Meanwhile, however, slavery was suffering and expiring in nearly all
parts of Europe. England began her battle against it even before the
beginning of the century. The work of the philanthropists, begun as
far back as 1786-87, when the Quakers, under the leadership of
Clarkson and Sharpe, began to cry out against the atrocity of human
bondage, now reached the public authorities, and ministers found it
necessary to take heed of what the people were saying and doing. Both
Pitt and Fox became abolitionists before the close of the eighteenth
century. The first attack was against the slave _trade_. Bills for the
abolition of this trade were passed in 1793-94 by the House of
Commons, but were rejected by the Peers. In 1804 another act was
passed; but this also was rejected by the Lords. So too, the bill of
1805! The agitation continued during 1806; and in 1807, just after the
death of Fox, the slave trade _was_ abolished in Great Britain.

The abolitionists went straight ahead, however, to attack slavery
itself. The Anti-slavery Society was founded. Clarkson and Wilberforce
and Buxton became the evangels of a new order that was seen far off.
It was not, however, until the great reform agitation of 1832 that the
government really took up the question of the abolition of slavery.
The bill for this purpose was introduced in the House of Commons on
the twenty-third of April, 1833. The process of abolition was to be
_gradual_. The masters were to be _compensated_. There were to be
periods of apprenticeship, after which freedom should supervene.
Twenty million pounds were to be appropriated from the national
treasury to pay the expenses of the abolition process.

It was on the seventh of August, 1833, that this bill was adopted by
the House of Commons. Two weeks afterward the House of Lords assented,
and on the twenty-eighth of August the royal assent was given. The