IX JUDICIAL AND LEGISLATIVE REVIEW It is commonly supposed that no phase of conciliar activity was fraught with greater future significance than that which had to do with the judicial testing and rejection of colonial statutes, the subject matter of this chapter. Because of its bearing upon later American constitutional practice, the attention of historians has been devoted chiefly to the case of Winthrop v. Lechmere, where the King in Council as a part of an appellate judgment declared a colonial act in issue to be null and void as contrary to the laws of England. The problem of nullification, however, is of much greater scope and on the whole much less sharp in outline than this one instance might lead one to suppose. Moreover, so far as contemporary thinking was concerned, it is apparent that both administrators and lawyers approached the problem uncertainly and that discussion was clouded by confused conceptions. Some of this perplexity may be laid to the fact that there was little or no theoretical exploration of the two basic factors—the crown's powers of control over colonial legislation, and the status of this legislation in relation to the English law. During and after the troubles over the Stamp Act there was some public ventilation of these questions, and throughout the eighteenth century distinctions were drawn in Council practice that should have furnished the raw materials for settling doctrine. This did not occur. Beyond describing the lawmaking power of provincial assemblies as inferior legislation, in the nature of corporate by-laws, and beyond some vague intimations respecting the supremacy of the crown, little progress in juristic clarification was made. Our own conclusions respecting those contemporary constitutional ideas must consequently be tentative, for they are belated rationalization, and even although based on the practice may not correctly reflect the eighteenth-century opinion. THE FOUNDATIONS OF DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE It is desirable at the outset of our discussion to distinguish the several processes of review to which colonial acts were subjected. There was in the first place the administrative examination of such statutes, managed via the Board of Trade. Those which were unobjectionable were confirmed by Order in Council based on report by the Board to the Lords Committee, which in turn