Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/128

 88 Every town was a corporate body, entitled to choose its officers, and to admit persons as freemen. Sports and labour on Sunday were prohibited. Purchases of land from the Indians were prohibited. By a formal enactment in 1700 it was declared, that in all actions, matters, causes, and things whatsoever, where no particular law of the colony is made to decide and determine the same, then in all such cases the laws of England shall be put in force to issue, determine, and decide the same, any usage, custom, or law to the contrary notwithstanding. About the same period the English navigation laws were required, by an act of the colonial legislature, to be executed. Twenty years' peaceful possession of lands under the claim of a title in fee simple was declared to give a good and rightful title to the fee; and thus a just and liberal effect was given to the statute of limitations, not as a bar of the remedy, but of the right. The acknowledgment and registration of conveyances of lands in a public town registry were provided for. The support of the ministry was made to depend upon free contributions. Appeals to the king in council, in cases exceeding £300 in value, were allowed. A system of redress in cases of abuses of property devoted to charitable uses was established; fines and common recoveries were regulated; and the trial by jury established. The criminal code was not sanguinary in its enactments; and did not affect to follow the punishments denounced in the Scripture against particular offences. Witchcraft, however, was, as in the common law, punished with death. At a later period, lands of persons living out of the colony or