence, I will tell you, so we shall be upon fair terms. I trust you find all possible advantage from sea-bathing and sea-air.... I am as well as it is possible in the midst of all this _sin and sea coal_, and, for a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has exchanged his _happier hour_, pass my time very tolerably. Even Goostree's is not absolutely extinct, but has a chance of living thro' the dog days. I shall be happy to hear from you, whether in the shape of an official despatch or a familiar epistle. I am very glad to see you write without the assistance of a secretary. Perhaps, however, you will not be able to read without the assistance of a decypherer. At least in compassion to your eyesight it is as well for me to try it no further. "So adieu. Yrs. ever sincerely, "W. PITT." "BRIGHTHELMSTONE, "_Wednesday, Aug. 6, 1783_.