any conciliar control, the examples of adaptation are many and striking. A 
great deal of this went on without attention to technical distinctions, because 
in the minds of the lawyers a useful statute, being part of the then law of 
England, was for their practical purposes not to be distinguished from a reported 
decision or other muniment of the law. Certain acts of Parliament, 
however, were not susceptible of this sort of covert absorption and necessitated 
local legislative action. Here there were two choices open: a provincial 
statute directing, as the Jamaica act discussed above, the reception of particular 
English statutes, or a provincial act which substantially set forth the substance 
of the desired model. The fate of such enactments when they reached the 
Board of Trade was various. In certain cases provincial statutes adopting 
specific acts of Parliament were approved, 83 and in others they were disallowed 
84 The provincial rewritings of particular acts of Parliament were subject 
to equally vagarious treatment. The long battle in New York for an 
acceptable statute against malicious informations patterned upon the English 
statute of William and Mary is an example of the hazards which such lawmaking 
had to surmount. 85 
THE PRE-SETTLEMENT STATUTES 
Although the colonists' chief difficulties were in connection with new statutes 
of general purport that failed to mention the dominions, and this because of 
the express rule of the English courts, they were not always allowed freedom 
to treat as applicable statutes enacted before settlement. In other words the 
authorities at Whitehall sometimes undertook themselves to settle what acts 
were suitable to colonial conditions. As far as we are aware, this general question 
was judicially determined for the first time in 1753, when the appeal of 
Dunbar v. Webb from Antigua presented to the King in Council the question 
whether or not the Statute of Charitable Uses (43 Elizabeth, c. 4) extended to 
that island. By virtue of a marriage settlement and of recent inheritance, one 
Thomas Watkins in February, 1745/6, died possessed of a large plantation 
and a considerable number of slaves. In his will Watkins bequeathed to each 
of his daughters The will further provided that the lands settled upon 
the testator by his father should be equally divided into ten-acre lots and that 
all testator's slaves should be equally appropriated to these lots. The lots and 
the accompanying slaves were to be disposed of by the present and future assemblies 
and councils, who were designated fiduciaries, to reduced and honest 
families for the purpose of strengthening the defenses of the island. Other 
clauses provided for the conversion of testator's mansion house into a resi- 
83 2 Stat, at Large Pa., 199, 437. 85 See Goebel and Naughton, op. cit., 372 
84 4 Col. Laws N.Y., 953. 376. 378.