Amazing Grace

• He had talked with sailors who crewed on the ships.


• He had interviewed witnesses who spoke of the crimes.


• He had held in his hands the cruel restraints.


• He had heard from passengers who'd barely survived.

Wilberforce had the evidence, but he faced a very difficult problem. Britain's slave trade was legal, so the crimes weren't crimes and the wrongs weren't punishable.

As one hundred thousand Africans were wrenched from their homes every year - to become "owned" by foreigners - people in the slave-trading business could ignore their plight because Parliament allowed it.

With extraordinary dedication, however, the Cambridge University essayist (Clarkson) and Parliament's youngest member (Wilberforce) staked out a new path.

Their journey, to illegalize Britain's slave trade, would take twenty years.

ISSUES AND QUESTIONS TO PONDER:   Britain's laws allowed slave-trading.  The buying-and-selling-of-people was therefore legal under British law.  Were such legal actions moral?  If not, does that mean government-enacted laws can sometimes be immoral? 

If a law is immoral, how can it be changed?  Can you think of any laws, today, which are legal-but-immoral?  What are they? 

What happens if everyone just "goes along" with an immoral law?  If individuals harmed by such a law have no power to change it, how would the law ever get changed?  

If an immoral law doesn't impact you - or someone you love - is it realistic to expect that you'd do anything to bring about change?  Why, or why not?