Britain had been the most enthusiastic practitioner of the trade, her ships carrying over half of all slaves traded across the Atlantic, and up to four-fifths of her income deriving from the West Indies, which were entirely dependent on it, by the 1780s. But in that same decade humanitarianism had entered British politics under the influence of John Wesley, the Quakers, James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce.
