And here a great variety is observable. In every case they are subject to a local governor, the representative and deputy of the sovereign, who acts under the royal commission and the royal instructions, by which the commission is usually accompanied. In every case, too, the law is administered by local judges, deriving their authority from the crown; and an appeal is universally allowed from the decision of those judges to the sovereign in council, here in England (g). But in other particulars our present colonies differ widely from each other in their plan of government, some of them having received the gift of English laws, others remaining subject to the codes of foreigners, their former masters; some remaining under the legislative power of the crown itself, and others receiving their laws from a local legislative council, or from representative assemblies, established by authority of the crown or of parliament. With respect to those possessing assemblies of this description, (which are a numerous class,) it may be said that their whole interior polity is in general closely modelled upon that of the mother country. For having a governor (the representative of royalty), and royal courts of justice, they have also a local council, forming a sort of upper house, in addition to their general assembly, corresponding with our House of Commons; who, by their united authority, make laws

West Indies, we may notice the following Acts: For the relief of certain colonies and plantations therein, 2 & 3 Will. 4, c. 125; 5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 51; 3 & 4 Vict. c. 40; 7 & 8 Vict. c. 17; 8 & 9 Vict. c. 50; 11 & 12 Vict. c. 38; 19 & 20 Vict. c. 35: For the sale of incumbered estates therein, 17 & 18 Vict. c. 117, amended by 21 & 22 Vict. c. 96, and 25 & 26 Vict. c. 45: For regulating the prisons there, 1 & 2 Vict. c. 67: For increasing the number of bishoprics therein, 5 &

6 Vict. c. 4: For establishing courts of appeal for certain of the West India Islands, 13 & 14 Vict. c. 15: For enabling Her Majesty to confirm an Act passed by Antigua as to Barbuda, 22 & 23 Vict. c. 13: To authorize the extension of a loan by West India relief commissioners to Dominica, 23 & 24 Vict. c. 57: For the settlement of a loan due from the Island of Jamaica to the Imperial Government, 25 & 26 Vict. c. 55.

(g) Vide post, vol. II. p. 478.

suited to the emergencies of the colony. This however is subject to such restriction as necessarily results from the subordination of these local establishments to the crown and the imperial parliament. For acts of assembly not only require the assent of the governor as representing the crown, before they can come even into temporary operation, but are liable to be afterwards annulled by a notification from this country of their having been disallowed by the sovereign in council (i). And it is particularly declared by statute 7 & 8 Will. III. c. 22, that all laws, bye-laws, usages and customs, which shall be in practice in any of the plantations, repugnant to any law made or to be made in this kingdom relative to the said plantations, shall be utterly void and of none effect (k).

Thus much as to our settlements in general (1). But there is a large class of them in the West Indies and elsewhere, which require our separate attention, on account of their connexion with the late system of colonial slavery. From the earliest period of their acquisition, their produce had been raised by the compulsory labour of the negro

(i) Clark's Colonial Law, 41. (k) A similar declaration occurs in 16 & 17 Vict. c. 107, s. 190, as to laws in our possessions in America repugnant to our laws relating to the customs, and to trade and navigation, so far as relates to such possessions.

(1) We may notice here the following statutes, containing recent regulations applicable to our colonies in general. As to the apprehension of offenders in the colonies escaping into the United Kingdom, and vice versâ, 6 & 7 Vict. c. 34. As to admission in certain cases of unsworn testimony in colonial courts, 6 & 7 Vict. c. 22. As to letters-patent in the colonies, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 91. As to the jurisdiction of the admiralty in the colonies, 12 & 13 Vict. c. 96;

23 & 24 Vict. c. 88. As to the postoffice in the colonies, 12 & 13 Vict. c. 66. As to the proof of colonial acts of state and legal proceedings, 14 & 15 Vict. c. 49, s. 7. As to the land and casual revenues of the crown in the colonies, 15 & 16 Vict. c. 39. As to colonial lighthouses, 18 & 19 Vict. c. 91. As to sale of crown waste lands in colonies, and emigration commissioners, 18 & 19 Vict. c. 119. As to ascertaining the law in, or pleaded within, any of her Majesty's dominions, 22 & 23 Vict. c. 63; 24 & 25 Vict. c. 11. As to the trial of a felonious poisoning, out of the limits of the colony in which death occurs, 23 & 24 Vict. c. 122. As to issuing writs of habeas corpus to the colonies, 25 & 26 Vict. c. 20.

race, and notwithstanding the peculiar freedom of her own institutions, and the pure form of Christianity which she professes, the mother country had never hesitated to lend her sanction to that iniquitous method of cultivation (m). Yet among all the nations involved in the guilt of slavery, she alone has now passed a law for its abolition, and under circumstances which can leave no doubt that the measure is really due to the force of her moral principles. The conscience of the British public was first awakened to the atrocity of the traffic by which the plantations were continually supplied with new victims from the coast of Africa; and at a later period to the nature of the colonial bondage itself, which was shown to exceed even the servile system of Pagan Rome in severity, and to be without parallel in the history of human oppression (n). The trade, after a long and obstinate opposition from the parties interested, was abolished in 1807 (0)—and after another protracted interval, during which the duty of ameliorating the condition of the negroes in the colonies was confided (but in vain) to the local legislature, the imperial parliament at length resolved to put an end, from 1st August, 1834, to the system of slavery itself-which was carried into effect by an Act passed in 1833 (p). To justify this measure, however, it was thought necessary to award to the slave proprietors the sum of twenty millions sterling, in compensation for the loss of service sustained,-and also to interpose a certain period of probation during which the slaves,

(m) Several of our statutes gave sanction to this system, as already established by the local laws of the colonies (see Forbes v. Lord Cochrane, 2 Barn. & Cress. 469); yet the condition of slavery has been long pronounced by our courts to be repugnant to the genius of the municipal law of England; see the case just cited, and the case of Somersett, 11 St. Tr. 340; Lofft. 1. (n) See " Slavery of the British

West India Colonies delineated," by the late James Stephen, Esq. 1824.

(0) 47 Geo. 3, st. 1, c. 36. The foreign slave trade, viz. the supply of foreign countries with slaves, was abolished in 1806, by stat. 46 Geo. 3, c. 52; and the supply of our own conquered colonies had been previously forbidden by order in council in 1805.

(p) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 73.

instead of passing suddenly into absolute liberty, should be considered as apprentices, and held in that qualified species of subjection to their former masters. But in the result, the masters themselves found it expedient to abandon the system of apprenticeship before the prescribed time had expired; and, by acts of their own legislature throughout the different colonies, admitted their apprentices into the state of pure freedom at a period somewhat earlier than they would otherwise have been entitled to its enjoyment (q).

In

Our possessions in India are also entitled, from their superior extent and importance, to specific notice. 1708 two rival associations existed in England for the purposes of East India traffic; but in that year they were consolidated into one by Act of Parliament (r), with an exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies and other specified places (s);—a privilege afterwards renewed by many successive grants. This body was originally incorporated by the name of "The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies," but convenience attached to them the shorter appellation of "The East India Company," which afterwards became by express provision their proper legal style (t). In the progress of their well-known history, they crushed upon the Indian peninsula the power of the rival settlers from France; and though first instituted for purposes merely

(q) Besides the Acts above cited, see 5 Geo. 4, c. 113, s. 9; 7 Will. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 91, for making the slave trade piracy: 5 Geo. 4, c. 113; 9 Geo. 4, c. 84; 11 Geo. 4 & 1 Will. 4, c. 55; 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 72; 5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 60, c. 61; 6 & 7 Will. 4, c. 81; 7 Will. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 62; 1 & 2 Vict. c. 39, c. 40, c. 41, c. 47, c. 83, c. 84, c. 102; 2 & 3 Vict. c. 57, c. 73; 6 & 7 Vict. c. 50, c. 98; 7 & 8 Vict. c. 26; 16 & 17 Vict. c. 16, c. 17; 18 & 19 Vict. c. 85, for farther provisions as to slave trade : 5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 45; 6 & 7 Will. 4,

c. 5, c. 16, c. 82; 1 & 2 Vict. c. 3, c. 19; 4 & 5 Vict. c. 18, as to slave compensation and slavery: 16 & 17 Vict. c. 86, to remove doubts as to the rights of liberated Africans in Sierra Leone: 25 & 26 Vict. c. 40 (amended by c. 90), to carry into effect the treaty between her Majesty and the United States of America, for the suppression of the African slave trade. (r) 6 Ann. c. 17, s. 13.

(s) 6 Ann. c. 17, and 9 & 10 Will. 3, c. 44, s. 81.

(t) 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 85, s. 111.

commercial, their policy, as administered by the governors whom they sent out, gradually led to the acquisition of immense territorial dominions, by which they became effectively (though subject to the undoubted supremacy of the British crown (u)) the sovereigns of India (x). The unexampled grandeur of this company rendered the regulation of its affairs, for a long period of our history, an object of the highest interest and importance to the British nation. In consequence of the prevalence of great abuses, its constitution was newly arranged in 1773 by an act of parliament (y), prescribing the manner in which its Directors should be chosen from among its members, and the qualification which should entitle a member to vote in its affairs (2). In 1784 its administration of the East was brought under the superintendence of the executive government at home, by the establishment of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, which operated as a check upon the Directors, and was afterwards generally called the "Board of Control" (a). Still however its commercial monopoly remained entire; but in 1813 it was provided by the act (b) then passed for the temporary renewal of the company's charter, that the trade from all places except China, and in all commodities except tea, should be thrown open (under certain restrictions and limitations) to every subject of the realm. And this proved but the prelude to a still more important change, for the expediency being at length generally recognized of admitting the capital of our private merchants to a free participation in every branch of the Indian traffic, an arrangement was accordingly made with the company for that purpose in 1832. This was carried into effect by the

(u) See preamble to 53 Geo. 3, c. 155.

(x) 7 Geo. 3, c. 57. See Gibson v. East India Company, 5 Bing. N. C. 272; Mayor of Lyons v. East India Company, 1 Moore, Priv. Counc. Rep. 374.

VOL. I.

(y) 13 Geo. 3, c. 63, explained and amended by 21 Geo. 3, c. 70. (z) 13 Geo. 3, c. 63, s. 5.

(a) 24 Geo. 3, c. 25, and see 26 Geo. 3, c. 16, and 23 Geo. 3, c. 52. (b) 53 Geo. 3, c. 155, s. 7.

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