Roman-Dutch Law and the West Indian Appeal Court. 103 
Berbicians will be delighted to learn that the States-General granted to every 
person settling in Berbice power to choose such known law of succession as 
might please him but in case of no choice being made the law in such cases 
is the law laid down for the East India Company by the resolution of 1661. 
(I shudder at what may happen if a people so “town-proud ” as that of 
New Amsterdam ever realizes the, advantages of the law of succession 
in Kamschatka or Timbuctoo.) This was the law of South Holland modified 
as described by Van der Keessel 352 by the said resolution in the direction 
of the law of North Holland (which prevails in Demerara and Essequebo), 
as regards the succession, when there are a parent and a brother or sister 
or both brother and sister surviving, and perhaps in some other respects 
which judicial ingenuity may determine. The editor of the local Reports for 
1890 cuts the Gordian knot by saying hopefully :—‘ The distribution of an 
intestate estate in Berbice is prima facie under the North Holland law. Pro- 
fessor Lee adds: ‘This is quite wrong.” It is obviously wrong, but who can 
define the extent of the error? The learned Judges of 1890 dealt with the sub- 
ject as Doyberry ordered the watch to deal with malefactors: “If you meet 
a thief you may suspect him by virtue of your office to be no true man ; and for 
such kind of men the less you meddle or make with them, why, the more is 
for your honesty.” 
This is an attitude to the legal conundrums of the colony which has since 
been religiously observed. In his remarks on the surprising case of Synada 
Bee v. Craigen Mr. Dalton has unwittingly shown the difficulties with which 
new Judges are faced in the year 1911 in having to extract the reasons 
for their decisions from authorities couched in or imperfectly translated from 
the Low Dutch or very unclassical Latin of the 16th and 17th centuries. 
His single example of the liability to error involved in such cases is all 
embracing. West Indian Magistrates and Judges cannot be expected to be 
linguists as well as lawyers. Mr. Dalton has referred incidentally to laesio 
enormis as still capable of being pleaded in the colony. He is quite right. 
It has been abolished by statute in South Africa but lingers in this home of 
lost causes. It means that if a purchaser pays more than twice the value of 
the article he can have the sale set aside. It is opposed in every respect to the 
British principle of caveat emptor but is the law here. Yet in a hundred yeais 
only one or two cases have ever been decided on the point. When it has 
arisen, as it has arisen, Judges bred to the English ideas of contract have 
decided on other grounds, and, like Dogberry, have presently called the judi- 
cial watch together and thanked God they were rid of a knave. The very 
Rule of Court by which the Bench binds itself to deliver its judgments only 
in writing is an outcome of the sheer necessity of having to avoid the snares 
of an antiquated and mutilated system. Frequently it entails a delay of 
months in the deliverance of the judgment. But in such matters caution, 
even if expensive, is better than the precipitancy of little knowledge. A 
whole issue of 7imehri might easily be taken up with the appalling anomalies 
of the present common law. 
Taking the situation at its most hopeful, viz., that as regards surviving 
spouses at all events, there is one law of intestate succession for the 
