to both Jamaica and Barbados more than 70 percent of the chancery appeals 
determined on the merits were reversals or variances, in the case of the Leeward 
Islands approximately 80 percent. We have already mentioned the proportion 
in vice-admiralty appeals. Since numerous strictures have been leveled 
against colonial judiciaries, it may be interesting to compare the proportion of 
affirmances and reversals in Channel Islands appeals with those from the plantations. 
Slightly more than 60 percent of the Guernsey appeals and approximately 
55 percent of the Jersey appeals resulted in affirmances. The colonial 
record in common law appeals does not compare too unfavorably with this 
proportion, but the chancery record cannot stand comparison. 
The direct influence of the Privy Council did not extend to all categories of 
colonial litigation, since the consistently maintained policy of minimum requirements 
precluded an appeal in the vast majority of causes coming before 
colonial tribunals. Of course the doleance was available to circumvent such 
minimums, but usually only resolute or wealthy litigants resorted to such 
procedure. 
For a real control over law enforcement through the medium of judicial 
proceedings this position of aloofness may have been unwise, and it was not 
corrected by the measures taken for administrative supervision via the Board 
of Trade. The House of Lords stood in a similar isolation from the tides of 
English litigation, but for the realm the firm and knowledgeable hand of the 
King's Bench wielded the birch in the interest of justice in a way that no 
governor and council or provincial supreme court was capable of doing. An 
intelligent employment of the device of reserving questions of law or of certification 
of proceedings by the colonial judges would have maintained a really 
close correspondence, but such measures would probably have created their 
own problems.