Slavery Abolition Act 1833 British Parliament held two inquiries. The results of these inquiries contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The Act had its third reading in the House of Commons on 26 July 1833, three days before William Wilberforce died. It received the Royal Assent a month later, on August 28, and came into force the following year, on 1 August 1834. In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies. Former slaves over the age of six were redesignated as "apprentices", and their servitude was abolished in two stages:
Slavery in Canada African slaves, native nations also enslaved their rivals, but most were purchased by colonial administrators and sold to native nations until 1833, when the British Parliament abolished slavery across the British Empire. (There is often confusion over the date at which this occurred; Britain had abolished the slave trade in 1807, but did not abolish slavery itself until 1833, in an act of Parliament that came into effect on 1 August 1834.) Prior to this, however, courts had, to varying degrees, rendered slavery unenforceable: for example, in Lower Canada after court decisions in the late 1790s, the "slave could not