The Final Imperial Crisis

Craig Yirush

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511921599.009

8 - The Final Imperial Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Craig Yirush

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Craig Yirush: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

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In 1774, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield handed down an important ruling about the rights of settlers in the new territories conquered from the French in the Seven Years' War. Campbell, the plaintiff, was a planter on the conquered French island of Grenada who objected to paying a new duty on all sugar exports on the grounds that the 1763 Royal Proclamation had promised the settlers on the island a representative government. Having extended such a right to a conquered territory, Campbell contended, the king could not then raise money by prerogative without local consent. Mansfield agreed, holding that “the King had precluded himself from the Exercise of a Legislative Authority over the Island of Grenada” by pledging to grant the settlers an assembly of their own.

At first glance, Mansfield's decision was a striking victory for the rights of settlers in the newly expanded empire. In holding that rights once granted were irrevocable, it removed the ambiguity about royal power outside the realm that had existed since Coke's equivocal ruling in Calvin's Case. But on closer inspection, the verdict provided cold comfort to Englishmen in the Crown's dominions. For despite limiting the power of the prerogative over them, Mansfield placed no such limits on Parliament. Indeed, Mansfield simply transferred the authority that the Crown had enjoyed by conquest to the king-in-Parliament.

Type: Chapter
Information: Settlers, Liberty, and Empire
The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675–1775
, pp. 215 - 262

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511921599.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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8 - The Final Imperial Crisis

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