Between approximately 1780 and 1830, British culture
and politics underwent a dramatic moral transformation.
The libertarian excess typified by leaders like Fox and
Pitt - both of whom often attended the Commons
drunk - gradually gave way to a code of evangelical
Christianity, of which William Wilberforce, county MP
for Yorkshire, was one of the leading lights.
A powerful parliamentary performer, Wilberforce's greatest
achievement lay not with domestic social reform, but in the abolition of slavery. A founder, in 1787, of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, he led the parliamentary campaign for abolition - which was passed in
1807 - and continued to campaign for the freedom of existing slaves (achieved a month after his death in 1833).
