DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 195 



of the internal affairs of the colonists as demanded the enactment 

 of laws specially adapted to their peculiar situation. Parliament, 

 indeed, contemplated the erection of corporate towns, with the power 

 of making bye-laws, for remedying this inconvenience; but on 

 attempting to carry this design into effect, unforeseen obstacles were 

 encountered. It was found altogether impracticable to reconcile the 

 contradictory wishes and recommendations of the parties who would 

 have been more immediately affected by the measure; and it became 

 evident that the boon which it was proposed to confer would be 

 received by a great body of the inhabitants, not as an act of grace, 

 but as an infringement of their rights, into whatever form the in- 

 tended charters might have been thrown. The consequence was, that 

 His Majesty became practically unable to execute the trust which 

 Parliament had confided to him. 



The necessity of some provision for regulating the internal con- 

 cerns of Newfoundland by enactments adapted to the peculiarities of 

 their local position became however daily more and more evident. 

 Carrying with them from this kingdom the law of England, as the 

 only code by which the rights and duties of the people in their rela- 

 tions to each other, and in their relation to the State, could be ascer- 

 tained, it was obvious, as soon as the colony began to assume a settled 

 form, that the adaptation of that code to the various exigencies of the 

 local society was a task demanding the exercise of much reflection, 

 and caution ; that many of its provisions were entirely inapplicable to 

 the wants of a population so peculiarly situated ; and that many more 

 could be applied only by a distant and uncertain approach to the 

 original standard. Hence it occurred that, in the administration of 

 the law, the judges virtually assumed to themselves functions rather 

 legislative than judicial; and undertook to determine not so much 

 what the law actually was, as what, in the conditions of Newfound- 

 land, it ought to be. For this assumption of power no censure at- 

 taches to those learned persons ; without any positive rule of decision, 

 nothing remained for them but to engage in such an enquiry ; yet the 

 practical inconvenience was not the less urgent, nor the anomaly the 

 less glaring. 



It was not, however, merely in the absence of rules, which this lati- 

 tude of judicial interpretation might supply, that the public detri- 

 ment was sustained. There were still wanting other regulations, 

 which no judge could either invent or enforce. Especially in what- 

 ever related to police and internal improvements, demanding the co- 

 operation of different persons, nothing could be carried into effect, 

 which any individual found an adequate reason for opposing, or 

 which he opposed from mere caprice. I find that in a matter so 

 trifling in appearance, and yet affecting the comforts of so many, as 

 the prevention of domestic animals w r andering at large through the 

 country, an earnest application was made to His Majesty's 

 115 Government to obtain an Act of Parliament for the redress of 

 the grievance endured by the colonists. Although it was 

 thought improper to encumber the British statute-book with such 

 provisions, yet it was fully admitted that they could be supplied by 

 no other authority ; and the application itself forcibly illustrated the 

 inconvenience of so remote a society being destitute of any local 

 Legislature. 



