Just at this crisis he came under the influence of two or three people who felt intensely on the slavery question, and in him they saw the very Parliamentary champion they needed. With his great influence, his powers of speech, his many friends, his independent character, and his high enthusiasms, Wilberforce seemed destined for this work, and he eagerly grasped it. Here was a direct call from God, and to him now every gift, every power he possessed was held as a sacred trust. Besides, he was respected by all parties in the House, and the hope of the Anti-Slavery party lay in their cause being non-political. Victory could only crown their efforts when the whole moral feeling of the nation was aroused, and much, very much hung on their choice of a leader. "Mr. Wilberforce," said Granville Sharp, "with his position as member for the largest county, the great influence of his personal connections, added to his unblemished character, will secure every advantage to the cause." So from the year 1787, William Wilberforce, chivalrous as any knight of old, gave up his life to the righting of a great wrong and to the deliverance of the oppressed.
For twenty years the fight went on, and though he was successfully opposed over and over again by the strong West Indian party, assisted by many of the Tories and the majority in the House of Lords, he was never baffled or disheartened.
"I am in no degree discouraged," he said after one defeat. "It is again my intention to move next year for the abolition, and though I dare not hope to carry the bill through both Houses, yet, if I do not deceive myself, this infamous and wicked traffic will not last out the century."
Both Pitt and Fox supported Wilberforce, but the opposition was solid and wealthy, and the bill above mentioned, brought in during the session of 1796, was again defeated by 78 votes to 61. The Revolution in France was causing much excitement and apprehension among all classes of Englishmen, and the opponents of Wilberforce attempted, among other things, to prove that he was at heart a revolutionist, and that his efforts to set free a class who had always been kept in slavery showed that he believed in the revolutionary "rights of men."