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Colonial Laws & Foreign Laws, Commentaries on, Burge, 1838
Commentaries on colonial and foreign laws generally, and in their conflict with each other and the law of England: by William Burge, 1st ed., Vol.
1–4, London, Saunders and Benning, 1838. (William Burge, Esq., Q.C., born in 1786, matriculated at Oxford in 1803, was admitted to the Inner Temple and
then called to the bar in 1808, when he joined the colonial service. He was stationed to Jamaica, where he served 20 years, the last 12 as attorney
general. Returning to England in 1829, he spent the rest of his life practicing before the Privy Council, as well as being influential in colonial
affairs. For many years until his death on Nov. 12, 1849 he served also as Jamaica’s London agent. See also the listings for Burge in the Misc. Jamaica
listings on this site. Burge’s Commentaries was enormously influential. The treatise was the first, and remained the preeminent, legal work attempting to
deal comparatively with the main divisions of the law of persons and property in the various legal systems prevailing in the British dependencies.
The pertinence at the time of a study in comparative jurisprudence such as Burge’s is illustrated by a fact cited in the introduction to the
Renton/Phillimore 1907- ed. of this work: “Of the 165 appeals to the Privy Council from the British colonies pending on Feb. 15, 1837, 115 were appeals from
courts in which English jurisprudence did not prevail, and consequently had to be decided according to the Coutume of Paris, the Code Civil, the
Roman-Dutch law, or the (Spanish) law of Trinidad.” — Vol. 1, p. xi. This original, 1838, edition of Burge’s work, went through several reprints and editions.
It was substantially enhanced and updated in the 1907 “Renton edition,” offered elsewhere on this site. In the original edition the author included a
“Preliminary treatise on the systems of jurisprudence prevailing in the British colonies, &c, and on appeals to the king in council.” (pp. xiii–lxxix)
In this lengthy essay he attempted to survey the laws in force and jurisprudence, along with copious citations to judicial charters, etc., for all of
the then-existing colonies and dependencies. This “Juridical Survey” was massively expanded in the definitive “New Edition” of Burge by Renton &
Phillimore, appearing in the form of their Volume 1, 1907. In that same year this same New Edition, Volume One was also issued separately under the
titleColonial Law & Courts, also offered elsewhere on this site.)
Title:   Commentaries on colonial and foreign laws : generally, and in their conflict with each other, and with the law of England / by William Burge.
OCLC Number:   60730299
Available Volumes
NameFiche CountOnlinePaper Backup
Volume 1YesYes
Volume 2YesYes
Volume 3YesYes
Volume 4YesYes