James Stephen, Lord Glenelg of colonial office bring a humanitarian oversight to South Australia's founding

James Stephen (left), British colonial office under secretary, and Lord Glenelg, secretary of state for war and the colonies, brought humanitarian oversight to colonising South Australia.

James Stephen, the British Colonial Office under secretary (1836-47), credited with playing a big role in abolishing slavery, also affected the colonising of South Australia through his criticism of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and for promoting the rights of Aboriginal people in the province.

Stephen, a lawyer who joined the Colonial Office in 1825, followed his father, a friend of Willbur Wilberforce, in his fight against slavery but also as a member of the evangelical Christian philanthropists called the Clapham Sect.

With politicians taking little interest in colonial affairs, the conscientious Stephen gained growing influence in the colonial office and policy regarding issues such as slavery.

His concerns extended to Indigenous people and the poor being exploited by settlers for quick profits in the colonies: 'The desire to extinguish the freedom of action of those on whose labour the profit of Capital depends is a passion always at work.” This was the fear that propelled his criticism of Wakefield’s theories of colonisation, particularly relating to New Zealand, that he considered vague and impractical. Stephen want further when he accused Wakefield of “wanting in truth and honour”.

Stephen was not satisfied with the parliamentary bill for the South Australia Colonisation Act 1834, opening the way to start the colony but it had already been passed before a Whig (liberal) government under Lord Melbourne came to power and the colonial office became dominated by humanitarians such as Lord Glenelg and George Grey who joined Stephen in an active campaign against slavery and concerns about the rights of Indigenous people.

Lord Glenelg (Charles Grant), one of a group of humanitarian Anglican evangelicals prominent in British politics in 1820s/30s, was British government secretary of state for war and the colonies through the mid 1830s until 1839.

Stephen, lobbied by the Quaker abolitionist Aborigines Protection Society, is credited with instructing South Australia’s first governor captain John Hindmarsh to make the legal rights of Aboriginal people "the centrepiece of his proclamation speech in 1836’". The speech declared that “the Natives, who are to be considered as much under the safeguard of the law as the Colonists themselves and equally entitled to the privileges of British subjects”.