A year or two before, Burke had applied himself to frame some regulations which he hoped might gradually remove the evil; but, little as he was moved by considerations of popularity or daunted by difficulty, he had abandoned the attempt, as one which would meet with a resistance too powerful to be overcome.
Wilberforce was not a bolder man than Burke, but he had no other object to divide his attention, and, therefore, to this one he devoted all his faculties and energies, enlisting supporters in every quarter, seeking even the co-operation of the French government, and opening a correspondence with the French Secretary of State, M.Montmorin, a statesman of great capacity, and, what was far rarer in France, of incorruptible honesty.

M.Montmorin, however, though alive to the cruelty of the traffic, was unable to promise him any aid, alleging the fears of the French planters that its abolition "would ruin the French islands.

He said that it was one of those subjects upon which the interests of men and their sentiments were so much at variance, that it was difficult to learn what was practicable."[160] Wilberforce had already found that the English merchants were still less manageable.

Pitt had entered so fully into his views, that in 1788 he himself moved and carried a resolution pledging the House of Commons to take the slave-trade into consideration in the next session.

And another friend of the cause, Sir W.Dobben, brought in a bill to diminish the horrors of the middle passage by proportioning the number of slaves who might be conveyed in one ship to the tonnage of the vessel.