nullity, there is support for either view. The crown law officers obviously 
regarded the acts as void ipso facto. But the language of the Order in Council 
and the proprietary action thereunder indicate a disallowance. The words 
"null and void" in themselves are not conclusive, since in disallowances the 
language "repealed and declared null and void" is sometimes found. In 1767, 
as we shall see, this Order in Council was regarded as a precedent for declaration 
of nullity. 54 If the conciliar order is regarded as a declaration of nullity, 
it cannot be based upon the language of the 1696 act, for there was no question 
here of repugnancy to an act of Parliament extending to the plantations. We 
incline to the opinion that the Order in Council was in the nature of a disallowance 
rather than a declaration of nullity. 
Later, a second Order in Council, of May 14, 1718, declared "null and void" 
a 1717 South Carolina act imposing a 10 percent duty upon all British goods 
imported into the province. The same injunction was directed to the Proprietors 
and Assembly as in the above June 10, 1706, Order in Council, with 
the addition that strict orders should be given the governor not to pass any 
law of a like nature in the future, the same not being consonant to reason, 
but repugnant to the laws of Great Britain and in no way warranted by the 
charter. 56 
In this case, complaint having been made about the act by William Rhett, 
local surveyor of the customs, the Board of Trade had queried the Solicitor 
General whether the act was contrary to the charter legislative powers and 
what the crown could do to remedy the inconveniences of such laws and 
prevent the like for the future. 56 Solicitor General Thomson had been of the 
opinion that the act might be truly said not to be consonant to reason and it 
might prove such a burden to trade as to be in effect a prohibition of such 
trade to British subjects, which was by no means agreeable to the laws of 
Britain. Therefore it was apprehended that the charter legislative power was 
exceeded; but "it would be too tedious, and too expensive, for every particular 
trader to contest the payment of the duty there, upon the supposed invalidity 
of the act, as being unreasonable, and if determined against them there, to 
appeal to the King in Council." Recommended methods of relief were petition 
to the King (with a sanction of vacating the charter, if the grievance were not 
order that the said act "be from henceforth repealed, 
annulled, revoked, and for ever made 
void" (Commissions and Instructions from the 
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Public Officials 
of South Carolina [ed. by A. S. Salley, Jr., 
1916], 192-94). See also the repealing act of 
Nov. 30, 1706 (2 Stat, at Large So. Car., 281). 
B * Infra, p. 613. In some other quarters the 
order also appears to have been understood as 
a declaration of nullity; see Rivers, Sketch 
History of South Carolina (1856), 225. Cf. 
McCrady (op. cit., 444-45) who treats the 
conciliar order as a direction to repeal the 
offensive acts. 
65 H. of L. MS, 247/135-37; PC 2/86/141; 
CSP, Col., 1717-18, #537. For the act, see 
3 Stat, at Large So. Car., 32. 
56 CSP, Col, 1717-18, #452, 463.