In the same year slavery was abolished in the West Indies. The trade had been stopped in 1807. But it was still legal for the planters to own slaves, though they could no longer import them. In 1821 Wilberforce had solemnly confided the leadership of his cause to Thomas Fowell Buxton. Mackintosh, Brougham, and Lushington had supported him steadily in the Commons, and they had always had the help of Canning. But the planters had succeeded, partly by threats of secession, partly by promises of amendment, in maintaining their abominable system. The decline of the West Indian trade since the peace had reduced their influence, and Parliament, free from unrest at home, could turn its attention more easily to the Colonies. The planters were presented with twenty millions of public money. The slaves were to be treated as apprentices for seven years and afterwards were to be free labourers. Thus the last trace of acknowledged slavery was removed from the British Empire. It is melancholy to reflect that the men who expended so much honest sympathy and indignation over slavery in the West Indies should have so carefully refrained from using it to abolish the slavery which oppressed their fellow-countrymen. Slavery is not always a matter of buying and selling, of chaining and whipping; and in the sweated labour and prostitution which were rife in England there were things no less horrible than the worst barbarities of the colonial planters. A Liberal reform no less important than the Factory Act was the establishment of a State department of education. In 1833 Radicals like Roebuck and Grote and Whigs like Brougham persuaded Parliament to grant L20,000 to supplement the private donations which were being administered by the different societies for education. Whitbread had introduced a Bill to establish schools in all poor parishes in 1807. Brougham had obtained {180} returns showing the existing provision for popular education in 1818. But nothing was done by the State to remedy the deficiencies of private enterprise until 1833, and even what was done then was so unscientific that, the private societies being all Protestant, Roman Catholic children got no benefit from it at all. After further efforts by Brougham and other enthusiasts, the Government in 1839 proposed to appoint a committee of the Privy Council as a central education authority. A training school for teachers was to be established under its supervision, and the State grant was to be increased to L30,000.