"The people had long desired a body of laws, and thought their
condition very unsafe while so much power rested in the
discretion of magistrates.... Two great reasons there were,
which caused most of the magistrates and some of the elders not
to be very forward in this matter. One was want of sufficient
experience of the nature and disposition of the people,
considered with the condition of the country and other
circumstances, which made them conceive that such laws would be
fittest for us which should arise _pro re nata_ upon
occasions, etc., and so the laws of England and other states
grew, and therefore the fundamental laws of England are called
customs, consuetudines. 2. For that it would professedly
transgress the limits of our charter, which provide we shall
make no laws repugnant to the laws of England, and that we were
assured we must do. But to raise up laws by practice and
custom had been no transgression."[Footnote: Winthrop, "History
of New England," I, 322.]

The tendency toward partial codification proved too strong to be
resisted, and all the colonies soon had a substantial body of
written law published in official form.

The exercise of judicial power by colonial legislatures was
steadily contracting throughout the century preceding the
Revolution. Where there were Governors appointed by the crown,
they discouraged it. The courts were correspondingly
strengthened. Law became better understood and more wisely
applied. A large body of local statute law had grown up by 1750,
much of it already venerable by antiquity, and intimately