424 ///. THE COLONIAL PERIOD that the former government by the commissons and instruc- tions be void and null." ^ Here seems to be a conscious recognition of the " conquest " idea so emphasized in the decision just quoted. In Mary- land itself, however, we have a still clearer example when, in 1684, in a debate between the Houses of the Assembly over the right of the Speaker to issue warrants for election to vacan- cies, the Proprietor's argument, in support of his own prerog- ative, that " the King had power to dispose of his conquests as he pleased," roused the ire of the Lower House, which asserted the rights of its members as based on their English origin. This was " their birthright by the words of the Char- ter." The word " conquest " had a sinister meaning which they resented, and they hoped that the words were the result, not of the Proprietor's own will, but of strange if not civil counsel. The Upper House at once explained that it had no idea of likening the freemen of the Province to a conquered people.^ The discussion indicates that in Maryland, before the revolution of 1689, this legal theory was known and its application of this principle to Maryland denied. The narrower question of the extension of the English stat- utes had been broached in many other plantations. One or two instances will suffice for illustration. In 1692 the Assembly of South Carolina passed an Act authorizing the judicial officers of the colony to execute the Habeas Corpus Act — an Act passed some years later than the settlement of Carolina. This the Proprietors disallowed, however, declaring that all laws of England apphed to the colony, and holding that it was there- fore unnecessary to re-enact that famous statute in their Province. " By those gentlemen's permission that say so, it is expressed in our grants from the Crown that the inhabit- ants of Carolina shall be of the King's allegiance, which makes them subject to the laws of England." Here we have a proprietary Province, of a constitution analogous in so many respects to Maryland, in controversy
- Hening: Statutes at Large I., p. 363-4. Cited in part in Snow:
The Administration of Dependencies, p. 115, and as a whole in Hart: American History Told by Contemporaries I., pp. 235-6.
- Sparks, Causes of the Maryland Rev. of 1689, p. 82 Md. Arch. III.
Ass. Pro. pp. 124-125.
