This act is memorable. for It was the first time that the common law had thus been planted by the free will of a selfgoverning people upon alien soil. The original British territory in America. embraced within the Thirteen Colonies. extended. at least by a fiction of law. as far west as the Mississippi River. The eastern half of the United States may be said to have acquired the common law of England as a part of its colonial inheritance. but our Missotiri immigrants carried this great body of the law across the Mississippi to a land where it had never existed and supplanted with it the Spanish law there dominant. By the statute of 1816 Missouri adopted the common law of England and all acts of Parliament of a general nature. not local to the Kingdom of Great Britain. passed prior to the fourth year of the reign of James I. As you know. the fourth year of James I was 1606. one year prior to the first permanent settlement of Englishmen within the bounds of the United States at Jamestown.
Keywords matched
immigrants