In a 1766 pamphlet emanating from New York it was alleged that the first settlement of the colonies being under the direction of the crown, colonial disputes "too crude and undigested to come regularly before any of the Superior Courts of Judicature, were brought before the Privy Council for a final determination." This method being convenient, the colonists failed to foresee the latent evils—"thus did the Privy Council usurp a jurisdiction altogether unconstitutional." 423 Furthermore, the Privy Council had erected itself into a court of final appeal upon the merits of the cause, abrogating the privilege of juries. 424 Presumably this was a reference to the instructions involved in the famous cause of Cunningham v. Forsey. i 25 The author of Remarks on the Review of the Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies asserted that in the earlier period of the American colonies the final determination of all judicial appeals was vested in the several assemblies, no appeals being ever made to the King in Council. He claimed that the first royal instruction directing appeals to the King in Council was secured by the misrepresentative suggestion of Governor Culpeper of Virginia in order to secure a new dernier resort for the determination of his claims to Northern Neck lands. He asserted further that however legal this measure was in royal colonies, it was a manifest violation of the rights of the then chartered colonies and that although individuals in such colonies had submitted to this regulation, unless the executive authority therein was willing to accept the appellate judgment of the King in Council, execution was impossible. But even this alteration did not prove the colonies part of the realm, since in that case appeals must have been made to the House of Lords as final arbiter. 428 The writer then proposed that in all causes between inhabitants of any colony, final appeals should lie to the General Assembly, rather than to the King in Council. It was, furthermore, a grievance to the inhabitants to be rendered amenable to a foreign judicature from the verdict of equals and neighbors best qualified to judge rightly. It was questioned whether this was not a deprivation of the privilege of trial by their peers. 427 John Dickinson, as a matter of practicality, placed more reliance in assembly control over judicial salaries than in any right of appeal to England to avoid arbitrary judgments. 428 423 Considerations upon the Rights of the Colonists to the Privileges of British Subjects (New York, 1766), 10. 424 Ibid., 13-14. 425 See infra, p. 390 et seq. 426 R emar^s on t f, e Review of the Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies (1769), 62-63. As to the accuracy of the historical allegations, see supra, Chap. I. 427 Ibid., 122-23. 428 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (1774), 91-92 (Letter IX).