There remains little to add, except that this measure, which was carried
with little opposition in 1833, owed its success in Parliament to the
ample bribe of twenty millions, by which the acquiescence of the West
Indians was purchased. The measure had hardly come into operation, when
all men perceived that the intermediate state of apprenticeship was
anything rather than a preparation for freedom, and anything rather than
a mitigation of slavery. It is due to some able and distinguished
friends of the negro race to state, that they all along were averse to
this plan of a transition state. Lord Howick, then in the Colonial
Office as Under-Secretary, went so far as to leave the department, from
his dislike of this part of the measure. Mr. Buxton and others protested
against it. Even its friends intimated that they wished the period of
apprenticeship to end in 1838 instead of 1840; but there was a general
belief of the preparatory step being necessary,--a belief apparently
founded on experience of the negro character, and indeed of the vicious
tendency of all slavery, to extinguish the power of voluntary labour, as
well as to make the sudden change to freedom unsafe for the peace of the
community.
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