James Stephen

An English lawyer, Stephen (1789-1859) spent time in the West Indies, an experience that turned him into a slavery abolitionist. He married the sister of William Wilberforce (the parliamentarian who led the anti-slavery movement) and was at the centre of the group of evangelicals that promoted abolition and other social reforms and that also had close links with the CMS. Entering the British Parliament in 1808 he rose to become Permanent Colonial Under-Secretary and was highly influential in the development of British colonial policy until retiring in 1847. By the late 1830s, he was convinced that the European settlers in New Zealand, numbering some 2000, already constituted a de facto colony. Because the colony was lawless and increasingly out of control, it had become necessary to regularise it through a formal cession of sovereignty to the British Crown.

Once Glenelg had decided to replace Busby with a Consul and offered the post to Hobson, Stephen began drafting the Royal Instructions to the Consul. The early drafts were strongly influenced by evangelical humanitarianism but by mid-1839, the final versions were mostly concerned with the pragmatic issues surrounding the acquisition of sovereignty. However, they provided neither a draft treaty nor provision for military backing other than what Gipps might be prepared to release.

Stephen was the principal advisor to the various Secretaries of State for the Colonies through this period. He not only helped to communicate their policies and instructions but also to shape them. Like both Lords Glenelg and Normanby, he was a convinced evangelical churchman whose Christian faith and social reforming attitudes led to a pronounced humanitarian emphasis and an active desire to see indigenous peoples such as Maori treated properly and allowed to develop into British citizens rather than destroyed or enslaved.