Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/442

 428 ///. THE COLONIAL PERIOD for passage by the Assembly, after the manner of Irish legis-lation under Poyning's Law. This reactionary attempt of the Crown to compel the civilian was opposed and rejected by the Jamaican Assembly. Then ensued a long wrangle, which left it in great doubt what laws were in force and what not. A temporary agreement as to the practical difficulties was reached in 1684. But the claim of the colonists to the English laws — not only to those passed before the settlement, but to some, like the Habeas Corpus Act, passed after it — was denied by the King in Council and by the courts. The Jamaica Assembly went farther than that of Mary-land, in that they entangled with this controversy the ques-tion of levying the public money, and refused to pass a law to grant a perpetual revenue until the Crown would fully admit the rights they demanded. This the Crown for a long time refused to do ; but at last, in 1728, the Assembly " Settled a permanent revenue, not burthensome to them- selves. ... In return for this they obtained the royal con-firmation of their most favourite and necessary Acts of As-sembly, and the following declaration expressed in the 31st clause of this revenue Act : " And also all such laws and statutes of England as have been at any time esteemed, introduced, used, accepted or received as laws, in this island, shall and are hereby declared to be, and continue, laws of this his majesty's island of Jamaica forever ! " This clause is justly regarded by the inhabitants as the grand charter of their liberties, since it not only confirmed to them the use of all those good laws which originally planted and supported freedom in England, but likewise of all the other provisions made for securing the liberty and property of the subject in more modern times; when, upon the several overthrows of tyrannic powers in that Kingdom, the sub- jects' rights were more solidly fixed on the rational basis of three solemn compacts between the sovereign and people: at the Restoration of Charles II., the Coronation of the prince of Orange, and, lastly, the accession of the House of Hanover.