CHAPTER XVI.
GENERAL REVIEW OF THE COLONIES.
§ 146. We have now finished our survey of the origin and political history of the colonies; and here we may pause for a short time for the purpose of some general reflections upon the subject.
§ 147. Plantations or colonies in distant countries are either, such as are acquired by occupying and peopling desert and uncultivated regions by emigrations from the mother country;[1] or such as, being already cultivated and organized, are acquired by conquest or cession under treaties. There is, however, a difference between these two species of colonies in respect to the laws, by which they are governed, at least according to the jurisprudence of the common law. If an uninhabited country is discovered and planted by British subjects, the English laws are said to be immediately in force there; for the law is the birthright of every subject. So that wherever they go, they carry their laws with them; and the new found country is governed by them.[2]
§ 148. This proposition, however, though laid down in such general terms by very high authority, requires many limitations, and is to be understood with many restrictions. Such colonists do not cany with them the whole body of the English laws, as they then exist; for many of them must, from the nature of the case, be wholly inapplicable to their situation, and