<P> At the time, religious enthusiasm was generally regarded as a social transgression and was stigmatised in polite society . Evangelicals in the upper classes, such as Sir Richard Hill, the Methodist MP for Shropshire, and Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, were exposed to contempt and ridicule, and Wilberforce's conversion led him to question whether he should remain in public life . He sought guidance from John Newton, a leading evangelical Anglican clergyman of the day and Rector of St Mary Woolnoth in the City of London . Both Newton and Pitt counselled him to remain in politics, and he resolved to do so "with increased diligence and conscientiousness". Thereafter, his political views were informed by his faith and by his desire to promote Christianity and Christian ethics in private and public life . His views were often deeply conservative, opposed to radical changes in a God - given political and social order, and focused on issues such as the observance of the Sabbath and the eradication of immorality through education and reform . As a result, he was often distrusted by progressive voices because of his conservatism, and regarded with suspicion by many Tories who saw evangelicals as radicals, bent on the overthrow of church and state . </P> <P> In 1786, Wilberforce leased a house in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, in order to be near Parliament . He began using his parliamentary position to advocate reform by introducing a Registration Bill, proposing limited changes to parliamentary election procedures . He brought forward a bill to extend the measure permitting the dissection after execution of criminals such as rapists, arsonists and thieves . The bill also advocated the reduction of sentences for women convicted of treason, a crime that at the time included a husband's murder . The House of Commons passed both bills, but they were defeated in the House of Lords . </P> <P> The British initially became involved in the slave trade during the 16th century . By 1783, the triangular route that took British - made goods to Africa to buy slaves, transported the enslaved to the West Indies, and then brought slave - grown products such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton to Britain, represented about 80 percent of Great Britain's foreign income . British ships dominated the trade, supplying French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and British colonies, and in peak years carried forty thousand enslaved men, women and children across the Atlantic in the horrific conditions of the middle passage . Of the estimated 11 million Africans transported into slavery, about 1.4 million died during the voyage . </P> <P> The British campaign to abolish the slave trade is generally considered to have begun in the 1780s with the establishment of the Quakers' anti-slavery committees, and their presentation to Parliament of the first slave trade petition in 1783 . The same year, Wilberforce, while dining with his old Cambridge friend Gerard Edwards, met Rev. James Ramsay, a ship's surgeon who had become a clergyman on the island of St Christopher (later St Kitts) in the Leeward Islands, and a medical supervisor of the plantations there . What Ramsay had witnessed of the conditions endured by the slaves, both at sea and on the plantations, horrified him . Returning to England after fifteen years, he accepted the living of Teston, Kent in 1781, and there met Sir Charles Middleton, Lady Middleton, Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More and others, a group that later became known as the Testonites . Interested in promoting Christianity and moral improvement in Britain and overseas, they were appalled by Ramsay's reports of the depraved lifestyles of slave owners, the cruel treatment meted out to the enslaved, and the lack of Christian instruction provided to the slaves . With their encouragement and help, Ramsay spent three years writing An essay on the treatment and conversion of African slaves in the British sugar colonies, which was highly critical of slavery in the West Indies . The book, published in 1784, was to have an important impact in raising public awareness and interest, and it excited the ire of West Indian planters who in the coming years attacked both Ramsay and his ideas in a series of proslavery tracts . </P>

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