Compensation, indeed, must follow: it could not be withheld.

But what would be the amount of it?
The country would have no less than from eighty to a hundred millions to pay the sufferers; and it would be driven to such distress in paying this sum as it had never before experienced.
The last attempt was to show them that a regulation of the trade was all that was now wanted.

While this would remedy the evils complained of, it would prevent the mischief which would assuredly follow the abolition.
The planters had already done their part.

The assemblies of the different islands had most of them made wholesome laws upon the subject.
The very bills passed for this purpose in Jamaica and Grenada had arrived in England, and might be seen by the public; the great grievances had been redressed; no slave could now be mutilated or wantonly killed by his owner; one man could not now maltreat, or bruise, or wound the slave of another; the aged could not now be turned off to perish by hunger.

There were laws, also, relative to the better feeding and clothing of the slaves.