Between 1807 and 1823, abolitionists showed little interest in abolishing slavery itself. Eric Williams presented economic data in "Capitalism and Slavery" to show that the slave trade itself generated only small profits compared to the much more lucrative sugar plantations of the Caribbean, and therefore slavery continued to thrive on those estates. However, from 1823 the British Caribbean sugar industry went into terminal decline, and the British parliament no longer felt they needed to protect the economic interests of the West Indian sugar planters.