Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/103

 CH. IV.] the provincial legislature, which were approved, were an act for the prevention of frauds and perjuries, conformable to that of Charles the Second; an act for the observance of the Lord's day; an act for solemnizing marriages by a minister or a justice of the peace; an act for the support of ministers and schoolmasters; an act for regulating towns and counties; and an act for the settlement and distribution of the estates of persons dying intestate. These and many other acts of general utility have continued substantially in force down to our day. Under the act for the distribution of estates the half-blood were permitted to inherit equally with the whole blood. Entails were preserved and passed according to the course of descents of the common law; but the general policy of the state silently reduced the actual creation of such estates to comparatively narrow limits.