Slavery in Britain and Ireland - Abolition

Abolition

The Church of England was implicated in slavery. Slaves were owned by the Anglican Church's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPGFP), which had sugar plantations in the West Indies. When slaves were emancipated by Act of the British Parliament in 1834, the British government paid compensation to slave owners. Among those they paid were the Bishop of Exeter and three business colleagues, who received compensation for 665 slaves.

A member of the House of Commons and a supporter of the Tory government, William Wilberforce became intrinsically involved in the abolition of slave trade in the Britain. His conversion to Evangelical Christianity in 1784 played a key role in interesting him in this social reform. William Wilberforce’s Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the slave trade in the British Empire. It was not until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that the institution finally was abolished.

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Famous quotes containing the word abolition:

    I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.
    Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

    Woman—with a capital letter—should by now have ceased to be a specialty. There should be no more need of “movements” on her behalf, and agitations for her advancement and development ... than for the abolition of negro slavery in the United States.
    Marion Harland (1830–1922)

    I am gradually drifting to the opinion that this Rebellion can only be crushed finally by either the execution of all the traitors or the abolition of slavery. Crushed, I mean, so as to remove all danger of its breaking out again in the future.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)