The 1833 Abolition Act included a payment of twenty million pounds to slave owners as compensation for the loss of their enslaved property. This was unjust: the money went to the wrong people and the people freed received nothing. But it also represented the British state formally closing its accounts with the institution of slavery as a legal matter.
The state paid to end a practice it had permitted and regulated. The compensation was calculated and paid through formal legal processes. Whatever the moral failings of the payment, it represented a legal settlement of the claims that existed at the time. There is a reasonable argument that this settlement, however imperfect, closed the legal account.
