Page:Copley 1844 A History of Slavery and its Abolition 2nd Ed.djvu/330

312 could effect it, it could not be lost sight of by the friends of humanity, that their triumph was incomplete, while personal and hereditary slavery continued to exist in the colonies of the British empire. It was indeed fondly hoped, that the great measure of 1807, accomplished after a twenty years' struggle, would have tended rapidly to the mitigation and gradual extinction of negro bondage in those colonies. But year after year elapsed, and a degree of supineness prevailed; people seemed to think that in obtaining the abolition of the slave-trade, they had done all that devolved upon them to do. If the subject was referred to, it was generally met by an expression of triumph and gratitude in that achievement, accompanied with too little disposition to farther inquiries which should disturb the repose of satisfaction. Some few, however, more enlightened and ardent spirits, or who had had peculiar opportunities of observing, or of ascertaining the real state of things, were continually stirred with a conviction that, after a lapse of sixteen years from the abolition of the slave-trade, slavery and all its ills existed almost with undiminished prevalence, notwithstanding occasional improvements in the colonial government, with a view to the advantage of the slave.

Of these improvements, one of the most important was the Registry Bill, in 1816, introduced by Mr. Wilberforce, and earned, through the greatest opposition from the colonists and their partisans. Its object was to prevent the illicit importation of slaves from Africa. The measure was ably defended by Mr. Stephen, in letters to Wilberforce. The local knowledge and high professional character of this gentleman qualified him to discuss