for a presumption that abroad as well as at home this rule would apply. However, 
as we shall see in a moment, a judicial pronouncement in 1608 introduced 
factors which, so far as the crown was concerned, turned out to be an 
effective practical bar to the indulgence of any such presumption and left the 
charter formula a mere standard for colonial behavior. Nevertheless, the 
presence of such formulae and their reappearance in the governors' commissions 
were in other quarters made the basis of claims of right and had consequently 
a great deal to do with the eternal frictions over the status of English 
law in the plantations. 
A second preliminary point of consequence that cannot be ignored in any 
consideration of statutory extension is the assumption, either tacit or express, 
in English judicial handling of acts of Parliament that these presume an 
extant common law base and are to be read or construed in terms thereof. Obviously, 
where the common law does not obtain, enactments made with reference 
thereto are not applicatory, because standing alone they would be meaningless. 
This rationale underlay the medieval practice of particular mention 
when an act of Parliament was to apply to a dominion outside the realm. 
A final matter which conditioned some of the discussion over the vigor of 
acts of Parliament in the plantations has to do with technical distinctions which 
English courts had made respecting types of enactment. The most significant 
for our purposes are the distinctions (1) between statutes general and statutes 
particular and (2) between the statutes in affirmance of the common law and 
those which make novel law. The first of these was useful to crown officials 
when it was thought expedient to deny the applicability overseas of even very 
old statutes. The second distinction the colonists found serviceable in their 
claims of applicability, and it also made colorable the resort to some English 
statutes as precedents on a par with judicial decisions. 
What has just been said is essential for comprehending the juristic atmosphere 
in which policies about statutory extension were formulated. Since these 
had their beginnings in a period of struggle over the limits of prerogative at 
home, when each side was making free with all available relevant precedents, 
it was inevitable that a similarly legalistic approach would be made respecting 
matters that affected the prerogative overseas. Debate continued in this idiom 
long after settlement of domestic constitutional issues, because the colonists 
in their turn resorted to the methods and the arguments of their English forebears. 

At the commencement of the period of colonization there was precious little 
in the way of judicial authority that could be regarded as a guide for official 
action. But by one of those fortuitous events which make the growth of the 
law so haphazard, yet so full of happy surprises, the various scraps of precedent