rejoice to see here,
have a hereditary connection with emancipation. The late Lord
Derby, then Mr. Stanley, was Colonial Secretary to the Liberal
Government of that day, which had set before it the task of
carrying through Parliament a measure which was to put a term to
Slavery in all the dependencies of the United Kingdom. Mr.
Forster's father, having taken his full share of the agitation
which led to the abolition of colonial Slavery, went to
Tennessee on an Anti-Slavery errand and died in that State.
There are glimpses, ladies and gentlemen, in Mr. Trevelyan's
'Life of Macaulay,' of the devotion with which this great
movement was carried on. Zachary Macaulay, father of our great
historian, was one of the chief workers in the cause, and it is
said of him that for forty years he was ever burdened with the
thought that he was called upon to wage war with this gigantic
evil. In some of the West India islands the apprenticeship
system produced worse evils than the servitude of the Slave. The
negroes were theoretically free, but practically Slaves. The
masters had been paid for their emancipation, but still held
them to service. In a year or two the term of apprenticeship was
shortened, and soon afterwards public opinion at home demanded
and effected its complete abolition. There were four years of
disappointment, trouble, dispute, and suffering in all the West
Indies, except the island of Antigua, where the planters had
preferred to make the change from Slavery to freedom at a single
step. Full emancipation of the colonies had to be enforced in
1838 by another Act, which abolished the transition stage, and
proclaimed universal and complete emancipation. This Act Only
completed the work which 1833 began. The battle in which so many
noble spirits had been engaged was practically won when the name
of Slavery was abolished. The negroes of the West Indies look
back to the 1st August, 1834, as the birthday of their race. The
Emancipation Act, which on that day came into force, spoke the
doom of Slavery all round the world.

"I have ventured on this occasion to touch on different topics
and dates which I thought would be of interest, but it is not my
wish to weary you with longer details. Allow me to thank you for
the kind way in which you have listened to the remarks I have
m