The people that had slaves lost money because of the new law. They would have rioted and possible reverted the law if they got no compensation. Law change is f

The people that had slaves lost money because of the new law. They would have rioted and possible reverted the law if they got no compensation. Law change is forever, compensation is short-term - of course it's worth it (that's one thing that paradox grand-strategy games taught me - never grant priviledges to provinces for gold ;) ). BTW there's a lesson there - it shows how we should deal with the CO2 problem and global warming. Countries that industrialized recently won't stop becoming rich just because it's bad for someone else. We can try to make everybody pay, or we can compensate these that need coal industry the most (i.e. developing countries) to make them switch to better (and more expansive) alternatives.