In 1769, by a nice coincidence, Captain James Cook made landfall in New Zealand, the first British mariner to do so, and William Blackstone published the final volume of his Commentaries on the Law of England. Blackstoněs discussion of the application of the law of Englandto newly acquired colonies is not completely coherent, but it does give a strong sense that much, if not all, of the common law did come to apply to many, if not all, of them.1 The Privy Council was reminded of this, with express reference to Blackstone, in November 2003 when it was asked to determine whether the rule in Smith v Selwyn,2 a decision of the English Court of Appeal given in 1914, was part of the law of Jamaica.3