258 DIVISION OF LEGISLATIVE POWER.

Dow v.
Black.

Liquor
traffic.

society was embarrassed did not make it “insolvent,” and the
object of the Act was to prevent insolvency and enable the
society to continue.
This case was followed in Dow v. Black?, where an Act of
the Legislature of New Brunswick to enable the majority of
the inhabitants of a parish within the province to raise, by
local taxation, a subsidy to promote the construction of a
railway extending beyond the province, but already duly
authorized to be made, was held to be a “local or private
matter ” resembling an Act authorizing trustees or guardians
of a minor to let a warehouse to the company.

Municipal Institutions. The right of a province to
regulate the liquor traffic has been held in several cases®
to be valid as an exercise of the power to make police or
municipal regulations. The validity of such laws has been
attacked, chiefly on the ground that they are an interference
with trade, but the case of Hodge v. The Queen has finally
determined that such laws so long as they relate to police or
to municipal or local matters are not ultra vires. A province
may therefore enforce a Sunday Closing Act®.
This power to deal with municipal institutions impliedly
gives power to alter and amend the laws relating to such
institutions as existed at the time the Act passed’, And
where a by-law of a municipal body forbade the sale by
retail in public streets of certain articles, it was held not
to be an interference with “the regulation of trade and
commerce?”

1L.R.6,P.C. 272; 1 Cart. p. 95.
% See Hodge v. The Queen, 9 App. Cas. 117; Sulte v. Corporation of City
of Three Rivers, 12 C. 8. C. R. 25.
8 Poulin v. Corporation of Quebec, 9 Can. S. C. R. 185.
4 Re Harris and the Corporation of the City of Hamilton, 44 U. C. Q. B.
641; 1 Cart. 756.
5 Ih.