Beschreibung
Folio (11.25 inches). 5 George II, Chapter 7. General title leaf + pages 219-221. Woodcut Royal coat of arms and decorative initial. Text in Black Letter. Neatly extracted from a bound volume. By the early 1730s, London merchants had significantly increased the level of credit and loan services to American and West Indian colonial plantation operators, with funds coming chiefly from the profits of sugar sales. Depressed sugar prices put a strain on financial arrangements, and the collection of debts became especially difficult when colonial assemblies actively disrupted actions and suits regarding debts owed to residents in Great Britain. Frustrated with continued impasse, a group of London merchants in the Negro slave, tobacco, and sugar industries petitioned Parliament for a solution. The resultant Debt Recovery Act, 1732 provided an effective process for the collection of debts in colonial America: creditors in Great Britain could make an affidavit before a chief magistrate and transmit the same to the colony where it would have the same force as a court of law in England. The new legislation allowed the seizure of real estate and Negro slaves for the purposes of satisfying debts. The legislation reads in part: And be it further enacted that Houses, Lands, Negroes, and other hereditaments and Real Estates, situate or being within any of the said Plantations belonging to any Person indebted shall be subject to the like Remedies, Proceedings, and Process in any Court of Law or Equity, in any of the said Plantations respectively, for seizing, extending, selling, or disposing of any such Houses, Lands, Negroes and other hereditaments and real Estates, towards the Satisfaction of such Debts, Duties, and Demands. The Act induced commission agents to be more liberal in granting trade credit and loans, and planters correspondingly carried larger debt balances on their accounts, to the great advantage of London agents that collected interest payments. In the end, the law apparently led to a greater commoditization of real property and expansion of the trade in Negro slaves. The Act had far-reaching implications for Canada. In the years that followed the British conquest of New France, much of Great Britains vast body of statutory legislation became part of Canadas colonial legal heritage through the principles of reception, Imperial prerogative, and legislative supremacy. British common law was imposed on the new Province of Quebec by the Treaty of Paris, 1763 and Proclamation of 1763. The Quebec Act, 1774 made concessions by permitting the French civil law system to be used within the province. The Constitutional Act, 1791 split the Province of Quebec into Lower Canada and Upper Canada. Both provinces were subject to the English criminal law system, but Lower Canada was allowed to retain their traditional French civil law system. Upper Canada, in fully adopting the British common law system, became subject to all applicable British laws and statutes, including this Act that permitted the seizure of Negro slaves for the settling of debts. This Act represents a part of the British legal heritage upon which laws specific to Canada were based, and which were modified and expanded by later Imperial and colonial enactments. In concert with the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, all applicable British legislation (including this Act) was officially received into Canadian constitutional law by means of Section 129 of the British North America Act, 1867. The clause respecting the seizure of Negro slaves for the purposes of satisfying debts was repealed in 1797, but the remainder of the Act relating to the seizure of land to settle debts remained in force in many parts of Canada well into the 20th century. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 187
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