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Excerpt from The Constitution of Jersey: Shewing Its Incorporation With the Kingdom of England, by Henry 1st, the Legislative Powers of Parliament and the Nature of the Authority of the Queen in Council, Over the Said Island; With Observations on the Institution of the Royal Court Before I dismiss this part of the subject, I crave leave, my Lords, to direct your lordships' attention to the generally received opinion, that these isles are the patrimony of the Crown, and ought to be governed by Orders in Council, whilst in reality they are a part of the Kingdom, and ought to be governed by the laws of England. I mean not only acts of Parliament in which the islands are named, but those in which they are not named, unless they are specially excepted. This point, my Lords, is of vital importance, and has been entirely overlooked by all the text writers on constitutional law. Hence, a misconception arose in Mr. Carus Wilson's case, in 1845, before the Court of Queen's Bench, upon Lord Mansfield's dictum, respecting the power of the Court to send a writ of Habeas Corpus to Jersey. His lordship's words are, To foreign dominions which belong to a Prince who succeeded to the throne of England, this Court has no power to send a writ of any kind. We cannot send a Habeas Corpus to Scotland, or to the Electorate, but to Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Plantations, and (as since the loss of the ducby of Normandy, they have been considered as annexed to the Crown in some respects) to Guernsey and Jersey, we may, and formerly it lay to Calais, which was a conquest, and yielded to the Crown of England by the treaty of Bretigny. Now, my Lords, it was assumed in Wilson's case, that the islands were the foreign dominions, or private patrimony of the Crown, yet nevertheless it was contended that the writ of Habeas Corpus would run to Jersey, even at common law, which, ao cording to Lord Mansfield's dictum, is an absurdity. In such case the writ could run to Jersey only in virtue of the statutes but if the isles were really annexed to the Crown, not however in some respects, but in all respects, as I maintain they were, then they must have been incorporated with the kingdom, not since the loss of the ducby of Normandy, but at its conquest, from which it follows, that the writ runs to the isles, at common law, independent of the statutes. I hum bly conceive, my lords, that this is the proper distinction, and that the statutes are only auxiliary means to carry out antecedent rights. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
