James Stephen

Sir James Stephen (3 January 1789 – 14 September 1859) was the British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1836 to 1847. He made an important contribution to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

Early life Stephen was born at Lambeth, the third son of James Stephen and brother to George Stephen (1794–1879). An attack of smallpox during James' infancy caused a permanent weakness of eyesight. He was under various schoolmasters, including John Prior Estlin and the Rev. Henry Jowett of Little Dunham, Norfolk. In 1806 he entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he learnt as little as if he had passed the time "at the Clarendon Hotel in Bond Street." He took the LL.B. degree in 1812, having been called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 11 November 1811. His father, who was just leaving the bar, transferred some practice to his son, who also began to make a digest of colonial laws. Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, who was in sympathy with the "Clapham Sect," allowed him to inspect official records for the digest, and in 1813 appointed him counsel to the Colonial Office. His duty was to report upon all acts of the colonial legislatures. The work increased, but he was also allowed to practice privately, and in a few years was making £3,000 a year, and in a fair way to the honours of the profession.

In 1834 Stephen was appointed Assistant Undersecretary of State for the Colonies, and in 1836 Undersecretary, and gave up his office at the Board of Trade. He was esteemed for his knowledge of constitutional law, and as an administrator, and his colleague Sir Henry Taylor said that for many years Stephen 'literally ruled the colonial empire'. The impression of his influence gained him the nicknames of "King Stephen" and "Mr. Oversecretary Stephen". He delivered a course of lectures on the history of France during the summers of 1850 and 1851, which were published in 1852, and praised by De Tocqueville. Another severe illness in the summer of 1850 had forced him to spend a winter abroad. From 1855 to 1857 he held a professorship at the East India Company College, Haileybury, which had been sentenced to extinction. He continued to lecture at Cambridge, but the history school then had little prestige. Keynes asserts in his biography of Malthus that Sir James Stephen was "the last holder" of Malthus's chair at Haileybury, which Malthus had held for thirty years until his death in 1834. Leslie Stephen "used to think nothing" of walking from Cambridge to visit his father at Haileybury. His widow died in 1875. They had five children:

There is a bust of him, by Marochetti, in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Works Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, 1849; 5th edit. 1867 (with life, by his son, J. F. Stephen); reprinted ; volume 2 volume 2