Reform or Ruin: English Moral Thought During the First French Republic

During Pitt's 1785 campaign for moderate parliamentary reform, William Wilberforce supported the government primarily on a moral basis rather than on political grounds. He explained his reasons to a friend, Lord Muncaster, as follows: It is not the confusion of parties, and their quarreling and battling in the House of Commons, which makes me despair of the republic … it is the universal corruption and profligacy of the times, which taking its rise amongst the rich and luxurious has now extended its baneful influence and spread its destructive poison through the whole body of the people.