The effects of this great debate cannot be over estimated.  The case of the missionary became the universal topic; The name of the martyred Smith, the general rallying cry.  The superior interest excited by individual sufferings to any general misery inflicted upon masses of the people, or any evil, however gigantic, which operates over a large space, and in a course of time, has always been observed.  The remark was peculiarly applicable in this instance.  Although all reflecting men had, for many long years, been well aware of the evils pervading our colonial system, and though the iniquity and perverseness of West Indian judicatures had long been the topic of universal comment, yet this single case of a persecuted individual falling a victim to those gross perversions of law and justice which are familiar to the colonial people, produced an impression far more general and more deep than all that had ever been written or declaimed against system of West India slavery; and looking back on the consummation of all our hopes in 1833 and 1838, we at once revert from this auspicious era to that ever memorable occasion as having laid the solid foundation of our ultimate triumph.

In this important day, which has thus by its effects proved decisive of the Emancipation question, Mr. Stephen bore no part.  He had long ceased to adorn and enlighten the House of Commons.  His retirement was the result of honest differences of opinion respecting West India slavery with his political friends, then in the plenitude of their power.  Those differences caused him to take the noble part, so rarely acted by politicians, of withdrawing from Parliament rather than lend his great support to men with whom he differed upon a question admitting no compromise; and he devoted his exertions in private life to the furtherance of the cause ever nearest his heart, the publication of his able and elaborate work on the Colonial Slave Laws was the fruit of his leisure; and had he never lent any other aid to the Emancipation, this would alone have placed him high among its most able and effective supporters.  In all the consultations which were held before Mr. Brougham’s motion in 1824, he bore an active and useful part.  In pushing the advantages gained by the debate he was unwearied and successful.  Unhappily it pleased Providence that he should not receive here below the final reward of his long and valued labours; for he was called to his final repose some months before the Emancipation Bill passed into a law.

There remains little to add, except that this measure, which was carried with little opposition in 1833, owed its success in Parliament to the ample bribe of twenty millions, by which the acquiescence of the West Indians was purchased.  The measure had hardly come into operation, when all men perceived that the intermediate state of apprenticeship was anything rather than a preparation for freedom, and anything rather than a mitigation of slavery.  It is due