Within the varied regions of our Crown colonies there is found a mosaic of legal systems, bewildering in their number and complexity,—here Roman-Dutch law, there the Custom of Paris or of Normandy, here the Code Civil, there Ottoman law, the law of Spain, or of medieval Italy. An Appendix to this work, on the Systems of Law obtaining in the Crown colonies (for which I have to thank Mr. Edward Manson, Honorary Secretary of the Society of Comparative Legislation,) presents, for the first time, an authoritative exhibition of the system of each colony, thereby giving my work a value which it would not otherwise possess. In a survey of the origin and development of this complicated mechanism, it is necessary to keep in view the leading principles which have governed English policy throughout its career of conquest and colonisation. The essence of this policy has been to adapt itself to the peculiar requirements of every individual accession to the Empire, and our methods have been, consequently, as various as the communities for whom the legislation was designed.

The colonies which fall within the scope of the present inquiry are of two kinds,—those which have been obtained by settlement, and those which have come to us either by conquest or by cession; and our mode of procedure in regard to each of these two groups is necessarily distinct. The case of settlers is a comparatively simple one.