contents in every case deserved. The post-Restoration cases reflect little familiarity 
even in Holt's time with the realities of colonial government and with the 
administrative activities of the crown. 10 It might have been otherwise, if generous 
reference to writs, commissions, etc., as precedents in the manner of Lord 
Coke had not gone out of fashion. 20 Nevertheless, these cases are of considerable 
significance as sole judicial precedents, especially when taken in connection 
with the earlier learning on the status of dominions such as Ireland, the 
Isle of Man, and Wales, from which additional fortification of the rules could 
be drawn. Furthermore, since these pronouncements emanated from the 
highest courts of the realm, they must be viewed as limitations upon and 
guides to the policy of the Council itself. 
Before discussing the cases in which the question of the extension of the 
laws of England to the colonies came before the Privy Council, it is desirable 
to take some view of opinion in the colonies respecting the problem of extension. 
No clear acceptance of the doctrine of the adjudged English cases appears 
in the colonies, even at the turn of the century, although we know that Sir 
Edward Coke's Institutes and Reports were well disseminated along the seaboard. 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, an anonymous colonial pamphleteer 
wrote querulously about the dilemma of the Virginians: 21 
It is a great Unhappiness that no one can tell what is Law and what is not, in the 
Plantations; some hold that the Law of England is chiefly to be respected, and 
where that is deficient, the Laws of the several Colonies are to take place; others 
are of the Opinion, that the Law of the Colonies are to take first place, and that 
the Law of England is of force only where they are silent; others there are, who 
contend for the Laws of the Colonies in Conjunction with those that are in force 
in England at the first settlement of the Colony, and lay down that as the measure 
of our Obedience, alleging that we are not bound to observe any late Acts of Parliament 
made in England except such only where the Reason is the same here, that 
it is in England; but this leaving too great a latitude to the Judge, some others hold 
that no late Acts of Parliament of England do bind the Plantations, but only those 
wherein the Plantations are particularly named. Thus are we left in the dark in 
19 The ignorance extended even to matters of 
geography, in respect of which knowledge 
seems to have remained static. Cf. the entry 
for November 27, 1769, in Wm. Samuel Johnson 
MS Diaries (Conn. Hist. Soc): "I heard 
a respectable counsellor at law ask Mr. Jackson 
gravely in the Hall whether Philadelphia was 
in the E. or W. Indies and said he had a notion 
it was upon the coast of Sumatra. Such is their 
knowledge of America." 
20 In Dutton v. Howell the purport of the 
governor's commission was directly involved. 
There was no attempt properly to analyze it 
or to use precedents of earlier commissions, 
such as existed for Ireland and Calais, to say 
nothing of other dominions. Shower mentioned 
the instructions, but refused to enter 
into them because they were not pleaded. 
21 An Essay upon the Government of the English 
Plantations on the Continent of America 
(1701) (ed. by L. B. Wright, 1945), 23, 39. 
Robert Beverley is regarded by some to be the 
writer.