James Stephen (politician) - Early Life

Early Life

James Stephen began his career reporting on parliamentary proceedings. Later he held an official post in the Caribbean at St. Kitts; at that time a British colony. During a visit to Barbados he witnessed the trial of four black slaves for murder. The trial, which found the men guilty as charged, was considered by many to be a grave miscarriage of justice. The men were sentenced to death by burning, and Stephens' revulsion at both the trial and the verdict led him to vow never to keep slaves himself, and to ally himself with the abolitionist movement. He opposed the opening up of Trinidad through the use of slave labour when ceded to the British in 1797, recommending instead that Crown land should only be granted for estates that supported the immigration of free Africans. He considered that, besides the evangelical arguments in support of freedom from slavery, internal security, particularly from potential French interests, could be obtained in the British West Indian Islands by improving the conditions of slaves.

Stephen was a skilled lawyer whose specialty was the laws governing Great Britain's foreign trade. He was a defender of the mercantilist system of government-licensed controlled trade. In October, 1805 – the same month that the British fleet under Lord Nelson defeated the French fleet – his book appeared: War in Disguise; or, the Frauds of the Neutral Flags. It called for the abolition of neutral nations' carrying trade, meaning America's carrying trade, between France's Caribbean islands and Europe, including Great Britain. Stephen's arguments two years later became the basis of Great Britain's Orders in Council, which placed restrictions on American vessels. The enforcement of this law by British warships eventually led to the War of 1812, even though the Orders were repealed in the same month that America declared war, unbeknown to the American Congress.