Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/441

 12. SIOUSSAT: ENGLISH STATUTES 427 " Whereas it is a settled point that as the common law is the birthright of English subjects, so it ought to be their rule in British dominions ; but Acts of Parliament have been adjudged not to extend to these plantations, unless they are particularly named in such acts." ^ Here is a clear-cut statement of the " orthodox " theory as to extension, exactly similar in tenor, it will be noticed, to the opinion of West in 1720, given above. Since it is easy to prove that contact between Maryland and Pennsylvania was continuous, and that the politics of the latter exerted a decided influence on those of the former, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this discussion in Pennsylvania, which occurred when discussion on the same point in Maryland was inactive, had something to do with the revival of the quarrel in Mary- land in 1722. This hypothesis is helped by the emphasis that we shall find laid by Dulany and his party on the Commissions of the Judges. It is the more remarkable, as the latter argued precisely in opposition to the ideas of the Council in Pennsylvania. A far more striking analogy appears in the history of Jamaica, to which the case of Blankard v. Galdy has already led us. We found it there claimed and adjudged that Jamaica was a conquered Province ; but, as we might suppose, the English inhabitants of the island denied that they repre- sented the conqueror. The military seizure of the island and its cession by Spain did, however, introduce this additional complication into the whole of Jamaica's constitutional his- tory. Moreover, Jamaica was a Crown colony, and had no charter. The instructions and proclamations of Cromwell and of Charles II. were liberal, however. In the time of the latter, especially after the period of military rule had reached a conclusion, the progress of the colony towards a constitu- tional development like that of the other American colonies was constant. But in 1678, upon objections by the lords of the Committee for Trade, the royal government rejected some of the Jamaican laws, and went so far as to urge that the laws for the island must be made in England, then sent to Jamaica
 * Shepherd: Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania, p, 390.