CHAP, in.] WEST INDIES. 189 



* 

 part of them had been constantly refused, and still 



continued to be withheld. It was indeed admitted, 

 that the English who captured the island, carried with 

 them as their birth right, the law of England as it 

 then stood; but much of the English law was inap- 

 plicable to the situation and condition of the new co- 

 lonists; and it was contended that they had no right 

 to any statute of the British parliament, which had 

 passed subsequent to their emigration, unless its pro- 

 visions were specially extended to the colony by 

 name. The courts of judicature within the island, 

 had however, from necessity, admitted many such 

 statutes, to be pleaded, and grounded several judg- 

 ments and important determinations upon them; and 

 the assembly had passed bills adopting several of the 

 English statutes which did not otherwise bind the 

 island; but several of those bills, when sent home for 

 the royal confirmation, and those judgments and de- 

 terminations of the courts of law, when brought by 

 appeal before the king and council, though not disal- 

 lowed, remained unconfirmed; and in this unsettled 

 state, the affairs of Jamaica were suffered to remain 

 for the space of fifty years. 



The true cause of such inflexibility on the part of 

 the crown, was no other than^the old story of re- 

 venue. For the purpose, as it was pretended, of de- 

 fraying the expense of erecting and repairing fortifi- 

 cations, and for answering some other public contin- 

 gencies, the ministers of Charles II. had procured, 

 as hath been related, from the assembly of Barbadoes, 

 and indeed from most of the other British West In- 



