As to the right of the colonist to inherit lands by descent in any other colony than his own,Judge Story himself informs us that it belonged to him "as a British subject."That right,indeed,is in consequence of his allegiance.By the policy of the British constitution and laws,it is not permitted that the soil of her territory should belong to any from whom she cannot demand all the duties of allegiance.This allegiance is the same in all the colonies as it is in England proper and,wherever it exists,the correspondent right to own and inherit the soil attaches.The right to regulate commercial intercourse among her colonies belongs,of course,to the parent country,unless she relinquishes it by some act of her own;
and no such act is shown in the present case.On the contrary,although that right was resisted for a time by some of the American colonies,it was fully yielded,as our author himself informs us,by all those of New England,and I am not informed that it was denied by any other.Indeed,the supremacy of Parliament,in most matters of legislation which concerned the colonies,was generally ?nay,universally ?admitted up to the very eve of the Revolution.It is true,the right to tax the colonies was denied,but this was upon a wholly different principle.It was the right of every British subject to be exempt from taxation,except by his own consent;
and as the colonies were not,and from their local situation could not be,represented in Parliament,the right of that body to tax them was denied,upon a fundamental principle of English liberty.But the right of the mother country to regulate commerce among her colonies is of a different character,and it never was denied to England by her American colonies,so long as a hope of reconciliation remained to them.In like manner,the facts relied on by Mr.Jay,that "all people of this country were then subjects of the King of Great Britain,and owed allegiance to him"and that "all the civil authority then existing or exercised here flowed from the head of the British empire,"are but the usual incidents of colonial dependence,and are by no means peculiar to the case he was considering.They do,indeed,prove a unity between all the colonies and the mother country,and show that these,taken altogether,are in the strictest sense of the terms,"one people";but I am at a loss to perceive how they prove,that two or more parts or subdivisions of the same empire necessarily constitute "one people."
If this be true of the colonies,it is equally true of any two or more geographical sections of England proper;for every one of the reasons assigned applies as strictly to this case as to that of the colonies.Any two countries may be "one people,"or "a nation de facto,"if they can be made so by the facts that their people are "subjects of the King of Great Britain,and owe allegiance to him,"and that "all the civil authority exercised therein flows from the head of the British empire."
It is to be regretted that the author has not given us his own views of the sources from which these several rights and powers were derived.
