Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/449

 13, ANDREWS: COLONIAL CONDITIONS 435 burden of taxation and the care of the fences, highways, etc., was distributed as evenly as possible ; and every effort was made to increase the amount of land brought under cultiva- tion. All this was characteristic of New England in general and of Connecticut in particular. The life in the latter colony was predominantly agricultural, the industrial and commercial aspects had hardly begun to appear, the govern- ment was republican — and for a hundred and fifty years of all the colonial governments it was the one most independent of the mother country ^ — the laws made were adapted to the let him take his chapman always provided the Inhabitants may buy and sell within themselves notwithstanding this order." Milford Town Records, I, p. 11. I have quoted this law from the Milford Records, because it contains some new points supplemental to the many others printed before and has itself never been printed. A similar law passed by the Colony of Connecticut came to the notice of the legal advisor of the Board of Trade who commented on it thus : " This Act would be very extraordinary in England but whether it may not be proper in a country where they are encompassed with enemies is humbly sub- mitted to your Lordship's consideration." The limited range of this law, which grew, as did the intestate law, out of the necessities of the settlement, and the brief period during which it was enforced, pre- vented it from assuming so important a place in the relations between England and the colonies. ^ The colonies most exempt from English interference and control were of course Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Massachusetts, however, had a royal governor and was obliged to deliver her laws for the approval of the Council within three years after they had been passed, though if they were not repealed within that time they could not be repealed at all. Pennsylvania had a five years limit. But the laws of Connecticut and Rhode Island were not repealable by the Crown; these colonies never lost their charters as did Massachusetts, never came into direct dependence upon the Crown as did Maryland for a short time, and were almost outside the knowl- edge of the Privy Council and the Board of Trade. There is, however, one difference in the attitude of these colonies toward English law which is interesting. Rhode Island, by referring herself to the law of England in cases where she had none of her own, made some of the laws of England to be her own laws. Connecticut, on the other hand, in case of doubt referred to " some plain and clear rule of the Word of God." In 1665 the Deputy Governor and the Assistants desired the advice of the General Court concerning incest, whether the law of the colony " that orders in defect of a law we should have recourse to the Word of God for our law " were binding or not. The Court decided that the colony should act according to the Word of God. Conn. Col. Bee, II, p. 184. Robert Quary commented on this statement in the Book of Laws as follows : " The people are of a very turbulent, factious and uneasy temper. I cannot give their character better than by telling your I>ordships that they have made a body of laws for their govern- ment which are printed; the first of which is that no law of England shall be in force in their government till made so by act of their own. Having told your Lordships this, I think there is no further room to admire at any extravagancy acted in the government." Quary to the