434 PART X. The British Commonwealth
to alter the constitutions of settled colonies were granted to the
Crown (acting by delegation if desired) by the British Settlements
Act.1 The Act applied to any settled colonies which were not at that
time within the jurisdiction of a colonial legislature, e.g. the Falkland
Islands, the Gold Coast. Thus for constitutional purposes henceforth
there was no difference between such colonies and those which had
been acquired by conquest or cession. For in the latter case it always
had been, and still is, competent for the Crown to legislate by pre-
rogative. But in colonies so acquired there was no automatic applica-
tion of English law, the law in force at the time of the conquest or
cession remaining in force until altered. Illustrations of this are to
be found to-day in the Union of South Africa and in Ceylon, where
the basic law is Roman-Dutch, and in Quebec where the pre-
Napoleonic French law still provides the common law of the
Province.
Rule in So far as the form of government is concerned it rests with the
Campbell v. Crown to grant or withhold a constitution as a matter of prerogative
a ' right in the case of territory which has been ceded to it or conquered.
But once a grant of a representative legislature has been made to
such a colony, the power to legislate or to raise taxes by prerogative
is irrevocably abandoned, so long as the legislature continues in
existence. This was laid down in the great case of Campbell v. Hall
in 1774 in relation to the Island of Granada, But there may be
expressly reserved by the instrument creating the legislature, or by a
subsequent Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a power
of concurrent legislation by prerogative.2 The definition of represen-
tative legislature given by section 5 of the Colonial Laws Validity
Act, 1865,3 is limited to that Act. When Campbell v. Hall was decided
such a legislature meant any assembly of the inhabitants summoned
by the Crown. In the days of the old Colonial Empire, which came to
an end with the revolt of the North American Colonies,) elected
majorities sat in most legislative councils along with the Governor
and his Executive Council, but with the advent of colonies with an
overwhelming preponderance of native inhabitants the acquisition
of a representative legislature only comes as a stage in the process of
acquiring self-governing powers. In practice in most letters patent
creating colonial constitutions with representative legislatures power
is expressly reserved to revoke the grant. Where the Crown, as in
Ceylon, originally a conquered and ceded colony, had reserved the
1 British Settlements Act, 1945, removed the requirement that delegation must
be to three or more persons.
a Campbell v. Hall (1774), Lofft. 655; K, & L. 487; J. & Y. 57; as interpreted
in Sammut v. Strickland, [1938] A.C. 678, especially at p, 704, which makes it
clear that the continued existence of the legislature is requisite. If the legislature
is surrendered, the prerogative is revived.
8 P. 44^ post.