"There should be some kind of phasing in to it, at least! Think about what happened in the States, during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln simply declared all slaves free all at once, and look what happened: the South went into an uproar, was able to regroup after Reconstruction and placed black people in a different kind of legal bondage for another hundred years! Do you really want to risk that kind of blowback and place the civil rights of house elves in jeopardy simply because you moved on emancipation too fast?"