ment were in force until adopted by provincial act. But application of this 
rule might vary with the litigants, the law being "a strange sort of Proteus 
capable of putting on all shapes and figures as occasion requires." 28 
The posture of the several plantations toward the problem of the extension 
of acts of Parliament was complicated by both doctrinal and political considerations. 
On the doctrinal side the emphasis for so long laid upon the difference 
between common law and statute, and the lawyers' distinctions between 
statutes in affirmance of the common law and those effecting change, and their 
"statutes general" and "statutes local" actually foreclosed any sort of general 
claim to reception of acts passed either before or after settlement. As to the 
latter, moreover, there was the further long-established rule that in dominions 
of the crown no act not specially mentioning them would apply. In the case of 
statutes which had restricted prerogative, such as the Habeas Corpus Act and 
the Act of Settlement, and which were felt to set up general constitutional 
principles, this restrictive doctrine was bitterly resented. 29 The crown's politics 
was obviously to keep the plantations in a state of subjection to the prerogative 
™lbid., 1708-9, #662. 
29 In August, 1695, a Massachusetts act of 
1692 requiring granting of the writ of habeas 
corpus as provided in the English Habeas 
Corpus Act (31 Charles 11, c. 2) was disallowed. 
The ground advanced for disallowance was 
that such privilege had not as yet been granted 
in any of the plantations (1 Acts and Res. 
Prov. Mass. Bay, 95, 97). In South Carolina 
in 1692 an act was passed empowering judicial 
officers to put 31 Charles 11, c. 2, into force 
(2 Stat, at Large So. Car., 74). But the act 
was disallowed by the Proprietors on the ground 
that it was unnecessary, since all the laws of 
England applied to die colony (McCrady, 
History of South Carolina under Proprietary 
Government, 1670-1 7 19, 247-48). The attitude 
of the Privy Council was partially nullified 
by reception of habeas corpus as a common law 
writ. In commenting upon a Bermuda act for 
liberty of the subject from illegal imprisonment 
the Attorney General in 1703 remarked 
that the act gave the entire benefit of 31 
Charles 11, c. 2, to the colony. Since the colony 
had all the benefits of the writ which the common 
law gave, it was submitted whether such 
statutory provision would not lessen dependence 
on the crown. Even if extension of the act to 
Bermuda was not regarded as improper, power 
to grant the writ should not be in the hands 
of every justice of the peace (CSP, Col, 1702-3, 
#1356). See also Carpenter, Habeas Corpus in 
the Colonies, 8 AHR, 18-27; Hurd, A Treatise 
on the Right of Personal Liberty and on the 
Writ of Habeas Corpus (1858), 109-16. In 
recommending disallowance the Board of Trade 
declared that the act was not allowed in any 
plantation and that an instruction should be 
issued to prevent unreasonable imprisonment 
(CSP, Col., 1704-5, #475). The act was disallowed 
in August, 1704, and there was an 
instructional extension of the writ to several 
colonies (PC 2/80/158; 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, 
#464, 466). However, at a later 
date the Privy Council acted to protect the 
operation of the Habeas Corpus Act in the 
colonies. In 1712, the royal instruction not extending 
there, South Carolina passed an act 
empowering the judiciary to put the Habeas 
Corpus Act in force (2 Stat, at Large So. Car., 
399). In 1733 complaint came from the province 
that the benefits of the 1712 act had been 
denied by means of an act conferring immunity 
from suit upon public officers for refusing 
to issue writs of habeas corpus in certain 
cases (3 APC, Col., #286). For the act 
see 3 Stat, at Large So. Car., 347. The act was 
then repealed in 1734, upon advice that, being 
of a very extraordinary nature, it violated the 
royal instructions because it lacked a suspending 
clause (3 APC, Col., #286). For the instruction 
contravened see 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, 
#227. By this disallowance the 
1712 act received tacit approbation. Cf. the 
1729 instruction to the Bahamas interdicting 
assembly regulation of habeas corpus proceedings 
(ibid., #463). For New York cf. Goebel 
and Naughton, op. cit., 502-3.