actions. When taken into careful consideration a salary of 300 pounds per annum, in an unsatisfactory working environment, is not enough to secure the loyalty or honesty of the average person when more can be gained through deception. Therefore corruption could be expected from some of the magistrates whose over-ambition may have led them to accept bribes from those willing to give them. In conclusion one can therefore form the opinion that the Act of Emancipation was imprecise in its methods for the workings of the systems it proposed. The Act was very unclear when it came to how the apprentices should be treated and what real freedoms they were to be granted. It seems that the British Parliament assumed that the relationship between the planters and the apprentices would eventually work itself out under the scrutiny of the Stipendiary Magistrates. Also the preparations made to benefit the newly ‘released’ slaves paid more attention to the economical profit that could be made during the transitional period of apprenticeship than on the overall welfare of the slaves. In other words when the Act of Emancipation was put into effect in 1834, the slaves would not have had many reasons to celebrate since for a further four to six years, they would be tied to the plantation that represented all the things that they wanted to get away from when their freedom was obtained. The proposals of the Emancipation Act of 1834 were also quite indistinct in defining the actual authority of the planter in the workings of the apprenticeship system. One can formulate the assumption that the vagueness of the Act itself can be attributed to the fact that the interests of the apprentices after their release was not of the utmost importance to the majority of the British Government. Therefore the end result appeared to hold no real freedom for the ‘emancipated’ slaves....
