from the Jamaica Ordinary, Lord Mansfield discussed several previous conciliar 
appeals. 61 Mansfield's unwonted timidity when he dodged a decision 
on the application of Shelley's Case in Perrin v. Blake 62 is explicable on the 
ground that the noble lord had already in Taylor v. Horde (1757) 63 embarked 
upon his attempted recasting of real property law and that the cause presented 
issues on the solution of which he desired the weight and prestige of the 
King's Bench itself. 64 In Quebec in 1769 we find that Orders in Council were 
regarded as precedents, 65 and we also find reference to the "decision" of the 
Privy Council in Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut.^ 
From this review it is evident that the Council itself regarded earlier orders 
as precedents in proceedings before itself and that in some colonial jurisdictions 
during the eighteenth century there was a disposition to speak of certain 
.Council cases as precedents. Under the circumstances immediately prior to 
the action of the Jamaica Court of Errors, Doe ex dem. Harris v. Barrett constituted 
a deliberate defiance of a precedent established by an appropriate authority. 
This refusal to follow conciliar precedents was a more serious attack 
upon the Council's jurisdiction than the refusal to obey Orders in Council 
upon individual appeals. For here, instead of one litigant, countless suitors 
might be affected. True, an appeal could be taken in cases in which precedent 
was flouted, but to many this was obviously an illusory remedy. 
Eventually the problem of statutory extension in Jamaica was solved by 
a provision of a 1728 statute declaring that "all such laws and statutes of England 
as have been at any time esteemed, introduced, used, accepted, or received 
as laws" in the island should continue in force. This act was neither affirmed 
nor disallowed by the King in Council. 67 
In 1722, or about the time when the Jamaicans were attempting to secure 
by statute what had been judicially denied them, the Privy Council had occasion 
to make a rather complete statement respecting the matter of reception 
of English law. It was declared by the Master of the Rolls on August 9, 1722, 
that it had been determined by the Privy Council on appeal that in the case 
of a new and uninhabited country discovered by English subjects, such country 
was to be governed by the laws of England, subjects carrying their laws with 
them as their birthright. But after such country was inhabited by the English, 
acts of Parliament not naming the plantations would not bind them. In the 
case of a conquered country the King might impose such laws as he pleased; 
61 1 Ambler 415. For appellant's conciliar 
"case" see Add. MS, 36,218/144; for notes of 
Charles Yorke on the hearing see ibid., 146. 
62 See supra, pp. 325-26. 
63 1 Burr. 60. 
64 See 7 Holds-worth, HEL, 43-46. 
65 1 Doc. Rel. Const. Hist. Canada, 360. 
66 See 27 Pa. Mag. Hist, and Biog., 159. 
67 Acts Assembly Jamaica (1738), 216, 223. 
See also i Long, The History of Jamaica (1774) 
219-20.