WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. II.] 
*95 
them, and a speaker being chosen and approved, 
the session opens by a speech from the king’s re¬ 
presentative. The assembly then proceed, as a 
grand provisional inquest, to hear grievances, and 
to correct such public abuses as are not cognizable 
before inferior tribunals.—They commit for con¬ 
tempts, and the courts of law have refused, after 
solemn argument, to discharge persons committed 
by the speaker’s warrant.—They examine and con¬ 
trol the accounts of the public treasurer;—they 
vote such supplies, lay such taxes, and frame such 
laws, statutes, and ordinances, as the exigencies 
of the province or colony require.—Jointly with 
the governor and council, they exercise the highest 
acts of legislation; for their penal laws, which the 
judges are sworn to execute, extend even to life; 
many persons having suffered death under laws 
passed in the colonies, even before they had recei¬ 
ved the royal assent. On the whole, subject to 
the restriction that their trade-laws are not repug¬ 
nant to those of Great Britain, there are no con¬ 
cerns of a local and provincial nature, to which the 
authority of the colonial laws does not extend.* 
This restriction was intended probably as an aux¬ 
iliary to other means for preserving the unity of the 
empire, and maintaining the superintending and con- 
troling power of the mother-country in matters of 
* The following account of the proceedings of the legislature ot 
Jamaica in 1766, while it illustrates this part of my subject, cannot 
fail to prove highly interesting to every inhabitant of the British 
colonies. 
