cap. 11] LIMITATION OF LEGISLATION 375
down that, whatever might be the power of the Imperial
Parliament, no Colonial Legislature could bind persons
resident outside the territory, and he instanced the fact
that difficulty had always arisen when it was sought to
establish a Colonial navy because of the limited extent of
Colonial jurisdiction. It was decided by the Supreme Court
of New Zealand in re Gleick! that the Colonial Legislature
had no power to authorize the conveyance on the high
sea to another Colony, and the detention outside its own
jurisdiction of any person whatsoever, such power requiring
Imperial authority. On the other hand, Higinbotham J.,
in the Victorian case of Regina v. Call, ex parte Murphy?
declared that though as a matter of abstract speculation the
Legislature of Victoria might have no authority outside
the Colonial limits, still its enactments were binding on all
Colonial Courts in Victoria.
Other early cases on this question affect the attempt to
give effect to criminal laws of a Colony beyond the territorial
limits. Thus in Regina v. Brierly 3 it was held by the Chancery
Division of Ontario that a Canadian law was valid which
made it an offence for a British subject resident in Canada
to commit bigamy anywhere, provided that he had left
Canada in order to commit the offence. But this case was
overruled or dissented from by the Queen’s Bench of Ontario
in Regina v. Plowman, on the strength of Macleod v. Attorney-
General for New South Wales’ and it is impossible to follow
Mr. Lefroy ® in his ingenious attempt to distinguish the
cases by the fact that the enactment of New South Wales
did not restrict its operation to British subjects resident in
that Colony as did the Act of Canada.
The whole question was elaborately considered by the
10. B. &F. S.C. 79; New Zealand Parl. Pap., 1880, A. 6.
* 7V. L. R. 113, at p. 123; cf. also Reg. v. Pearson, 6 V.L R. 333;
Lefroy, op. cit., p. 263, note 1; above, p. 170, note 1. :
1 (1887) 14 O. R. 525; 4 Cart. 665. Cf. Reg. v. Giles, 15 C. L. J. 178.
} (1894) 25 O. R. 656.
5 [1891] A. C. 455. Cf. Reg. v. Mount, 6 P. C. 283; Low v. Routledge,
1 Ch. App. 42; Reg. v. Keyn, 2 Ex. D. 63. ¢ Op. cit., pp. 336-8.
