Beyond a certain point, too close attention to the Channel Islands cases ceases 
to be salutary, and, as the reader has observed, we have not attempted to make 
more of them, in spite of their proportionately greater number, than to establish 
their effect as precedents and as a stabilizing factor. By the beginning 
of the eighteenth century, at least, the shrewder councilors were certainly 
aware that the appellate function with reference to an ancient customary law 
used by a homogeneous population at the very doorstep of England was quite 
a different problem than that with reference to the disputes in dominions 
where English law was not yet well seated, where even the lawyers were adventurers, 
and where communication was hardly maintained. Realization 
of these differences was already implicit in the commissions and instructions 
issued in the period of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, 
and it becomes more pronounced in the handling of cases after 1696. The 
central principle of appeal jurisdiction as to the American plantations becomes 
the maintenance of the royal prerogative overseas, a legal doctrine the particulars 
of which were well understood, but the limits of which were not defined. 
A second and subsidiary principle was the maintenance of the trade policies 
embodied in statutes and of the interests of the English merchant class. When 
neither of these considerations was involved in an appeal) the judicial superintendence 
exercised by the Council was no different than that exercised by the 
highest court for the realm. 
The first of these principles embraced the two cardinal problems presented 
by virtually every case on appeal —the applicability of English law and the 
extension of acts of Parliament. These were matters of prerogative because of 
medieval rules, reiterated in Calvin's Case, that the crown had an especial 
prerogative in determining laws for dominions acquired by conquest. Even 
the later notion, that settlers carried their law with them, did not shake the 
application of the earlier doctrine, because of the governmental control of the 
crown in royal colonies and because the machinery of legislative and judicial 
review was already established. The companion rule that acts of Parliament 
passed after settlement would apply only if the dominions were named was a 
useful reinsurance device. It is extremely important to note once more that the 
crown never took the fatal step of introducing the law of England as such into 
any colony, but maintained with great steadfastness the position that so far as 
the colonies were concerned English law was a standard with which, all things 
being equal, there must be compliance. There were circumstances where such 
compliance would not be necessary. Thus, a rule might not be applied if local 
conditions were unsuitable or if some matter of prerogative or national trade 
was at stake. The decision of these circumstances was entirely within the discretion 
of the Council, so that frequently the ordinary risks of appeal were