We use the implosion of the first Commission of Inquiry into Liberated Africans in the Caribbean (1821–26) to examine the deep discomfort of key conservatives with the politics of amelioration. Anti-slavery commissioner, John Dougan, and his conservative counterpart, Thomas Moody fell out when two young and very brave women attempted to use the commission to protest the conditions under which they laboured. Their testimony prompted thousands of pages of debate over whether and to what degree the commission should inquire into the relationship of masters and enslaved people rescued and indentured under the Abolition Act; which rules governed that relationship; whose voices should be recorded in the imperial archive; and, ultimately, the fate of the enslaved, soon to be emancipated throughout the empire.