ABSTRACT
IN the West Indies, as in South Africa, it was difficult for the Imperial Government to bring itself to a full realization of its responsibilities. It was an Imperial Act that had abolished slavery. It was the Imperial Government, acting under pressure from public opinion in England, that had induced the legislatures of the colonies in 1838 to bring the period of ‘apprenticeship’ to an end. The Government still proposed to protect the negro from abuse by carefully scrutinizing colonial legislation, and by taking from Parliament an annual vote, steadily diminishing in amount, for a stipendiary magistracy to enforce the law as between the two races. In the Crown Colonies—British Guiana, Trinidad, St. Lucia, and, on the other side of the world, Mauritius—it introduced by Order in Council alterations in the law regarding marriage, contracts for labour, vagrancy, and the unauthorized occupation of land; and it recommended the colonies with representative assemblies to adopt these alterations. But there its conception of its responsibility ended. The negro was free. Was it for the Imperial Government to say how he should use his freedom? The planter had been compensated for the loss of his slaves. Was not this enough? Was it not his business to make the best of the altered conditions of society?
