found himself able to read these remarks in a different way.

The observations of Lord Sumner, it seems to us, are obiter dicta, and having this in mind, and the fact that the Privy Council had already held the Manitoba Act valid, it would seem that the decision in the Nat Bell Case is not applicable to the Flood or McKenna Cases.

In the Manitoba Case, Lord Macnaghten said of sec. 119 that,

"That provision is as much a part of the Act as any other section contained in it. It must have its full effect in exempting from the operation of Act all bonâ fide transactions in liquor which come within its terms. It is not necessary to go through the provisions of the Act. It is enough to say that they are extremely stringent-more stringent probably than anything that is to be found in any legislation of a similar kind."

When the Manitoba Act was before the Manitoba Court of Appeal, that Court took the same view of sec. 119 that Mathieson, C.J., has taken, but the judgment of the Privy Council was an answer to that contention, and we cannot see that the absence from the P. E. Island Act of clause 52 of the Manitoba Act can make any difference to the decision. In our opinion Lord Sumner's judgment must be treated as confined to the particular facts of the case, and if we bear in mind that he was trying to uphold an Act which had not a section like 162 of the P. E. Island statute, and read the judgment in the light of that, it is easily distinguishable.

It is probably because sec. 72 of the Alberta Act was repealed that no reference to the Manitoba Case is made in Lord Sumner's judgment. This would be further proof that his remarks would not be appliable to the Flood or McKenna Cases, and would not support the judgments of the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island in those cases.

Assuming, however, that the decision in the Flood Case was not altogether erroneous, it should, it seems to us, have been limited to stating that sec. 52 of the P. E. Island Act was ultra vires in part—that is, in so far as it purports to apply to transactions beyond the limits of the province. It could not be properly held that sec. 52 was ultra vires or inoperative in so far as local transactions are concerned. This being so, all that was required to make sec. 52 entirely unobjectionable was to pass legislation which made it clear that it was not intended to apply to export transactions. On this point we should like to quote from Lefroy's Constitutional Law of Canada, p. 100:

"Although part of an Act, either of the Dominion Parliament or of a Provincial Legislature, may be ultra vires, and therefore invalid, this will not invalidate the rest of the Act, if it appears that the one part is separate in its operation from the other part, so that each is a separate declaration of the legislative will, and unless the object of the Act is such that it cannot be attained by a partial execution.

Assuming for argument's sake that sec. 162 of the Prince Edward Island statute was not clear in its intendment as to export transactions, it appears to us beyond a doubt that the Prohibition Amendment Act, 1922, clarified the doubt, and entirely cured sec. 52 of any such supposed defect.

Mathieson, C.J., in his judgment in the McKenna Case, in referring to the amending legislation of 1922, says:

"After an exhaustive examination of all the authorities available, I can find no case in which a statute, held invalid as to part, has been amended without direct reference to the defective section or part intended to be affected The method

of amendment uniformly adopted in such cases as this, appears to be to remove the invalid section by the amendment and substitute therefor the section as validated together with the validating provisions."

We must confess that this is a somewhat novel objection so far as English law is concerned. Now, while authority may be found in the United States Courts to the effect that an Act totally unconstitutional and void does not admit of amendment, the current of decisions, even in those Courts, is altogether in favour of the possibility of amending an Act which is void in one section only, or in part of a section. The highly technical objection made by Chief Justice Mathieson to the effect that the partial invalidity of sec. 52 could not be remedied except by a statute which made a direct reference to the defective section, does not appear to us to rest on any sound foundation. It is true that in the constitution of many of the United States there is a requirement that the amended section shall be set out in the amending statute, but this is merely in order to avoid confusion of thought and expression, and while it may be a very wise rule to introduce into a State constitution, it has no counterpart in the British North America Act.

In the case under consideration it seems to us that the most that could be said is that sec. 52 was unconstitutional and inoperative in part, i.e., in so far as it purported to affect transactions outside the province. But it cannot be pretended that a judgment so holding would delete the section altogether, as if it had been repealed and removed from the statute book. Consequently, when the legislation of 1922 introduced the qualification which was held to be necessary in order to make sec. 52′ unobjectionable, we cannot see that any further difficulty could arise.

With profound deference to the views of the learned Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island, we are unable to share his conclusion that the Prohibition Amendment Act of 1922 did not completely cure the defect which was supposed to exist in sec. 52 of the Island Act.

Furthermore, it does not appear in either of the judgments that the convictions were in respect of transactions in liquor relating to the export trade;

and, for the reasons already stated, that sec. 52 could at most be considered ultra vires only as regards such transactions, it would seem that on this ground alone the convictions in both cases should have been maintained.

We cannot leave our consideration of this matter without stating with all possible emphasis that it is unfortunate that important constitutional questions, such as have arisen in the two cases under discussion, involving the jurisdiction and authority of a provincial legislature, should be allowed to rest with the decision of a provincial Court.

THE reception given in the Privy Council to the first group of Irish appeals is of particular interest to Canadians, since the terms of the AngloIrish Treaty expressly assimilate the constitutional position of Ireland to that of Canada, so that the precedents established for either Dominion are materially relevant to the status of the other. All the applications for leave to appeal were refused, although one of the cases raised questions of difficulty and importance upon which there had been much conflict of opinion in the Irish Courts. From the remarks of their Lordships we are reminded of the significant fact that the Judicial Committee is still technically a board of advisers to the executive, and is therefore free to consider questions of policy which cannot properly affect the decision of a purely legal tribunal.

Lord Haldane said in effect that the Committee would take notice of the growth of autonomy in the Dominions, and would govern its attitude towards appeals in the light of the new political development. He indicated that in the future applications for leave to appeal would generally only be granted in constitutional questions, and that cases of private right, irrespective of their difficulty or importance, would be dealt with finally by the Irish Courts.

So far as Canada is concerned, this reasoning will not apply to direct appeals from the provincial courts, where the appeal in certain cases lies as of right, but will presumably govern the practice of the Committee in dealing with applications for leave to appeal from the Supreme Court. If so, the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada will be final in all except constitutional cases. This is the converse of the position established by the Australian Constitution, where it is expressly provided (s. 74), that the decisions of the Commonwealth High Court shall be final in constitutional questions, unless that Court itself grants leave to appeal. In South Africa the form of the constitution leaves almost no scope for the judicial determination of constitutional problems, so that under the new ruling appeals from South Africa, which are already extremely rare, will practically become obsolete.

H. A. S.

THE Supreme Court of Nova Scotia en banc rendered a decision recently of unusual interest in relation to the liberty of the subject. Livingston and MacLaughlin, who were respectively President and Secretary of District No. 26 U.M.W. of America, were charged before a Police Magistrate at Halifax with having published a seditious libel in connection. with the recent strike at Sydney. Upon being arraigned they were remanded for a preliminary inquiry without bail. Counsel on their behalf applied to Mr. Justice Chisholm, of the Supreme Court, for a writ of habeas corpus, and on its return moved that the decision of the magistrate be rescinded and the accused be admitted to bail. The application was referred to the Full Court and on the argument the Attorney-General for Nova Scotia showed cause and contended that under the provisions of sec. 698 of the Criminal Code there was no power in a Superior Court to bail a prisoner on remand by a Justice; that under the writ of

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