Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/103

the provincial legislature, which were approved, were an act for the prevention of frauds and perjuries, conformable to that of Charles the Second; an act for the observance of the Lord's day; an act for solemnizing marriages by a minister or a justice of the peace; an act for the support of ministers and schoolmasters; an act for regulating towns and counties; and an act for the settlement and distribution of the estates of persons dying intestate.^[1] These and many other acts of general utility have continued substantially in force down to our day. Under the act for the distribution of estates the half-blood were permitted to inherit equally with the whole blood.^[2] Entails were preserved and passed according to the course of descents of the common law; but the general policy of the state silently reduced the actual creation of such estates to comparatively narrow limits.

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1. 2 Hutch. Hist. 65, 66.
2. 2 Hutch. Hist. 66.