T[^E TRUE TEMl'ER OF EMl'lRE. 



289 



individual accession to the Empire, and our methods have 

 consequently been as A^arious as the communities for whom 

 the legislation was designed. They may be grouped, how- 

 ever, in two systems — applicable respectively to territories 

 obtained by settlement and those which have come to us by 

 conquest or cession. In tlie case of settlements our policy 

 is indicated by the Act of Settlement of William the Third : 

 " If there be a new and uninhabited country found out by 

 English subjects, as the law is the birthright of English 

 subjects, so wherever they go they carry their law with them ; 

 and therefore such a new found country is to be governed by 

 the laws of England." The principle was not confined to 

 uninhabited countries. It was the basis of the ■ old factory 

 system established in many not necessarily barlDarous states, 

 where the settlers carried with them " not only their own laws 

 but the sovereignty of their own state; and those who lived 

 among them and those who became members of their community 

 became also partakers of and subject to the same laws." 

 Briefly, it may be said that in all settled territories the common 

 law of England is the foundation of the local law. In terri- 

 tories acquired by conquest our policy has been, in the first 

 instance, to preserve the established law in so far as it was not 

 fundamentally at variance with our conception of justice, for it 

 would obviously be inconvenient and unwise to replace the 

 existing system by a body of laws of which the inhabitants 

 were ignorant, and for which they might be in civil and political 

 character entirely unprepared. In either case on its funda- 

 mental law every territory has erected and continues to erect 

 a superstructure of local laws adapted to its own requirements 

 and changing circumstances, borrowing largely from the United 

 Kingdom and the other units of the Empire. The result of 

 this process has been the accumulation of masses of legislative 

 material formidable in bulk and intricacy, a natural consequence 

 of the conditions under which the work of legislation is carried 

 on. In the Crown Colonies all legislation is liable to be 

 amended, modified or reversed to meet the exigencies of party 

 politics in the Imperial Parliament, the shifting mind of the 

 Colonial Office, or the views of governors who often follow each 

 other in rapid succession, and are apt to subordinate continuity 

 of policy to individual motives, generally laudable no doubt, but 

 not seldom capricious. In these circumstances, it is not to be 

 wondered at that in many or most of our colonies the actual 

 condition of the laws has been found to be one of confusion, 

 contradiction repetition and disorder. To remedy this state of 



