An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade
The Act of Parliament that made the African slave trade unlawful for British subjects and ships from 1 May 1807. It prohibited the trade, not slavery itself.
The Act received the royal assent on 25 March 1807, after twenty years of motions and bills in the House of Commons. Its first section declares the African slave trade “utterly abolished, prohibited, and declared to be unlawful” from 1 May 1807 and sets a fine of a hundred pounds for each person bought or sold. The sections that follow forfeit any ship fitted out for the trade, void insurance on it, and provide for people found on captured slave ships.
It is the document of record for Christians and the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It did not free anyone already held in the British colonies; that was the work of a further Act in 1833.
Cited in
- 25 March 1807, firm date