Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/209

 CH. XVII.] thereof, in like manner as real estates are by the law of England liable, to the satisfaction of debts due by bond or other specialty, and shall be subject to like remedies in courts of law and equity, for seizing, extending, selling, and disposing of the same, towards satisfaction of such debts, in like manner as personal estates in any of such plantations are seized, extended, sold, or disposed of, for satisfaction of debts. This act does not seem to have been resisted on the part of any of the colonies, to whom it peculiarly applied.

§ 183. In respect to the political relations of the colonies with the parent country, it is not easy to state the exact limits of the dependency, which was admitted, and the extent of sovereignty, which might be lawfully exercised over them, either by the crown, or by parliament. In regard to the crown, all of the colonies admitted, that they owed allegiance to the crown, as their sovereign liege lord, though the nature of the powers, which he might exercise, as sovereign, were still undefined.

§ 184. In the silence of express declarations we may resort to the doctrines maintained by the crown-writers, as furnishing, if not an exact, at least a comprehensive view of the claims of the royal prerogative over the colonial establishments. They considered it not necessary to maintain, that all the royal prerogatives, exercisable in England, were of course exercisable in the colonies; but only such fundamental rights and principles, as constituted the basis of the throne and its authority, and without which the king would cease to be sovereign in all his dominions. Hence the attributes VOL. I.