From there he went to the Isle de France in 1791 and worked in the law office of François Fressanges, who was also the mayor of the island's capital, Port Louis.
[5][6] After the capture of the Isle de France by the British in 1810 as part of the Napoleonic Wars, Bestel remained active in public affairs as a notable of the district of Grand Port.
Bestel took part in the sitting of the Conseil Général des Communes on 14 February 1820 which debated the accusation by General Darling, commander of the British troops in Mauritius, that the island's colonists persisted in the slave trade.
[7][8] In 1832 Governor Colville appointed Bestel to the Conseil législatif, another body through which the colonists represented their interests to the British administration, as the member for Grand Port.
[9] Bestel voted in favour of the dismissal of public prosecutor John Jeremie, reviled among the colonists for being an anti-slavery campaigner, who had sought to abolish slavery in the island without financial compensation for the sugar plantation owners.
[12][13] Following successful representations to the British government by Franco-Mauritian lawyer Adrien d'Épinay, also a member of the Conseil législatif, the plantation owners received compensation when slavery was abolished in Mauritius on 1 February 1835.