"To soften the extreme rigor of their bondage": James Stephen's attempt to reform the criminal slave laws of the west indies, 1813-1833

Law and History Review

Volumn 23, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 537-587

  Smandych, Russell ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA   (Canada)

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EID: 59849101810     PISSN: 07382480     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0738248000000572     Document Type: Review

References (172)

1. See T. J. Barron, "James Stephen, the 'Black Race' and British Colonial Administration, 1813-47," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 5 (1977): 131-50
2. Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002)
3. Richard Ely, "From Sect to Church: Sir James Stephen's Theology of Empire," Journal of Religious History 19 (1995): 74-91
4. Edward Hughes, "Sir James Stephen and the Anonymity of the Civil Servant," Public Administration 36 (1958): 29-36
5. Paul Knaplund, James Stephen and the British Colonial System, 1813-1847 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1953)
6. Samuel Clyde McCulloch, "James Stephen and the Problems of New South Wales, 1838-1846," Pacific Historical Review 26 (1957): 353-64
7. Jane Samson, "British Voices and Indigenous Rights: Debating Aboriginal Legal Status in Nineteenth-Century Australia and Canada," Cultures of the Commonwealth 2 (1997): 5-16
8. Alan G. L. Shaw, "Orders from Downing Street," Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 54 (1968): 113-34
9. Alan G. L. Shaw, "James Stephen and Colonial Policy: The Australian Experience," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 20 (1992): 11-34
10. Alan G. L. Shaw, "British Policy Towards the Australian Aborigines, 1830-1850," Australian Historical Studies 25 (1992): 265-85
11. Russell Smandych, "Contemplating the Testimony of Others': James Stephen, The Colonial Office, and the Fate of Australian Aboriginal Evidence Acts, circa 1839-1849," Australian Journal of Legal History 8 (2004): 237-83
12. Examples of this writing are cited below in footnotes on Stephen's early upbringing and important influences on his life and career
13. Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 323, Law Officers' Reports, 1813-1833
14. I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to one of the anonymous reviewers for Law and History Review who made this point, which was essential to but missing from my original manuscript
15. D. B. Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation, 1813-1865: A Study of British Policy Towards Colonial Legislative Powers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)
16. Relevant studies include: Neville Hall, "Law and Society in the Barbados at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century," Journal of Caribbean History 5 (1972): 20-45
17. Anthony De V. Phillips, "'Doubly Condemned': Adjustments to the Crime and Punishment Regime in the Late Slavery Period in the British Caribbean Colonies," Cardozo Law Review 18 (1996): 699-715
18. Mindie Lazarus-Black, "Slaves, Masters, and Magistrates: Law and the Politics of Resistance in the British Caribbean, 1736-1834," in Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance, ed. M. Lazarus-Black and S. Hirsch (New York: Routledge, 1994), 252-81
19. Mindie Lazarus-Black, Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters: Law and Society in Antigua and Barbuda (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994)
20. James Walvin, Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), esp. chap. 15 on "Violence."
21. For examples of recent secondary literature on the pre-Civil War United States, see Paul Finkelman, ed., Slavery and the Law (Madison: Madison House, 1997)
22. Thomas Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
23. Judith Kelleher Schäfer, "'Under the Present Mode of Trial, Improper Verdicts Are Very Often Given': Criminal Procedure in the Trials of Slaves in Antebellum Louisiana," Cardozo Law Review 18 (1996): 635-77
24. Jenny Bourne Wahl, The Bondsman's Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
25. Christopher Waldrep and Donald Nieman, eds., Local Matters: Race, Crime, and Justice in the Nineteenth-Century South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001)
26. William Wiethoff, The Insolent Slave (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002)
27. See also Robert J. Cottrol, "Outlawing Outcasts: Comparative Perspectives on the Differing Functions of the Criminal Law of Slavery in the Americas," Cardozo Law Review 18 (1996): 717-52
28. and Raymond T. Diamond, "Condemned by Substance and Process: A Comment on "'Doubly Condemned': Adjustments to the Crime and Punishment Regime in the Late Slavery Period in the British Caribbean Colonies and 'Under the Present Mode of Trial, Improper Verdicts are Very Often Given': Criminal Procedure in the Trials of Slaves in Antebellum Louisiana," Cardozo Law Review 18 (1996): 753-65, for rare but important recent comparative discussion of slave laws in the West Indies and pre-Civil War United States
29. Leslie Stephen (author of), Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I.: A Judge of the High Court of Justice (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1895). Sir James Fitzjames Stephen gained fame as a leading English High Court judge and legal codifier, while another son, Sir Leslie Stephen, became famous as an author and one of the first editors of the British Dictionary of National Biography
30. James Fitzjames Stephen, "Biographical Notice of Sir James Stephen," in Sir James Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, new edition (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868), xi-xvi, at xi
31. Ibid
32. T. Barron and K. J. Cable, "The Diary of James Stephen, 1846," Historical Studies 13 (1969): 503-19
33. Christopher Tolley, Domestic Biography: The Legacy of Evangelicalism in Four Nineteenth-Century Families (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
34. J. F. Stephen, "Biographical Notice of Sir James Stephen," xii
35. Sir Henry Taylor, Autobiography (1885)
36. cited in L. Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 44-45
37. Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation, 1813-1865, 2-3
38. Annan, Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian, 11
39. Ely, "Sir James Stephen's Theology of Empire," 80
40. See Furneaux, William Wilberforce, 116
41. Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Johathan Cape, 1976), 17
42. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 7. James Stephen, Jr., also used the endearing term "Saints" in his later essay on the "Clapham Sect."
43. For an example of this, see Richard R. Follett, Evangelicalism, Penal Theory and the Politics of Criminal Law Reform in England, 1808-30 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), 69
44. L. Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen
45. David D. Zink, Leslie Stephen (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972), 35
46. Tolley, Domestic Biography
47. Hilton, The Age of Atonement, 10
48. Follett, Evangelicalism, Penal Theory and the Politics of Criminal Law Reform in England, 1808-30, 14
49. Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, 16
50. David Bebbington, Evangelism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2-17
51. The following discussion of the core religious beliefs of Evangelicals also draws on the well-regarded work of Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, and Hilton, The Age of Atonement
52. James Stephen (Senior), The Memoirs of James Stephen, Written by Himself for the Use of His Children, edited with an introduction by Merle M. Bevington (London: The Hogarth Press, 1954). Bevington (at 13) notes that Stephen sent for his wife after he arrived at St. Christopher and began practicing at the bar
53. Knaplund, James Stephen, 8
54. For a detailed account of James Stephen's role, see Ann M. Burton, "British
55. Evangelicals, Economic Warfare and the Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1794-1810," Anglican and Episcopal History 65 (1996): 197-225
56. See also Helen Taft Manning, British Colonial Government after the American Revolution, 1782-1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 485-86. Manning also notes that from 1807 to 1815 "Stephen was constantly consulted by the colonial department on matters having to do with slavery and the black race," and that consequently he came to be regarded by West Indian slave interests "as the evil genius of the Colonial Office" in this period
57. A. Meredith John, The Plantation Slaves of Trinidad, 1783-1816 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
58. Robert L. Schuyler, "The Constitutional Claims of the British West Indies: The Controversy over the Slave Registry Bill of 1815," Political Science Quarterly 40 (1925): 1-36
59. G. Stephen, Anti-Slavery Recollections, 26, 35. George Stephen notes that Wilberforce's "Registration Bill" of 1815 "was essentially the same as the order in council of 1812, but with a few variations to adapt the provisions of it to the chartered colonies."
60. PRO, CO 323/40, folio 318
61. See also Sir Reginald Coupland, The British Anti-Slavery Movement, 2d ed. (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1964), 115-16
62. A good account of this is provided in Robert E. Luster, The Amelioration of the Slaves in the British Empire, 1790-1833 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995)
63. See also J. R. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834: The Process of Amelioration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
64. Hughes, "Sir James Stephen and the Anonymity of the Civil Servant," 29-36
65. D. B. Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation, 1813-1865, 22
66. Hansard, N.S., XIV 1081, 3 March 1826
67. cited in Swinfen, Imperial Control of Colonial Legislation, 1813-1865, 22
68. citing National Library of Scotland, Murray Papers, Statement of Stephen, 16 Feb. 1830, vol. 171, folio 55)
69. James Stephen to Jane Stephen, 24 July 1829. In Caroline E. Stephen, The Right Honourable Sir James Stephen . . . Letters with Biographical Notes by His Daughter Caroline Emelia Stephen (Gloucester: John Bellows, printed for private circulation only, 1906), 17
70. In C. Stephen, The Right Honourable Sir James Stephen, 16. Alfred Stephen was the son of James Stephen, Sr.'s brother John, which made him James Stephen's first cousin. Like his brother, James, Sr., John Stephen was also a barrister who emigrated to St. Kitts, and Alfred was bom there in 1802, later returning to England to study law. John Stephen and his family later emigrated to New South Wales, where he was appointed as a judge of the supreme court in 1825. Upon traveling to Australia after completing his legal studies, Alfred Stephen was appointed as solicitor-general of Tasmania in 1825, as a judge of the supreme
71. court of New South Wales in 1839, and as chief justice of the supreme court of New South Wales from 1843 to 1873. L. Stephen, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 24-29
72. G. D. Woods, A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales: The Colonial Period, 1788-1900 (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2002)
73. Sir Reginald Coupland, The British Anti-Slavery Movement, 141. In her account of Stephen's role in writing the Abolition of Slavery Act, Edith Hurwitz notes that: "For Stephen this was a memorable task. He was the son of one of the original founders of the movement, James Stephen, and the brother of George Stephen. As the only abolitionist in the Colonial Office, he was greatly honoured to draft the instrument of Negro emancipation. With an energy which reflected his dedication to the cause, Stephen drafted the entire statute of sixty-four clauses in one week-end."
74. Edith Hurwitz, Politics and the Public Conscience: Slave Emancipation and the Abolitionist Movement in Britain (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973), 66
75. The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed on 29 August, 1833, and put into effect on 1 August, 1834
76. PRO, CO 323/39, folios 175-78. Stephen to Bathurst, 13 November 1813
77. PRO, CO 323/42, folios 195-200. Stephen to Bathurst, 25 October 1822
78. PRO, CO 323/42, folios 254-59. Stephen to Bathurst, 19 September 1823
79. Barron, "James Stephen," 141
80. See, for example, Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
81. Hamar Foster, "'The Queen's Law Is Better Than Yours': International Homicide in Early British Columbia," in Essays in the History of Canadian Law, vol. 5, Crime and Criminal Justice, ed. J. Phillips, T. Loo, and S. Lewthwaite (Toronto: The Osgoode Society, 1994), 41-111
82. Sidney L. Harring, White Man's Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence (Toronto: The Osgoode Society, 1998)
83. Douglas C. Harris, Fish, Law and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2001)
84. Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995)
85. John McLaren, "Reflections on the Rule of Law: The Georgian Colonies of New South Wales and Upper Canada, 1788-1837," in Law, History, Colonialism: The Reach of Empire, ed. D. Kirkby and C. Coleborne (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 46-62
86. David Neal, The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in Early New South Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
87. Stefan Petrow, "Policing in a Penal Colony: Governor Arthur's Police System in Van Diemen's Land, 1826-1836," Law and History Review 18 (2000): 351-95
88. Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998)
89. Lazarus-Black, "Slaves, Masters, and Magistrates"; Lazarus-Black, Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters
90. See, for example, Cottrol, "Outlawing Outcasts"; Diamond, "Condemned by Substance and Process"; Lazarus-Black, "Slaves, Masters, and Magistrates" and Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters; Phillips, "'Doubly Condemned.'"
91. PRO, CO 323/40, folios 113-15. Stephen to Bathurst, 9 February 1816
92. Elbourne, Blood Ground
93. Harring, White Man's Law
94. Kercher, An Unruly Child
95. Samson, "British Voices and Indigenous Rights" and Imperial Benevolence; Shaw, "James Stephen and Colonial Policy"; Smandych, "Contemplating the Testimony of 'Others.'"
96. PRO, CO 323/40, 373-74. Stephen to Bathurst, 31 December 1818
97. PRO, CO 323/41, folios 56-57. Stephen to Bathurst, 31 December 1819
98. James Stephen, The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated, vol. 1 (London, 1824), 305. This is the first volume of a massive two-volume book Stephen, Sr., published under the full title, The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated, as it exists, Both in Law and in Practise, and Compared with the Slavery of other Countries, Ancient and Modern, 2 vols. (London, 1824, 1830)
99. Wilberforce, An Appeal to the Religion, 22-23
100. also cited in Joseph J. Williams, Voodoos and Obeahs: Phases of West India Witchcraft (New York: Dial Press, 1932), 176
101. See George Wilson Bridges, A Voice from Jamaica; in reply to William Wilberforce (London, 1823)
102. and Barclay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies, 185
103. PRO, CO 323/41, folios 76-80. Stephen to Bathurst, 28 April 1820
104. PRO, CO 323/42, folios 326-29. Stephen to Bathurst, 18 September 1823
105. See generally Michael Craton, Empire, Enslavement and Freedom in the Caribbean (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1997)
106. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860
107. Wahl, The Bondsman's Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern Slavery
108. Alan Watson, Slave Law in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989)
109. PRO, CO 323/44, folios 51-55. Stephen to Wilmot Horton, 4 August 1827. Wilmot
110. Horton was the under secretary of the Colonial Office from 12 December 1821 to 15 October 1827. J. C. Saintly, Office-Holders in Modern Britain, vol. 6, Colonial Office Officials (London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 1976)
111. PRO, CO 323/40, folios 265-66. Stephen to Bathurst, 22 November 1817
112. PRO, CO 323/41, folios 62-65. Stephen to Bathurst, 1 March 1820
113. PRO, CO 323/42, folios 147-51. Stephen to Wilmot Horton, 18 February 1822
114. D. Hall, ed., In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-1786 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 72
115. Cited in Walvin, Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire, 206
116. Craton, Empire, Enslavement and Freedom in the Caribbean, 151
117. Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967), 71
118. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 82
119. For other similar descriptions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century American and West Indies criminal slaves laws, see Howard A. Fergus, "The Early Laws of Montserrat (1668-1680): The Legal Schema of a Slave Society," Caribbean Quarterly 24 (1978): 34-43
120. David B. Gaspar, "'To Bring Their Offending Slaves to Justice': Compensation and Slave Resistance in Antigua, 1669-1763," Caribbean Quarterly 30 (1984): 45-59
121. David B. Gaspar, "'Rigid and Inclement': Origins of the Jamaica Slave Laws of the Seventeenth Century," in The Many Legalities of Early America, ed. C. Tomlins and B. Mann (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 78-96
122. E. V. Goveia, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
123. E. V. Goveia, The West Indian Slave Laws of the Eighteenth Century (Lodge Hill, Barbados: Caribbean Universities Press, 1970)
124. Bradley J. Nicholson, "Legal Borrowing and the Origins of Slave Law in the British Colonies," American Journal of Legal History 38 (1994): 38-54
125. Diana Paton, "Punishment, Crime, and the Bodies of Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica," Journal of Social History 34 (2001): 923-54
126. Sir Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers, and Jamaica, with the natural history . . . of the last of those islands; to which is prefixed an introduction wherein is an account of the inhabitants . . . trade, etc., 2 vols. (London, 1701-1725), vol. 1, introduction
127. cited in Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 82-83
128. Phillips, "'Doubly Condemned,'" 714
129. Mary Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787-1834 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 43
130. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, 78-79, argues that although the melioration acts passed in Jamaica between 1780 and 1817 "did to some extent reflect a genuine improvement in the general condition of the slaves," the acts passed after this point began to reflect a "new spirit of severity" on the part of Jamaican slave owners represented in the Colonial Assembly, who recognized that they were fighting a losing battle against the anti-slavery movement and therefore adopted the general attitude of exacting "as much labour from slaves as possible before emancipation."
131. PRO, CO 323/40, folios 77-79. Stephen to Bathurst, 18 July 1815
132. PRO, CO 323/44, folios 107-55. Stephen to Goderich, 5 May 1827. This Act has also been referred to as the Jamaica Consolidated Slave Act of 1826
133. See Stiv Jakobsson, Am I Not a Man and a Brother: British Missions and the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery in West Africa and the West Indies, 1786-1838 (Uppsala, Sweden: Gleerup, 1972), 398
134. PRO, CO 323/44, folios 107-55, Stephen to Goderich, 5 May 1827, at folio 152
135. See also Jakobsson, British Missions and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 403
136. Luster, The Amelioration of the Slaves in the British Empire, 1790-1833, 42-43
137. PRO, CO 323/45, folios 125-37. Stephen to Huskisson, 23 February 1828
138. This Statement by Chief Justice Otley was made in response to a Parliamentary inquiry carried out in 1790 (Britain: House of Commons Select Committee in the Slave Trade, 1790-1791)
139. The same statement is cited in William Goodell, The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: Its Distinctive Features shown by Its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative Facts. Originally published in 1853 by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 302
140. Stephen, The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated, vol. 1 (London, 1824)
141. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, 408. Other secondary literature on both West Indian and pre-Civil War American colonial slave evidence laws that I have examined in the course of my research offers much the same view as Furneaux
142. See Lazarus-Black, "Slaves, Masters, and Magistrates"
143. Schafer, "'Under the Present Mode of Trial'"
144. Watson, Slave Law in the Americas
145. PRO, CO 323/41, folios 197-99. Stephen to Bathurst, 11 August 1821
146. Thomas Morris suggests that the practice of allowing slaves to testify against other slaves, which started in Virginia in 1723, was introduced in order to increase the chance of convicting slaves accused of committing crimes against their masters when no other (white) witnesses were present. The same reasoning was likely also followed in the West Indies. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860, 232-33
147. Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1824, XXIV, 427, schedule 1, pp. 8-13
148. Lord Bathurst, 9 July 1823, Copy of a (Circular) Letter Addressed to Governors of Colonies Having Local Legislatures. Contained in Klingberg, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England, Appendix B, 338-50
149. PRO, CO 323/42, folios 332-41. Stephen to Bathurst, 13 January 1824
150. Bathurst's successors during this period were Viscount Goderich (30 April 1827 to 2 September 1827), W. Huskisson (3 September 1827 to 29 May 1828), Sir G. Murray (30 May 1828 to 21 November 1830), Viscount Goderich (22 November 1830 to 2 April 1833), and Hon. E. G. Stanley Smith (3 April 1833 to 5 June 1834)
151. Saintly, Office-Holders in Modern Britain, vol. 6, Colonial Office Officials, 8
152. PRO, CO 323/42, folios 120-37. Stephen to Bathurst, 5 August 1824
153. PRO, CO 323/43, folios 2-3. List of acts reported on by James Stephen in 1825-1826
154. PRO, CO 323/44, folios 11-43. Stephen to Bathurst, 29 January 1827
155. Huskisson took over as secretary of state on 3 September 1827, and his letter to the lieutenant governor of Jamaica disallowing the consolidated slave act is dated 22 September 1827. Saintly, Office-Holders in Modern Britain, vol. 6, Colonial Office Officials, 8
156. A copy of Huskisson's dispatch of 22 September 1827 is contained the appendix to Barclay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies, 433-44
157. Huskisson to Lieut. Governor Sir John Keane, 22 September 1827
158. cited in the appendix to Barclay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies, 440-41
159. PRO, CO 323/44, folios 88-91. Stephen to Huskisson, 13 December 1827
160. PRO, CO 323/45, folios 13-34. Stephen to Huskisson, 27 February 1828
161. PRO, CO 323/44, folios 174-94. Stephen to Bathurst, 2 January 1827
162. PRO, CO 323/45, folios 256-77. Stephen to Huskisson, 22 February 1828
163. For examples of significant studies of mid-nineteenth-century British colonial law outside the West Indies that can be used as a foundation for further research along these lines, see Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures
164. McLaren, "Reflections on the Rule of Law"
165. Samson, Imperial Benevolence
166. Smandych, "Contemplating the Testimony of 'Others.'"
167. PRO, CO 323/46, folios 52-55. Stephen to Murray, 5 February 1829
168. PRO, CO 323/48, folios 112-13. Stephen to Goderich, 10 October 1831
169. Great Britain, Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3d ser., vol. 18, pp. 1193-1231
170. "Speech of Edward Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Introducing the Government Plan for the Emancipation of Slaves, 14 May 1833." Extract included in Hurwitz, Politics and the Public Conscience, 145-55
171. PRO, CO 323/49, folios 43-45. Stephen to Goderich, 22 January 1833. Revealingly, in this report Stephen commented on a consolidated slave act (No. 447) passed in Bermuda aimed at revising an earlier Act he had reported on originally in 1828, noting: "The whole discussion on the subject of Slavery has, since the date of that Report, been brought into a posture so entirely new, that, pending the enquiries of Parliament upon the general subject, I presume that His Majesty's decision upon this Act must be suspended."
172. Stephen to Stanley, 3 September 1833