To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for Trade & Plantations.

May it please your Lordships,

In humble obedience to your Lordships Commands signified to me by Mr Pownal, I have perused and considered an Act passed by the Governor, Council and Assembly in the Province of North Carolina in March 1773, intituled—

“An Act for dividing the Province into six several Districts, and for Establishing a Superior Court of Justice in each of the said Districts, and for Establishing Inferior Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in the several Counties in this Province, & regulating the Proceedings therein.”

And I am of opinion, that the said Act is liable to important objections in point of Law, among these I conceive it to be one, that the original Jurisdiction of the Superior Court (the Determination of which must necessarily be the most conformable to those of the great Courts of Justice in this Country) is confined to Debts and Demands not less than fifty pounds Proclamation money, where the Plaintiff and Defendant both reside in the same District, and not less than twenty five pounds where they reside in different Districts. But as I find in the tenth page of the Law a clause giving an attachment against the Goods of Persons residing in other Governments, expressly contrary to His Majesty's late Royal Instruction, and inconsistent as I think with the true commercial Interest of the Colony, I cannot but advise your Lordships to propose the Repeal of this Law, or at least that His Majestys approbation thereof should not be signified.