The expulsion of the words, although it might appear better to the eye, did not alter the fact that the whole of the States, which then framed their Union, although they did not all practise slavery, yet every one of them then consented to its perpetuation. Thus it came that slavery existed legally under the Stars and Stripes from 1787 until 1865, when happily it was terminated[160] by the proclamation of Lincoln and the constitutional amendment. [160] Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, January 31st, 1865. Such is the story of the slave's "freedom" under the national flag of the United States. We may now turn to the story of his freedom under the Union Jack in Canada. We have seen that slavery, excepting on the soil of Great Britain, was not abolished in all other parts of the British Empire until 1833, and not in the United States until 1865. In 1792, long before either of these dates, self-government had been granted to Canada, and, under the two-crossed Jack, at the first meetings which were held by the parliament in Upper Canada, slavery was abolished on July 9th, 1793.[161] This was before our present Union Jack came into existence, so that in Canada alone, of all the outer lands over which this flag of 1801 has ever been raised, beginning from the very day on which it first was displayed, this three-crossed Jack has always, as in the Motherland, proclaimed freedom to the slave. [161] There were a few isolated instances of slaves who continued for a short time in the possession of their previous owners, but after this date any slave who came to the country, and every child born of coloured parents, was free. Canadians in this way feel added honour in the flag, and that it is more particularly their own; for on the continent of America, whether he came from the British West Indies, from the southern continent, from Cuba, or the United States, in all of which he was still the chattel of his owner, so soon as the slave reached the soil of Canada, and came under the colours of our Union Jack, that moment he was free. The deep significance which this early law of Canada had given to the flag has often been attested by coloured men before their fellow-citizens and the world, and particularly by Frederick Douglas, the great coloured orator of the United States. While dilating upon the great advantage which had come to his own people since freedom had at last been granted to them in the United States, he would nevertheless contrast their condition with that existing in the neighbouring Canadian land, where the black child sits in the public schools by the side of his little white brother, and travels with him in the same carriage on the trains, and where the law is administered with impartiality for both white and black alike.[162]