The colonial administrator and member of parliament for Puerto Rico, Hernandez Arvízu published his project for an emancipation law in 1869. He recommended that all children of slaves should be born free, and also proposed the emancipation of all slaves aged under seven or over seventy, and the gradual abolition of slavery over a period of ten to twelve years. Arvízu opposed immediate abolition, but argued that both the threat of slave resistance and public pressure from "abolitionist peoples and societies" (20) made some kind of reform of slave law in the Spanish colonies necessary.