cuAP. 11] LIMITATION OF LEGISLATION 395 
died domiciled in the Colony! In any case there is no 
evidence of the principle being accepted at that date, 
but with regard to merchant shipping, the question has 
! Thisfact has given rise to a good deal of confusion as to extra-territorial 
legislation, whereas it really rests on a doctrine of situs of goods ; see e.g. 
Dicey, Conflict of Laws,® pp. 753 seq. There is a classical example of this 
confusion in the protests of the High Commissioner of Canada and 
the Agents-General in 1894 against the Finance Act of that year; see 
Parl, Pap., C. 1433, 1451. They contended that it was taxation of the 
Colonies in the sense that a tax was levied on the Colonial assets directly; 
that was not the case: no proceedings under the Act could have been 
taken in the Colonies; the only liability was in England, nor was 
this objection pressed later in the discussions re double income tax (cf. 
Parl. Pap., Cd. 3523, pp. 183 seq., 3524, pp. 161 seq.). The matter has 
again received new life from the resolution of South Africa for discussion 
at the Imperial Conference of 1911 (see Parl. Pap., Cd. 5513, p. 16), which 
recommended that the Imperial Government should in assessing death 
duties make an allowance of the amount paid on assets situated in the 
Colonies, the intention being to secure the reduction of the assessment on 
shares in Transvaal and Cape mining enterprises on which death duties are 
payable in every case, though not regarded by the Imperial Government 
as being assets situated in South Africa. The principle adopted by the 
Imperial Government as to the situs of shares in companies is that the share 
is situated where the title is situated, namely in the place where the share 
is registered or in the place where it actually is transferred, if it is in a form 
transferable by simple delivery. There is only an exception to this by 
the rule that shares in companies which open branch Colonial registers are 
held to be situated for purposes of death duties in the United Kingdom. 
On the other hand, the Cape and the Transvaal adopt the criterion of the 
places where the company exercises its operations irrespective of any 
other consideration, except that the Transvaal adopts also the criterion 
that shares in all Transvaal companies, wherever they carry on their 
operations, are assets in the Transvaal ; see Act No. 28 of 1909, s. 10. 
A conflict immediately arises in case of death duties. The Finance Act 
of 1894 levies such duties on the personal property, wherever situated, of 
a person whodiesdomiciled in the United Kingdom, and makes an allowance 
only in respect of duties paid in a Colony on assets situated therein. There is, 
therefore, a conflict in cases of the assets in the Transvaal and the Cape in the 
shape of shares in companies which transact business there, and accordingly 
the Order in Council applying s. 20 of the Finance Act to the Cape had to be 
revoked, and it is impossible to apply that section to the Transvaal at all. 
There is no possible doubt as to the legal right of a Dominion parliament 
to tax all the assets which are physically within the Dominion, and it may 
algo, it seems clear, tax those assets which. as in the case of the personal