Appeals to the king in
council were also provided for in personal actions where the matter in
difference exceeded three hundred pounds.
On the other hand, the legislature made all appropriations, including
those for the salaries of the governor and judges, and was only limited in
its capacity to enact statutes by the clause invariably inserted in these
patents.
This, therefore, is the precise moment when the modern theory of
constitutional limitations first appears defined; distinct from the
ancient corporate precedents. By a combination of circumstances also, a
sufficient sanction for the written law happened to be provided, thus
making the conception complete, for the tribunal of last resort was an
English court sustained by ample physical force; nevertheless the great
principle of coordinate departments of government was not yet understood,
and substantial relief against legislative usurpation had to be sought in
a foreign jurisdiction. To lawyers of our own time it is self-evident that
the restrictions of an organic code must be futile unless they are upheld
by a judiciary not only secure in tenure and pay, but removed as far as
may be from partisan passions. This truth, however, remained to be
discovered amid the abuses of the eighteenth century, for the position of
the provincial bench was unsatisfactory in the last degree.
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