COLONUS (Lat.). In Civil Law. A serf attached to the soil and whose descendants so continued. Whilst the colon,/ were not really servi, and in many respects were held to be ingenui, they were not permitted to remove from the place on which they were born into this status. They paid rent to the owner of the land and generally in kind. Those who were coloni liberi had well-as certained rights of property as against the owner of the land, and were subject to few other obligations ; while another class, call ed ceuiti, had no property, and what they might acquire was acquired for the master. Howe, Civ. L. (2d ed.) 152.
It is thought by Spence not improbable that many of the °eons were descended from the co/oni brought over by the Romans. The names of the coloni and their families were all recorded in the archives of the colony or district. Hence they were called adscriptitii. 1 Spence, Eq. Jur. 51.
A union of citizens or subjects who have left their country to people an other, and remain subject to the mother country. U. S. v. The Nancy, 3 Wash. C. C.
287, Fed. Cas. No. 15,854.
A tract of territory subordinate to the inhabitants of a different tract of country, and ruled by authorities wholly or in part responsible to the main administration, in stead of to the people of their own region. quoted by J. B. Thayer (Legal Essays 166) from Prof. Hart.
In conquered or ceded countries, their laws remain in force until changed, but where a colony is planted in an uninhabited country, the colonists carry with them all the English laws that are applicable to their condition ; 1 Steph. Com. 62.
The country occupied by the colonists.
A colony differs from a possession or a dependency. See DEPENDENCY.
A province of Canada is not a British colony or dependency ; [1911] 2 Ch. 58.
See Burge, Colonial Laws, by Renton & Phillimore.