While, as has been seen, these labors were becoming complicated and arduous, the opposition was growing not only strong, but violent. Anti-slavery petitions, intended for presentation in Parliament, must be sent in strong boxes, addressed, not to the leaders of the cause, but to private persons, lest they should be opened and their contents destroyed. Mr. Wilberforce is requested, when writing to a friend in Liverpool, not to frank his own letter, lest it should never be received. Correspondence on this subject must be carried on anonymously, and addressed to persons not known to be interested. This was not the worst. To random words of defiant opposition were added threats of personal violence. For a space of two years the friends of Mr. Wilberforce were annoyed by a desperate man who had declared that he would take the life of the Yorkshire member. But, to do justice to the advocates of the trade, there was one form of violence which they appear never to have contemplated:--secession. The injured slave-merchants of that time never thought of conspiring against the government under which they lived. That was reserved for a later day. Yet, while appearances were so dark, the cause was actually gaining ground. The moral sense of the nation was becoming aroused. The scattered sympathies of the religious classes were concentrating. Already public sentiment in certain quarters was outgrowing the movements of Parliament, and the impatient friends of the negro declared that the leaders of the cause had given up! In rebutting this charge, Mr. Wilberforce took high ground. He declared that for himself his aim in this thing was the service of God, and, that having committed himself to this enterprise, he was not at liberty to go back. Believing that these efforts on behalf of an injured people were in accordance with the will of the Almighty, he expressed himself confident that the divine attributes were enlisted in the work and sure of the ultimate success of the cause. Of his sincerity and honesty in this matter we need not speak. By common consent he takes place among those who in this world have been permitted to illustrate on an extended scale the power and beauty of the Christian life. As a reformer of the abuses of society he is often cited as a model, uniting to a singular purity and sweetness of spirit an immovable firmness of will. To these blended and diverse qualities was owing, in a great measure, the final success of the long-contested Abolition Bill. Seldom, indeed, has the patience of an advocate been put to a severer test than during the protracted period that the bill for the suppression of the Slave-Trade was before the House. To push it forward when there was an opening, and to withdraw when effort was useless or worse than useless, was the course pursued for a series of years. The subject, meanwhile, was never lost sight of; when nothing more could be done, the House were reminded that it was still in reserve.