Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/443

 1^. SIOUSSAT: ENGLISH STATUTES 429 " The little clause before recited has cost the island, in fifty years, about £50,000, the net income of the revenue being about £10,000 per anrmm. Yet, considering the lui- speakable benefits derived by them in virtue of this compact, they do not think it too dear a purchase." ^ Such was the controversy in Jamaica, thus contempora-^ neous in part with that conducted by Dulany in Maryland. That the Jamaican affair was studied in Maryland will appear below, where we shall find the Proprietor, in 1724, citing the failure of the Jamaicans in one of their attempts to get their English laws. Five years later, in the Maryland Grazette, a letter from Jamaica announces the probability of an agreement. This Act " has been at home near a year " and " cannot well fail of being cofirmed, being exactly conformable in the substance to the draught sent hither from home." ^ At the time, therefore, when Dulany began his decade of agitation in Maryland, there was, in the first place, a theory or tradition established in the English courts ; a tradition not yet distinct, but approaching definiteness. Secondly, there had been frequent occasions in other colonies where the relations to the legal system of the mother country were mat- ters of dispute. Lastly, the uncertainty in Maryland was as old as the colony. With these points in mind, we may per- haps sympathize with " An American," who in " An Essay on the Government of the English Plantations," published at the beginning of the eighteenth century, voiced his com- plaint that " No one can tell what is law and what is not in the plan- tations. Some hold that the law of England is chiefly to be respected, and, when that is deficient, the laws of the sev- eral colonies are to take place. Others are of the opinion 219-20. The account of Jamaica as a whole is based on the Appendix to the Tenth Chapter of Long's very valuable work; on a pamphlet en- titled The Privileges of the Island of Jamaica Vindicated — reprinted in London, 1766, with an appendix; and on the opinion of Yorke and Wearg, the Attorney and the Solicitor-General, as to the legal constitu- tion of Jamaica in 1722-25, Chalmers' Opinions (Colonial, Edition of 1814, Vol. I., pp. 204-224). See also Lord Mansfield's decision in Camp- bell V. Hall. •Maryland Gazette, June 10-17, 1729. The Jamaican letter is dated March 5.
 * I>ong, Edward: The History of Jamaica, London, 1774, Vol. I., pp.