Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/122

106 royalty being found inconvenient for the purpoes of public jutice, and for the revenue, (it affording a commodious aylum for debtors, outlaws, and mugglers) authority was given to the treaury by tatute 12 Geo. I. c. 28. to purchae the interet of the then proprietors for the ue of the crown: which purchae was at length completed in the year 1765, and confirmed by tatutes 5 Geo. III. c. 26 and 39. whereby the whole iland and all it’s dependencies, o granted as aforeaid, (except the landed property of the Atholl family, their manerial rights and emoluments, and the patronage of the bihoprick and other eccleiatical benefices) are unalienably veted in the crown, and ubjected to the regulations of the Britih excie and cutoms.

ilands of Jerey, Guerney, Sark, Alderney, and their appendages, were parcel of the duchy of Normandy, and were united to the crown of England by the firt princes of the Norman line. They are governed by their own laws, which are for the mot part the ducal cutoms of Normandy, being collected in an antient book of very great authority, entituled, le grand coutumier. The king’s writ, or proces from the courts of Wetminter, is there of no force; but his commiion is. They are not bound by common acts of our parliaments, unles particularly named. All caues are originally determined by their own officers, the bailiffs and jurats of the ilands; but an appeal lies from them to the king in council, in the lat reort.

thee adjacent ilands, our more ditant plantations in America, and elewhere, are alo in ome repects ubject to the Englih laws. Plantations, or colonies in ditant countries, are either uch where the lands are claimed by right of occupancy only, by finding them deart and uncultivated, and peopling them from the mother country; or where, when already cultivated, they have been either gained by conquet, or ceded to us by treaties. And both thee rights are founded upon the law of nature, or