RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT [PART I 
seventeenth centuries, when colonial settlements became of 
importance, that the money of the subject could only be 
voted by a representative legislature, and that the laws of 
England could only be changed by a similar legislature. 
The Crown lawyers, therefore, adopted the view that the 
King had the power in any Colony by settlement (this was 
the technical term adopted) to empower the Governor, or 
other representative of the Crown, to make laws for the peace, 
welfare, and good government of the settlement, with the 
advice and consent of a Council which acted both as a 
legislative and executive authority and of an Assembly 
which consisted of the whole or the major portion of the 
freeholders of the Colony. It was not in the power of 
the Crown to legislate for such a Colony with the advice of 
a nominee Council only, though it was never decided in the 
Courts to what extent the people must be represented in 
the Assembly; as a matter of fact, the representation 
in every case was a decidedly liberal one. 
The other principle which guided the lawyers of the day 
was the doctrine then prevalent at international law of 
the absolute power possessed by a conqueror over the 
people of the country he conquered, an idea applied also to 
cases of cession. In their view, as the conqueror was not 
bound in international law even to spare the lives of those 
who were overcome by him, so he need not accord them any 
civil rights whatever, and what he did accord was his to 
grant and to take away. Thence followed the doctrine that 
the Crown has uncontrolled legislative authority over the 
conquered or ceded Colony.! But it would be a mistake to 
suppose that this status was considered a specially desirable 
one, even from the royal point of view, especially if, as was 
the case with the Colonies early so acquired, there was a 
chance of white settlement: in those cases the Crown was 
ready and willing to grant a constitution of the same liberal 
type as had been necessarily granted to Colonies which had 
been acquired by settlement. Nothing, perhaps, can illustrate 
12 P. Will. 75; Smith v. Brown, 2 Salk. 666; Beaumont v, Barrett, 
1 Moo. P. C. at p. 75; Cameron v. Kyte, 3 Knapp, at p. 346. 
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