380 PARLIAMENTS OF THE DOMINIONS [PART III 
Natal,! under its inherent jurisdiction, and not, as of course it 
might have done, under the Imperial Acts which were not cited. 
There are other cases sometimes cited in this connexion 
which have really nothing to do with the question, but deal 
with questions of civil rights in a Colony of persons residing 
abroad. It is absurd to say absolutely, as in the doctrine 
ascribed by Lefroy to Low v. Routledge, that an alien’s rights 
outside Canada cannot be affected by a Canadian Act. That 
case is no authority for any such proposition : it is an autho- 
rity merely for the proposition that an Imperial Act con- 
ferring certain privileges cannot be rendered invalid by any 
Colonial legislation, if such privileges are expressed to extend 
to the Colonies, as was the privilege of obtaining copyright 
imperially by publication in England in that case. The real 
position is clearly laid down in Ashbury v. Ellis, where the 
Privy Council held clearly that the power given to New 
Zealand by s. 53 of the Constitution Act of 1852 enabled the 
Legislature to make rules subjecting to the jurisdiction of 
its tribunals persons neither themselves nor by their agents 
resident in the Colony, in respect of actions founded on any 
contract made or entered into wholly or in part to be 
performed in the Colony, for their lordships are clear that 
it is for the peace, order, and good government of New 
Zealand that the Courts of New Zealand should in any case 
of contracts made or to be performed in New Zealand have 
the power of judging whether they will or will not proceed 
in the absence of the defendant.’ The Court carefully 
distinguished in that case between the validity of the law 
in the Colony and its effect outside in other Courts, which 
of course is quite a different thing, and depends on the 
doctrines of private international law. Thus the cases which 
treat of the effect in England of judgements obtained in 
Colonial Courts in these cases are not directed to the effect 
of Colonial laws outside the territory, but to the principles 
of law which apply if a Court proceeds with a case in the 
* BR. v. Bester, 21 N. L. R. 238, where Dutch law only was cited foreign ; 
of. Anson, Law of the Constitution ®, 11. i. 242-5. 
* 1 Ch. App. 42, 3 [1893] A. C. 339.