STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

plantations and in other territories then under British jurisdiction. 23 Registered
slaves were declared free and the legal status of slavery was ended on 1 August
1834. A system of compulsory apprenticeship regulated by law was instituted to
replace it but by 1838 had been abolished by the colonial legislatures concerned.
A compensation fund, finally fixed at £20 million, was also established for the
benefit of slave owners in specified colonies. 24 The detailed provisions of the Act
setting out the original scheme, together with later Acts which altered it, were
repealed in the 19th century. 25 All that remains of the Act is part of section 12.
This relates to the formal abolition of the status of slavery in the territories to
which the Act applied, most of which are now independent states, and it is long
since spent in its operation.
152 Slave Trade Act 1843
8.1 Only sections 1 and 4 of this Act survive. Section 1 extended the Slave Trade
Act 1824 to British subjects “wheresoever residing or being, and whether within
the dominions of the British crown or any foreign country”. Section 4 provided
machinery for the taking of evidence abroad in British colonies and other
dependencies for use in criminal proceedings for slavery offences in the Court of
Queen’s Bench. The procedure under section 4 was by way of mandamus
requiring the chief justice in the colony to hold a court for the examination of
witnesses and transmit the evidence to the court in England. The rationale for
the procedure was that it would enable British subjects committing slavery
offences abroad to be tried in England, the underlying assumption being that it
was impossible to trust to the justice of the local courts. The procedure has long
fallen into disuse and its rationale has disappeared. Most of the colonies
concerned are now independent states to whose chief justices it would
inappropriate to issue an order of mandamus. So far as concerns surviving
British dependencies, process of this nature as respects developed
dependencies (such as Gibraltar and Bermuda) would similarly now be
inappropriate and as respects undeveloped areas (such as the British Indian
Ocean Territory) would be unnecessary. Section 4 is therefore obsolete and of no
practical utility. The repeals proposed in section 1 of the 1843 Act and in the
Courts Act 1971 and the Judicature (Northern Ireland) Act 1978 are
consequential.
153 Slave Trade Act 1873
8.1 The Slave Trade Act 1873 consolidated with amendments the Acts giving effect
to the bilateral slave trade treaties concluded by the United Kingdom with foreign
powers in the nineteenth century: see paragraph 8.3. As is noted at paragraph
23 As originally enacted, the Act did not extend (s 64) to any territories of the East India
Company, Ceylon or St Helena. The ending of slavery in India and in British protectorates
in Africa came later. In Sierra Leone the legal status of slavery was only finally and
effectively ended in 1928.
24
The Bermudas, Honduras, Jamaica and other West Indian islands, British Guiana, the
Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius.
25 Sections 24-60, and later Acts relating to slave compensation funds, were repealed by the
Court of Chancery (Funds) Act 1872. The other detailed provisions enacted in 1833 were
repealed by Statute Law Revision Acts passed between 1874 and 1890.
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