ssent to the amended Bill for the
abolition of slavery, including the generous gift to the planters, and
the measure became law on August 27, 1833. Some of the colonies had
the sense and spirit to discard the apprenticeship system altogether,
and to date the emancipation of their slaves from the day when the
measure became an Act of Parliament. In no colony did the setting free
of the negroes bring about any of the troubles and turmoils, the {200}
lawless outbreaks of blacks against whites, the massacres of the
innocents, which had been so long and so often pictured as the
inevitable consequences of the legislation demanded by the Clarksons,
the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and the Broughams. It seems to us all
now so much a matter of course for a civilized and enlightened State to
decree the extinction of slavery within its limits, that we find it
hard to appreciate at its true value the difficulty and the splendor of
the achievement which was accomplished by the Grey Ministry. It has to
be said, however, that the Ministry and the Parliament were, in this
instance, only the instruments by which the great charge was wrought.
The movement carried on out-of-doors, the movement set going by the
leading abolitionists and supported by the people, deserves the chief
honor of the victory. All the countries that make up the kingdom,
England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, sent their authorized speakers
to sustain the cause of freedom for the slaves. The gift, which on the
recommendation of Lord Grey's Ministry was placed at the disposal of
the West Indian planters, was indeed a lavish gift; but the public in
general made little complaint on the score of its lavishness, and did
not calculate too jealously the value of the sacrifice which the State
was invited to make for the purchase of negro emancipation. Thirty
years and more had to pass before the great American republic was able
to free itself from the curse of slavery, and even then the late
deliverance was only accomplished at the cost of a war which threatened
for the season a permanent division of the States.

[Sidenote: 1833--Labor legislation]

The same year which saw the passing of the measure for the abolition of
slavery in the colonies saw also the passing of an Act which interfered
seriously, for the first time, with something which might almost be
called a system of domestic slavery. We are speaking now of the
measure which dealt with the conditions of facto