breach of privilege in the seizure of a member's coachhorses for debt (594); they dismissed an official appointed under powers conferred by an Act of Parliament (381), declared the customary fees of various Crown officers to be illegal (592), and ousted the secretary from being their clerk in order to secure full control of the records (352). Individual members of the Council showed no less contumacious a spirit in upholding and abusing their privileges, and two of them had to be threatened with deprivation in order to induce them to pay their debts (371, 498).

The Bermuda Assembly also gave considerable trouble to Governor Popple, resolving in 1747 not to allow him any salary (p. 64), claiming the right to appoint their clerk in 1753 (225), determining a quorum and altering the speaker at the beginning of every fourth session (pp. 306-7). In 1755 there was further complaint that the governor's instructions had been made public by the senior councillor acting as president (p. 304).

It was the aim of the colonial legislatures to establish their right-in local matters-to powers and privileges identical with those of the Imperial Parliament, but when such a claim was made in Pennsylvania in dealing with an alleged libel on the Assembly, the law officers of the Crown (Pratt and Yorke) declared “that this extraordinary power ought never to be suffered in these inferior Assemblys in America who must not be compared either in power or privileges to the Commons of Great Britain" (p. 384).

The constitution of the Assembly-the admission of representatives from new districts caused a seven years' dispute in New Hampshire, 1745-52 (35), and dissensions in North Carolina in 1746 and 1755 (71 and 271), and in Montserrat in 1748-9 (107, 132). The power of the purse was used not only against the executive, as in South Carolina in 1766 (637), but also against a judiciary appointed during pleasure only. In New Hampshire and New York, the judges

were in this way forced to resign, and a total abeyance of justice was only averted in the former by a grant of 40l. a year to the chief justice by the governor out of his own salary, and in the latter by the disinterested zeal of Chief Justice Pratt (364, 493).

The attempt to secure a permanent revenue had been abandoned in Massachusetts before 1745, and the home Government similarly admitted defeat in New York in 1755-6 (258, 306). The encroachments of the New York Assembly are thus described in July, 1754 :-" The Assembly have taken to themselves, not only the management and disposal of such Public money, but have also wrested from Your Majesty's Governor, the nomination of all officers of Government, the Custody and direction of the Publick Military Stores, the Mustering and regulating of Troops raised for Your Majesty's Service, and in short almost every other executive part of Government, by which unwarrantable Encroachments and Invasions of Your Majesty's just and undoubted authority, Order and good Government were subverted, Your Majesty's Service obstructed, and the Security of the Province endangered" (p. 247).

In several colonies the regulation of fees was a matter of complaint. The Assembly of Georgia politely asked to be allowed to control these exactions (285); that of Virginia voted 2,500l. to an agent who should uphold in England their protest against a fee demanded by the governor (227); and in North Carolina the regulation was assumed by the Assembly, and the complaint to the Council in 1764 came from the governor and other officials (580). By this time, however, the Council had recognised the prevalence of abuses, and order had been given for suppressing them and removing offenders (554).

The opposition to Parliamentary taxation in the case of the Stamp Act is very faintly adumbrated in the Register: the accounts of its reception in America were promptly ordered

to be laid before Parliament (578). But it does appear that the Massachusetts opposition argued " that as the Parliament had taxed the American Colonies, they ought also to provide for the expense of their Government", and hence no supplies should be voted (625).

ance of Colonial Acts.

Colonial acts were repealed (1) because they were incon- Disallowsistent with the economic aim of the old colonial system; (2) because they did not befit the just dependence of a colony on the Mother Country; and (3) because they were bad per se.

(1) Among acts prejudicial to British trade are included a St. Christopher act of 1745 allowing the export of provisions to friendly foreign governments contrary to an Order in Council of 19th February, 1740 (21); a Massachusetts excise act (180); a South Carolina act exempting the shipping of the province from port charges (281); and the bankruptcy laws of Massachusetts (359) and Virginia (511), which favoured the few resident creditors at the expense of the greater number in Britain. There are two striking cases in which the government of Jamaica endeavoured to make regulations in matters of general policy in respect to the commerce of British subjects, which were censured as unwarrantable and arrogant assumptions of power. In 1760 an act was repealed which had proposed to give to 100,000 dollars an arbitrarily enhanced value on being stamped in the island-a uniform value independent of the weight and purity of the metal. In 422 the Board of Trade explains the unwisdom of such a course and the superiority of the imperial Act of Anne's reign. Two years later an even more serious view was taken of two Acts regulating prizes and forbidding imports of sugar products from foreign colonies. Under the first head neutrals were laid under a variety of restraints enforced by rigorous penalties contrary to the law of nations; and by the second illicit trading was punished with death, and informers encouraged by a reward of 500l. "It is

difficult for Us," the Board of Trade reported, " to find Words to express our Concern that the Legislature of Jamaica could have so far departed from the known and Established Principles of Justice, Equity, and Reason, and the Laws of the Mother Country as to have framed so Sanguinary a Clause" (468).

(2) Under the head of encroachments by the Assembly on the executive and judicature come the efforts of Jamaica and South Carolina to exclude Crown officials from the Council and Assembly, and to enforce the popular character of their demands by frequent elections, such as were the rule in the chartered colonies. South Carolina passed acts of this nature in 1745, 1748, and 1759 (67, 156 and 452); but the view of the British Government is best found in the report on the Jamaica triennial bill, which was passed in 1741 by the device of withholding supplies and only repealed in June, 1752 (114) the Limiting the Duration of the Assemblys to Short Periods and fixing their determination by Law, Manifestly tends to the Discouragement of Industry and the Prejudice of Trade, Destroys good Neighbourhood, keeps up ill Blood, nourishes a Spirit of Party Divisions, and gives Faction an Opportunity to Act with better Concert and to greater Effect."

Besides reinforcing their own claims to independence, colonial legislatures struck at the overruling authority through the needs of its local representatives. Salaries of governors and judges were withheld with a view to "awing and deterring [them] from the due and faithful execution of their duty and the proper exertion of those legal Rights and Privileges which they are commissioned to support" (p. 744). In New Jersey fees were established at so low a rate for the officers of the courts of justice "that no persons of Character or Reputation will care to accept of employments therein " (p. 29). In South Carolina, Jamaica, and Georgia it was sought to remove actions from the ordinary courts, and leave them in the hands

of local justices of the peace (78, pp. 218-9, 407), and in several colonies the tenure of judges during good conduct was one of the objects of the Assembly, as it had been of the English Parliament in the seventeenth century (cf. v). The Board of Trade, however, pointed out that the English judges were made independent not by the tenure of their commissions alone, "but such Salaries were Settled upon them, as not only rendered them less liable to be Corrupted, but was an Encouragement for the ablest Men to engage in that Profession which qualified them for such high Trusts." As no such certain established allowance had been made by the American colonies, "it is difficult to conceive a State of Government more dangerous to the Rights and Liberties of the Subject.. aggravated as the Evil would be by making the Judges Commissions during good behaviour without Rendering them at the same time Independant of the Factious Will and Caprice of an Assembly" (p. 499). When North Carolina in 1760 repeated the offence of tampering with jurisdictions and the tenure of judges, the Governor was warned that if his disobedience were to be tolerated, "the Dependance of those Colonies upon the Authority of the Crown and the Just Government of the Mother Country, already too much relaxed, will stand upon a very precarious foot" (p. 506).

The Jamaica legislature even ventured to reverse a sentence of the Supreme Court (384)-" the first instance where the Legislature even of Jamaica although it has assumed great powers in several Acts have taken upon them to reverse a sentence passed by legal Judges upon the Trial of a person for a Breach of the Laws of the Island": New Hampshire and New Jersey passed laws in cases properly cognizable in the law courts (pp. 676, 684); and the Barbados Assembly inflicted a second punishment on one already sentenced in the courts of justice (570). The fiscal officers of the Crown fared no better than the judicial: New York attempted to regulate the collection of quitrents (4): Jamaica appointed