Sorry - that was technically inaccurate of me. The French Revolution 1789 declared all men to be equal and so there were, in theory no more slaves. That did not stop slavery in French colonies.
In 1772 a case was heard in England - the Somerset case. The finding was that no person could be sold hence a slave became worthless as an item of trade. A similar finding was made in Scotland about a decade later - I forget the name of that case or even the date. Slavery [new slaves] became illegal in 1807, I think, and all slaves held by Britons, home or abroad were emancipated in 1833.
Britain had been prominent in the slave-trade for the best part of 200 years though the biggest slavers in Europe, by far, were Portugal!
I have made the point before that the British Empire was much more a force for good than for bad [law, a civil service, railways, Western medicine, basic education] and all men are a product of their times.
I see little use in hammering on bitterly about inequities that occurred 5 or 10 generations ago - why not 20 or 30 or 100 generations ago? So it is not productive to describe Irish working folk of 1840 as "slaves" when they just down-trodden as were most working-class people world-wide, my own Forest of Dean ancestors amongst them.
