in that portion of the King's dominions had been recognized by
Parliament and courts of justice for many generations, and that suddenly
to withdraw a sanction and abrogate a custom thus established, and, as
it might fairly be believed, almost legalized by time, would be not only
ruinous to the planters, who would have no other means of cultivating
their lands, but, as being ruinous to them, would also manifestly be
most unjust. Even in the interests of the slaves themselves, instant
emancipation before they were fit for it might prove to them a very
doubtful blessing. The state, too, and the general interests of the
kingdom had to be considered, for the shipping employed in the West
India trade, and the revenue derived by the Imperial Exchequer from it,
were both of great amount. It was a very complicated question, and
required very cautious handling; but it was plain that the people were
greatly excited on the subject. One or two of the ministers themselves
had deeply pledged themselves to their constituents to labor for the
cessation of slavery; and eventually, though by no means blind to the
difficulty of arriving at a thoroughly safe solution of the question,
the ministry decided that "delay was more perilous than decision," and
they brought in a bill, in which they endeavored to combine the three
great objects--justice to the slave, by conferring on him that freedom
to which he, in common with all mankind, had an inviolable right;
justice to the slave-owner, by compensating him fairly for the loss of
what (however originally vicious the practice may have been) he was
entitled by long usage and more than one positive law to regard as
property; and a farther justice to the slave, that justice which
consists in being careful so to confer benefits as to do the greatest
amount of good to the recipient. The first object was attained by
enacting that those who had hitherto been slaves should be free; the
third was arrived at by making the freedom thus given, not
instantaneous, but by leading them to it, and preparing them for its
proper and useful enjoyment, by a system of apprenticeship. The slave
was to be apprenticed to his master for seven years, receiving, partly
in money and partly in kind, a certain fair amount of wages, and having
also one-fourth of his time absolutely at his own disposal. And the
second was secured by granting the planters the magnificent sum of
twenty millions of money, as compensation for the in