Slavery was legal under British statute from the earliest colonial period until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The slave trade specifically was legal and regulated until the Slave Trade Act 1807. During this period, Parliament passed numerous acts relating to the regulation of slavery and the slave trade, treating them as legitimate economic activities subject to ordinary commercial law.
The courts enforced property rights in enslaved people. Insurance contracts covering enslaved people as cargo were upheld. Debts secured against enslaved people as assets were recoverable. The entire legal apparatus of British commercial and property law treated enslaved people as lawful subjects of economic transactions.
This legal framework was morally monstrous. But its existence means that participants in the slave trade were acting within the law as it existed. Retroactively imposing financial liability for acts that were lawful at the time would be an unprecedented departure from the principle of legal certainty.
