jury done to them;
or, in other words, as purchase-money for the property they were
compelled to surrender. The apprenticeship system did not wholly
succeed. The slaves were not sufficiently enlightened to appreciate the
character of the new arrangement; and, as the light in which it appeared
to them was rather that of deferring than of securing their
emancipation, it made them impatient rather than thankful. In the
majority of cases it proved difficult to induce them to work even
three-fourths of their time, and eventually the planters themselves were
driven to the conclusion that it was best to abridge the period of
apprenticeship. By the act of the colonial Legislatures themselves it
was shortened by two years, and the emancipation was completed on the
1st of August, 1838.

Still, though on this single point the success of the scheme did not
fully correspond to the hopes of those who had framed it, it was one
which did great honor to their ingenuity as well as to their
philanthropy (Lord Stanley, as Colonial Secretary, being the minister to
whose department it belonged). And the nation itself is fairly entitled
to no small credit for its cordial, ungrudging approval of a measure of
such unprecedented liberality. Indeed, the credit deserved was frankly
allowed it by foreign countries. To quote the language of an eloquent
historian of the period, "the generous acquiescence of the people under
this prodigious increase of their burdens has caused the moralists of
other nations to declare that the British Act of Emancipation stands
alone for moral grandeur in the history of the world."[228] And, in
respect of the personal liberty of the subject, it may be said to have
completed the British constitution; establishing the glorious principle,
that freedom is not limited to one part of our sovereign's dominions, to
these islands alone, but that in no part of the world in which the
British flag is erected can any sort of slavery exist for a single
moment.

The abolition of the political authority of the East India Company,
which took place some years after the time at which we have arrived, and
which will be mentioned in a subsequent chapter, would make it
unnecessary to mention the renewal of its charter, which took place at
this time, were it not that the force of public opinion again made
itself felt in some important limitations of its previous rights. The
monopoly of the trade with China which the Company had hitherto e