In 1728 Sir William Keith wrote that it was generally acknowledged in the 
plantations that the subject was entitled by birthright to the benefit of the 
common law of England. But the common law having been altered by acts 
of Parliament, it was still a question in many colonial courts whether any 
statutes not mentioning the plantations were of force until received by colonial 
act. Allowance or rejection of statutes often depended upon the influence 
of counsel with an unqualified bench and upon judicial partiality. 71 
A 1730 observer upon the judicial system of South Carolina commented 
vigorously upon the effect of a clause in the provincial act of 1712 that every 
part of the common law of England not altered by certain enumerated statutes 
should be of full force in the province. According to this commentator the 
common law as accepted in the province varied extensively from that in force 
in England, because many acts of Parliament changing, improving, or amending 
the common law were not enumerated in the 1712 statute. Flow far this 
might affect the prerogative of the crown or the interests of the subject or the 
correspondence which plantation laws ought to have with the laws of England 
was submitted for consideration. But it was advanced as extremely absurd 
for the provincial courts to pass a different judgment concerning the obligation 
of the statutes of England from that which would be given on appeal to 
the King in Council. 72 This observer then asserted that it was 
greatly to be wished, that in all His Majesty's colonies and plantations in America, 
some general method was established for settling the forms and methods of proceeding 
in the courts of judicature and to declare certainly what manner of obligation 
English statutes made before the settlement of the several colonies, have in the 
plantations, it being credibly reported that throughout the whole continent of 
North America, there are not two colonies, where the courts of justice or the 
the question; and as the court seem inclined 
to introduce no other statutes among us than 
what have already been introduced, and carry 
that so farr, as to admitt one and exclude another 
part of the same clause and this part 
having never as I remember, been determined 
against you, and has in one instance been determined 
for you, I should think the chance 
is better than equal" (MS Stephen Bordley Letter 
P>oo\, 1740-47, 101—2 [Md. Hist. Soc.]). 
Earlier in 1738 an appeal had been taken to 
the King in Council in Jennings v. Cumming 
from an Oct. 25, 1737, sentence of the Court 
of Delegates which upheld the validity of the 
will of one Amos Garrett, although not signed 
and sealed in the presence of three credible 
witnesses (PC 2/95/46; MS Testamentary 
Proc., 1734-38, 306-45 [Md. H.R.]). But the 
appeal was dismissed for nonprosecution (PC 
2/95/301, 340). On the extension of the 
Statute of Frauds to Maryland see further Clayland's 
Lessee v. Pearce (1 Harris and M'Henry's 
Rep. 29); Carroll v. Llewellin (MS Ct. of Appeals 
Misc. Proc, 1749-60, 80-81 [Md. H.R.] )• 
71 CSP, Col., 1728-29, #513 ii. Compare the 
views expressed by Keith in 1717/8 (3 Mins. 
Prov. Coun. Pa., 34-35). 
72 MS Observations on the Present State of 
the Courts of Judicature in His Majesty's Province 
of South Carolina (1730), 25-26 (L.C.). 
The cases cited by the writer on the extension 
of the laws of England to the plantations were 
Vaughan 402; Privy Council Memorandum, 
2 Peere Williams 75. For the act referred to 
see 2 So. Car. Stat, at Large, 401.