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ernors, in the charter colonies, as well as the royal prov-
inces, were compelled to take oath to do their utmost that every clause in these acts be punctually observed.
Compare 8 and 9 W. III.
c. XX. § 69 |
Officers of the revenue in
America were invested with all the powers conferred by act of parliament on those in
England.
The intercolonial trade had been burdened with taxation, and the payment of the tax was interpreted as giving to the goods the right of being exported any where: this liberty was denied.
The immense American domain was reserved exclusively for English subjects, or for those who obtained from the privy council a permission to purchase.
The proprietary charters were modified—it is the first act of parliament of that nature—by conferring on the crown a
negative on the choice of the governors in the charter colonies; and the paramount legislative authority of parliament was asserted by declaring illegal, null, and void, every colonial act or usage, present or future, which might be in any wise repugnant ‘to this present act, or to any other law hereafter to be made in the kingdom, so far as such law shall relate to the plantations.’
Such was the spirit of English legislation for its colonies, at the great moment when
England asserted its aristocratic liberties.
As yet the owners of land were not sufficiently pledged to the colonial system.
Wool was the great staple of
England, and its growers and manufacturers envied the colonies the possession of a flock of sheep,
a spindle, or a loom.
The preamble to an act of parliament avows the motive for a restraining law, in the conviction that colonial industry would ‘inevitably sink the value of lands’ in
England.
The public mind of the mother country could esteem the present interest of its landholders paramount to natural justice.
