but more probably the imperial agencies had in view the usual marked differences 
in the composition and political attitudes of the two branches. 
The instructions were addressed only to the matter of appellate jurisdiction 
and were consequently an ineffective barrier to other methods of interference. 
As to these, the weapon of disallowance was the usual resort of the crown, 
and a variety of legislative ventures was thereby incontinently dispatched. In 
the field of criminal law we find that Massachusetts by statutes in 1707 imposed 
fines upon six persons for high misdemeanors in trading with the 
enemy. These were disallowed, because crimes were not cognizable by the 
General Assembly. 579 In 1756 the Jamaica legislature passed an act reversing 
a sentence against one Thomas Kello. This was regarded as an unprecedented 
attempt to review a sentence of the Supreme Court and was disallowed, 580 
yet an act of 1773 reversing in part a fine against a destitute prisoner was allowed 
to stand. 5 81 
the eighteenth century the Governor and 
Council assumed jurisdiction as a Court of 
Grievances. Appeals were taken from judgments 
there; Mendez v. Battyn (PC 2/84/ 
362, 371; PC 2/85/143, 172); Stewart v. 
Battyn (PC 2/85/154, 248, 257). Complaint 
against this was not made until 1720. The 
Privy Council declared that the function of 
the Governor and Council was properly appellate 
and not to proceed originally (2 APC, 
Col., #1335; Acts of Barbados, 1643-1762 
[ed. Richard Hall, 1764], 23; cf. The Barbados 
Packet; Containing Several Original Papers: 
Giving an Account of the Most Material Transactions 
that have lately happened in a certain 
Part of the West Indies [1720], 41-42). 
579 PC 2/81/466; 6 APC, Col., #166. For 
the acts see 6 Acts and Res. Prov. Mass. Bay, 
62-68. Upon the subsequent trials in the 
Supreme Court of Judicature on November 
30, 1708, Boreland was found not guilty, 
Coffin was found guilty, and the indictments 
against Rouse and Phillips were quashed as 
not mentioning the counties in which the defendants 
resided (MS Mass. Sup. Ct. Jud. 
Judgment Boo\, 1700-1714, 230). 
580 4 APC, Col, #384. An Act to reverse the 
sentence against Thomas Kello, a prisoner in 
the gaol of St. lago de la Vega, December, 
1756 (4 MS Laws of Jamaica, 159 [Jamaica 
Record Office]). The act recited that the 
prisoner, having been convicted in the Supreme 
Court of Judicature of harboring and 
employing a negro, the property of Anne Peake, 
was sentenced to pay said Peake £526 and 
a j£ l0 ° penalty and to suffer a year's imprisonment; 
that the assembly, upon Kello's 
petition, having caused the sentence and other 
proceedings to be brought before them, it 
appeared upon due inspection that there was 
not sufficient foundation upon the evidence 
produced at the trial to ground the sentence. It 
appears that Kello's petition was referred to 
the Committee of Grievances to inquire into 
the allegations thereof and report the fact 
with its opinion thereon to the House. The 
Clerk of the Peace of St. Catherine's parish 
was ordered to deliver to the Committee an 
attested copy of the trial of Kello and Thomas 
Holt before Ballard Beckford and William 
Thomas, puisne judges of the Grand Court 
(4 Journals Assembly Jamaica, 597, 602, 644). 
The proceedings are set forth at ibid., 657-61 
and would seem to refute the insinuation of 
Lamb. In the island the disallowance was regarded 
as secured by misrepresentation of the 
matter. Lieutenant-Governor Moore informed 
the Board of Trade that he conceived the 
affair was imperfectly represented to the Board 
of Trade. Kello was not convicted in the 
Supreme Court of Judicature, but by an association 
of two judges and three freeholders, 
the only court from whose judgment no appeal 
lay. The enveigling law upon which Kello 
was tried had in its extent been long considered 
as a great grievance to the people of 
the island by exposing them to the malice of 
wicked persons, which the assembly regarded 
as the case in the affair of Kello (CO 137/30/ 
Z 63). 
581 An Act to reverse part of the sentence 
against Richard, alias Dick Wade, a prisoner 
in the Gaol of Kingston in the County of 
Surrey (6 MS Laws of Jamaica, 166-67