cHAp. 11] LIMITATION OF LEGISLATION 383
offence to its jurisdiction. Upon any other construction it
would be ultra vires, the local Legislature deriving from the
Imperial Parliament a jurisdiction limited to the extent of
the Colony.
It was argued, on the other hand, that the Colony had full
jurisdiction, and it was pointed out that the Imperial Parlia-
ment by 24 & 25 Vict. ¢. 100, s. 57, had made similar provision
to that made by the Parliament of New South Wales. It
appeared that Macleod had married in the Colony of New
South Wales one woman in 1872, and in her lifetime in 1889
he was married at St. Louis, in the State of Missouri in the
United States of America, to another woman, and his con-
viction for bigamy was in respect of that second marriage.
The Privy Council advised Her Majesty that the judge-
ment of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, which had
dismissed the appeal brought from the Court of Quarter Ses-
sions, should be reversed. They held that the word * where-
soever’ in the section was universal in its application, and
they continued as follows ~—
Therefore, if their Lordships construe the statute as it
stands, and upon the bare words, any person, married to
any other person, who marries a second time anywhere in
the habitable globe, is amenable to the criminal jurisdiction
of New South Wales, if he can be caught in that Colony.
That seems to their Lordships to be an impossible construc-
tion of the statute ; the Colony can have no such jurisdiction,
and their Lordships do not desire to attribute to the Colonial
Legislature an effort to enlarge their jurisdiction to such
an extent as would be inconsistent with the powers com-
mitted to a Colony, and, indeed, inconsistent with the most
familiar principles of international law. It therefore becomes
necessary to search for limitations to see what would be the
reasonable limitation to apply to words so general ; and their
Lordships take it that the words ‘ whosoever being married ’
mean ‘ whosoever being married, and who is amenable, at
the time of the offence committed, to the jurisdiction of the
t'olonv of New South Wales’
Further, interpreting the section as intended to make the
offence of bigamy justiciable all over the Colony, and to
secure that no limits of local venue were to be observed in
