Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/473

 13. ANDREWS: COLONIAL CONDITIONS 459 With this opinion of its legal advisor before it, the Board summoned to its presence the agents of the colony and Win- throp and listened to the arguments on both sides. ^ It then finished the draught of its own representation. Many in- fluences underlay the wording of that report, influences which it has been the purpose of this paper to disclose. The report was the resultant of at least three forces: first, the desire to gratify the colony in confirming the lands already settled under the intestate law, for Dummer had ably pre- sented the inconveniences which would follow the upholding of the decree of the Council; secondly, the determination to syncopate the privileges of Connecticut on the ground that she had been too independent of the Crown, and had too long a list of charges against her to escape some limitation of her powers ; and thirdly, the conviction, in view of the changing constitutional relations of King and Parliament, that the only safe method whereby such end could be accomplished was to apply to the King for leave to bring in a bill for that purpose.^ A few extracts from the report will exemplify this. After recommending compliance with the request of the colony, the Board adds, " And we think this may be done by his Majesty's royal license to pass an Act for that purpose with a saving therein for the interest of John Win- throp, Esq. But we can by no means propose that the course of succession to lands of inheritance should for the Dummer and Mr. Wilks attending, as they had been desired with Mr. Winthrop, their Lordships desired to know from them how the colony of Connecticut would be affected by the annulling the Act for settling intestate estates. And Mr. Dummer acquainted the Board that the colony would be reduced to the utmost confusion if their estates as they now hold them should not be secured to the present possessors, their tenures being liable to be reversed or at least to be disputed in a man- ner that cannot fail to be expensive and vexatious. Upon the with- drawal of these gentlemen their Lordships agreed to consider the matter further at another opportunity." B. T. Journal, 40, f. 316. It is a little remarkable that the clerk of the Board makes no mention of Winthrop's speech, for in Wilks's report of the interview we are told that he spoke at some length. Talcott Papers, I, pp. 217-218. Perhaps Mr. Winthrop had overreached himself. (Ibid., pp. 166, 171.) • .Tudge Chamberlain says that this recommendation of the Board marks a changing constitutional policy in the direction of parliamentary supremacy over the colonies which finally led to the severance of the empire. Op. cit., pp. 134, 136.
 * The minute in the Board of Trade Journal is as follows : " Mr.