Then, the attempt was made to represent this pure, and valuable, and disinterested man as a mendicant philanthropist, who, for his exertions in the cause of justice, stooped to the humiliating attitude of collecting a remuneration from his friends. The words of William Wilberforce, and other Abolition leaders, prove that he had expended a very considerable portion of his own small patrimony in the cause, and that the subscription was to pay a debt,--a just and lawful debt; not to confer a bounty, or reward, or remuneration for services performed. It is also proved, that after being reimbursed to the amount of the sum contributed, or rather levied on those for whom the poorest of their body had advanced his own money, he remained out of pocket far more than others had ever given, after their share of the repayment was credited to them, in this debtor and creditor account. But this is not all: Mr. Wilberforce himself, then a man of ample fortune, and Member for Yorkshire, had in 1807, published a pamphlet in the cause. The Minutes of the Committee for 6th June, 1811, contained an entry of an order to pay 83_l_. out of the subscription funds to Mr. Cadell, being Mr. Wilberforce's share of the loss sustained by that publication. There had been no mention at all of this in his life, by these reverend authors, who scrupled not to print the garbled letters, with the manifest design of lowering the character of their father's friend, by ranking him among venal stipendiary pretenders to philanthropy, and jobbing mendicant patriots. Wherefore, it may be asked, was this matter at all dragged forth to light, except to effect that unworthy purpose, and to give pain to a man as eminently as deservedly respected and beloved? The false pretext is, the vindication of their father's memory.--But it had never been attacked. They affect to suppose such an attack, that they may have a pretext for inflicting a wound in a fictitious and almost a fraudulent defence.--But if it had been ever so rudely attacked, the letters are no defence. For the only possible pretence of attack was the notion of Thomas Clarkson having assumed the priority, and these letters can have no earthly relation to that point. Whether Wilberforce, or Clarkson, or neither of them, first began the abolition struggle, is a question as utterly wide of the subscription as any one private matter in the life of either party can be of any one public transaction in which both were engaged.