The resolutions put forward by the Government were regarded as highly unsatisfactory by most of the leading abolitionists. Macaulay indeed argued with all his usual eloquence and skill in favor of the principle of gradual abolition, and it is hardly necessary to say that it was not in that speech he made use of the pithy sentence which we have already quoted. Buxton proposed an amendment to the resolution, an amendment in fact calling for immediate abolition, and the amendment was seconded by Daniel O'Connell. Buxton, however, was prevailed upon not to press his amendment on the ground that the Government were as eager for emancipation as any one could {198} be, and that Lord Grey and his colleagues were only anxious to bring forward such a measure as might at once secure the support of the majority and prevent further delay, while securing, at the same time, the ultimate and not distant settlement of the whole question. O'Connell stood firm, argued strongly against the proposed compromise, refused to accept it, and actually pressed Buxton's amendment to a division. Of course he was defeated by a large majority, but he carried a respectable minority along with him; and few now can doubt that the amendment which he pressed forward, even after its proposer had abandoned it, was right in its principle, and that the Government, if forced to it, could have carried a plan for immediate abolition with little more difficulty than was found in carrying the scheme of compromise. As the discussion went on the Government made some further concessions to the abolitionists, by reducing the time and modifying the terms of the apprenticeship system, and the abolitionists in general believed it their wisest policy to accept the modified arrangement and thus avoid any further delay. Another alteration of great importance was made by the Government in favor of the planters, and was finally accepted by the abolitionists and by the country in general. The friends of the planters made strong representations to the effect that the proffered loan would be of no use whatever to the owners of slaves whose property was so soon to pass from their hands into freedom, and that there was not the slightest chance of the planters being able to pay back to the English exchequer the amount that the Government was willing to advance. It was urged, too, with some show of reason, that the planters were not themselves responsible for the existence of slave labor, that generations of planters had grown up under the system and had made a profit by it during the days when civilization had not, anywhere, set its face against slavery, and that it was hard, therefore, to make them suffer in pocket for the recent development in the feelings of humanity. The offer of a loan was abandoned by the Government, and it was proposed instead that a gift of twenty millions sterling should {199} be tendered as compensation for the losses that the planters would be likely to undergo.