> The British government also paid 20 million pounds – the equivalent of around 17 billion pounds today – to compensate slave owners for the lost capital associated with freeing slaves. This payout was a massive 40% of the government's budget and required many bonds to slave owners to effectuate the law.

honestly the most amazing this is that in the 1830s when this happened, ~20 billion was half of the british government budget in today's pounds. for comparison: the current budget is around 1200 billion, so around 60 times higher, and there's no empire around this time.