No mention whatever was made of the 1727/8 act or of the royal instruction 
for legislation to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the General Court, a classic 
example of administrative inefficiency. The action is even less justifiable when 
we consider that in most colonies the Governor and Council exercised appellate 
jurisdiction only in causes over ,£3OO an d exercised no original jurisdiction, 
except, perhaps, in chancery. 
An indirect limitation upon appeals is found in a provision of another 1748 
act regulating the practice of attorneys. This clause, "to prevent frivolous suits 
in the general courts, and trifling and vexatious appeals from the county courts, 
and other inferior courts," provided that no attorney practicing in the General 
Court should be allowed to prosecute or defend any cause in the inferior 
courts under threat of pecuniary penalties. The statute was somewhat weakened 
by the exception of barristers-at-law and certain inferior courts from the 
operation of the act. 265 This practice ban was lifted in 1757, 266 but was reinstated 
by a 1761 act and subsequent enactments. 267 Since the General Court 
records have been destroyed, it is impossible to determine the operative effect 
of these statutes. 
By a 1753 act the provisions of the disallowed act relating to appeals were 
re-enacted. 268 Although this legislation escaped disallowance, its early operation 
came into conflict with 1753 royal instructions dispatched to Virginia containing 
regulations for appeals to the Governor and Council at variance with 
those locally enacted. 269 After several years of conflict the instructional minimum 
was withdrawn by the crown in favor of "the regulations and directions 
of such acts as, having been passed in our province and ratified and confirmed 
by us, are now in force within the same." 270 We have seen no evidence that 
the above Virginia act (27 Geo. 11, c. 1) was ever confirmed, and with the loss 
of the General Court records most of the evidence as to practice has disappeared. 
From the Privy Council register and from the various remaining 
county court records it is a safe inference that in practice, it was the unconfirmed 
act which governed, rather than the royal instructions. 
In contrast to the reaction against the instructions, relatively little complaint 
is found against regulation of conciliar appeals by colonial legislatures. However, 
in one case in which an appeal was taken from fines imposed upon 
intruding Marylanders by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, it was complained 
that the "very terms of their law are injurious to the subjects right of appealing 
to his sovereign and little if anything less than a prescribing rules to His 
Majesty." 271 
265 6 Hening, Slat, at Large Va., 143. 269 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, #453. 
266 7 ibid., 124. 2 ™lbid. 
267 7 ibid., 399; 8 ibid., 198, 385. 271 Daniel Dulany to Lord Baltimore, Oct. 
268 6 ibid., 325, 338-40. 29, 1736 (Dulany MSS, Box 2, #4).