Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/444

 430 ///. THE COLONIAL PERIOD that the laws of the Colonies are to take the first place and that the laws of England are in force only where they are silent. Others there are who contend for the laws of the colonies, in conjunction with those that were in force in England at the first settlement of the colony, and lay down that as the measure of our obedience, alleging that we are not bound to observe any late acts of parliament in England except such only where the reason of the law is the same here that it is in England." ^ pp. 117-118. Compare also the section on the Civil Jurisdiction in a Short Discourse on The Present State of the Colonies in America. This pamphlet is No. 6 in A Collection of Papers and Other Tracts, by Sir William Keith, London, 1779 (2nd ed.). This pamphlet, No. 6, was pre- sented to the King in 1728, and thus is contemporary with the struggles in Maryland and in Jamaica.
 * Quoted in Lincoln : The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania,