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 8 resort to the Law of Rome. It may be supposed, since the Dutch Colonies stood in no peculiar relation to the province of Holland more than to any other provinces of the Union, that even general customs of this province had no preferential claim to acceptance in the Colonies. In theory this is true. In practice, perhaps, the predominant partner carried the day. In South Africa at all events there seems to be some presumption in favour of the admission of a general custom of Holland rather than that of any other province as part of the common law of the Colony.

The Dutch settlements of the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and Guiana, passed into the hands of the British at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Cape was taken from the Dutch in 1795, given back in 1803, and retaken in 1806, since when it has remained part of the British Dominions. It does not appear that any express stipulation was made upon the occasion of either the first or the second cession for the retention of the Roman-Dutch law. Its continuance is the expression of the settled principle of English law and policy that colonies acquired by cession or by conquest