Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/435

 12. SIOUSSAT: ENGLISH STATUTES 421 and declared to be Laws by some Acts of Assembly of the Province, or have been received there by a long uninterrupted usage or practice which may impart a tacit consent of the Lord Proprietary and of the people of the colony that they should have the force of a law there." ^ The modification here evident was without doubt a reflection of the agitation in Maryland to which we shall devote extended discussion hereafter. Passing over other cases, we come to the doctrine of the pre-revolutionary period as summed up by Blackstone,^ who, upon this subject delivers himself as follows: " Besides these adjacent islands [Man and the Channel Islands], our most distant plantations in America, and else- where, are also in some respects subject to the English laws. Plantations or colonies, in distant countries, are either such where the lands are claimed by right of occupancy only, by finding them desert and uncultivated, and peo- pling them from the mother country ; or where, when already cultivated, they have been either gained by conquest or ceded to us by treaties. And both these rights are founded upon the law of nature, or at least upon that of nations. But there is a difference between these two species of col- onies, with respect to the laws by which they are bound. For it hath been held ^ that if an uninhabited country be dis- covered and planted by English subjects, all the English laws then in being, which are the birthright of every subject * are immediately there in force. But this must be understood with very many and very great restrictions. Such colonists carry with them only so much of the English law as is ap- plicable to their own situation and the condition of an infant colony. Such, for instance, as the general rules of inheritance, and of protection from personal injuries. The artificial refinements and distinctions incident to the prop- erty of a great and commercial people, the laws of police ^ Chalmers' Opinions, Vol. I., p. 206. Also in Calvert Papers (MS.) No. 52, p, 14. Chalmers dates this March 9, 1729. The Jamaican con- troversy referred to below had been settled in the meantime; while the controversy in Maryland had reached its height. p. 107. » Refers to Salkeld 411, 666. * Refers to 2 Peere Williams 75.
 * Blackstone's Commentaries (3rd ed. Cooley) Introduction, sec. 4,