of the Government, or
the leader of the Opposition, feel that the time is near at hand when
the cause must be taken up by one or other of the great parties in the
State.

Buxton raised the whole question in the following session; and then
Lord Althorp, speaking for the Government, went so far as to offer a
sort of compromise by suggesting that the colonies which in the future
should give evidence of their sincere resolve to make distinct
improvement in the condition of their slaves should be rewarded and
encouraged by a permission to send their sugar into English ports at a
reduced rate of duty. The country, however, had long outgrown the
condition of mind in which this feeble and ridiculous proposition could
be regarded as worthy of serious consideration. The notion of
sacrificing any part of the country's revenues for the purpose of
bribing the planters to deal a little less severely with their slaves
was not likely to find much favor among the men who had thus far
conducted the great agitation against slavery. The object of reformers
such as Clarkson, Wilberforce, Buxton, Brougham, and Mackintosh was not
merely that the negroes should be flogged less often, or that the negro
women should not be flogged at all, but that the whole abominable
system which made men, women, and children the absolute property of
their owners should be brought to an end forever.

{196}

[Sidenote: 1833--A plan for the abolition of slavery]

At last it became evident to the Whig Ministry that something definite
must be done, and that nothing would be considered definite by the
country which did not aim at the total abolition of slavery. The hour
had come, and the man who could best turn it to account in the House of
Commons was already in his place. Lord Stanley, who had joined the
Reform Ministry as Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, had
since that time been moved to the higher position of Colonial
Secretary, and to him was appropriately confided the task of
introducing the measures which the Government had determined to take.
The Lord Stanley of those days was in after years the Earl of Derby,
whom some of us can still call to mind as one of the most brilliant
orators in the House of Lords at a time when Brougham and Lyndhurst
maintained the character of that assembly for parliamentary eloquence.
Those among us who remember the eloquent Lord Derby, the Rupert of
debate, remember him as a Tory Prime Minister or the Tory