Page 44 - Phonebox Magazine December 2009

Amazing Grace in Olney
The article entitled “Amazing Disgrace” by Geoff Bacchus in the November issue of Phonebox was so full of “misinformation” that I feel compelled to state the truth about John Newton.
Newton’s own story of his involvement in the slave trade in his misguided youth is told in his Authentic Narrative, available from the Cowper & Newton Museum. Published a few months after he began his ministry in Olney in 1764, it clearly states his increasing dissatisfaction with the slave trade (then regarded as legal by the government).
Within months of arriving in Olney, Newton’s small savings, which he had hoped might just about cover his removal expenses, were lost when his former ship-owner Manesty went bankrupt. He had no further connection with money gained from the slave trade.
The abolition of the slave trade began in earnest with a small, dedicated committee of Quakers meeting in London from 1783. Note that this commendable effort did not begin until almost thirty years after Newton had left the slave trade. In between those years, there was no major public outcry, merely complacence all round.
We have seen in our own lifetime how campaigns against drink-driving and passive smoking, for instance, have taken many years to become socially acceptable. It was at least as impossible to achieve a rapid change of public opinion in the 18th century. Even now this change is not complete, for
by Marylynn Rouse, The John Newton Project, www.johnnewton.org
hundreds of sex slaves are trafficked today within our own country.
William Wilberforce first met Newton in Olney while a boy. During his conversion crisis as an MP he sought a secret meeting with Newton, who persuaded him to remain in politics. The Middeltons of Teston asked him shortly afterwards to be parliamentary spokesman on abolition. Wilberforce had many discussions with Newton about the slave trade. Satisfied that he had explored every aspect of how to persevere with such a daunting task, he resolved after one of their meetings, in 1787, to take it on.
He wrote immediately to the newly formed Abolition Committee to request a supply of information. Over the next few days and weeks the pace intensified dramatically. Jonathan Aitken captures this vividly in his biography John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace. The Abolition Committee called for “useful publications”. Newton immediately wrote an eye-witness account of the slave trade, making plain its abject cruelty and the urgent need for it to cease. Within days of publication, the Abolition Committee bought up all unsold copies and commissioned a further 3,000 to be printed. They handed a copy to each member of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
William Cowper was deeply impressed by Newton’s Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, considering it “to all prudent persons the most satisfactory publication on the subject.”
All the royalties for Newton’s book went directly from the Abolition Committee to the Sunday School Society.
Newton later persuaded Cowper to write poems about the slave trade to heighten awareness for the abolition campaign.
Meanwhile Thomas Clarkson had also begun working for the abolition of the slave trade. One of the first people he consulted was John Newton. The Abolition Committee appointed Clarkson to supply data to Wilberforce.
Newton gave evidence against the trade before the Privy Council and again before a Select Committee of the House of Commons. He held prayer meetings in central London for the success of the parliamentary debates on abolition, preaching against the slave trade in the financial hub of the city (where interested parties argued fiercely for its continuance). Newton lived to see the abolition of the slave trade become law.
Dr Modupe Taylor-Pearce of Freetown, Sierra Leone (whom some may have heard preaching in Olney), says of the radically changed life of John Newton: “For us living through the pain and cruelty of the civil war in Sierra Leone, and possessed with the eternal Gospel that can turn people from 'darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God', every help to show that man can change, with concrete examples, is extremely welcome.”
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44 Phonebox Magazine
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