legal opinion respecting the preferability of judicial review is illustrated further 
by the third instance of a declaration of nullity upon legislative review that 
occurred shortly before the instance just discussed. On March 2, 1769, Governor 
Wentworth of New Hampshire issued a proclamation for ascertaining 
the value of gold and silver foreign coin current in the province. But 
Richard Jackson was of opinion that this proclamation was not warranted 
by the Act for Ascertaining the Rates of Foreign Coins in Her Majesty's 
Plantations in America (6 Anne, c. 30) and was therefore "void in law without 
revocation." The Committee thereupon ordered an additional instruction 
to the governor to take such measures, with the advice of the council, 
as were necessary to halt the operation of the proclamation. Permission was 
also to be granted to the General Assembly to make legislative provision 
for preventing any prejudice to private persons from any transactions which 
might have passed under color of the proclamation. 575 Such instruction 
accordingly issued on December 10, 1770. 576 In January, 1772, an act was 
passed in the province declaring "all grants, assessments, judgments of court, 
payments, and private contracts, and all other proceedings whatsoever, made 
in pursuance of said proclamation" good and effectual in law to all intents 
and purposes. 577 This voiding action was justified by the terms of 7 and 
8 William 111, c. 22, since 6 Anne, c. 30, was an act of Parliament extending to 
the plantations. 
SEPARATION OF POWERS AND JUDICIAL REVIEW 
There remains to be considered one of the most perplexing and at the same 
time exasperating problems with which the Privy Council had to cope —the 
acts of legislation which invaded the sacred purlieus of the judiciary and were 
viewed in Whitehall with intense dislike. This attitude was not grounded upon 
any philosophical conviction that a separation of governmental powers was 
necessary or desirable, for the English politicians of the eighteenth century 
did not think in such terms, and the Privy Council itself was a standing negative 
that any such precept was active. The courts, however, had built up a 
respectable body of opinion to the effect that the judicial power was independent 
of other branches; and although the Parliament had on at least one 
occasion declared certain judicial proceedings null and void (viz., the London 
quo warranto case) the Act of Settlement, which determined that the judges 
were to be commissioned during good behavior, may be said to have fixed as 
575 5 APC, Col, #122; JCTP, 1768-75, 190, 
193-95; 7 Doc. and Rec. Rel. Prov. N.H., 281. 
On the financial history of New Hampshire, 
see Fry, New Hampshire As a Royal Province, 
076 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, #322; 18 
N.H. State Papers, 598-99. 
577 3 Laws of N.H., 570-71. 
c. 5.