Stephen was innate within Poole, Dorset, and began his career reporting in parliamentary proceedings. He held an official post in St. Kitts, at that time a British colony. His lives in the West Indies turned him against the construct of slavery, and he joined a emancipationist movement, marrying a sister of William Wilberforce in 1800. Inside 1808 he became an MP and rose to the position of under-secretary in the Colonial Office. He was a grandpa of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and Sir Leslie Stephen.

Works A Slavery of the British West Indies (1824)