cHaP. 11] LIMITATION OF LEGISLATION 391 
the territorial limits of Canada, and upon this point alone the 
decision of the case turned. It was conceded in argument 
before their Lordships, on the principle of law laid down by 
this Board in the case of Macleod v. Attorney-General for 
New South Wales} that the statute must, if possible, be 
construed as merely intending to authorize the deportation 
of the alien across the seas to the country whence he came, 
if he was imported into Canada by sea, or, if he entered from 
an adjoining country, to authorize his expulsion from Canada 
across the Canadian frontier into that adjoining country. 
The judgement of the learned Judge was, in effect, based upon 
the practical impossibility of expelling an alien from Canada 
into an adjoining country without such an exercise of 
extra-territorial constraint of his person by the Canadian 
officer as the Dominion Parliament could not authorize. No 
special significance was attached to the word ‘return’. The 
reasoning of the judgement would apply with equal force if the 
word used had been expel’ or ‘ deport’ instead of ‘return’. 
In 1763, Canada and all its dependencies, with the 
sovereignty, property, and possession, and all other rights 
which had at any previous time been held or acquired by the 
Crown of France, were ceded to Great Britain (St. Catherine’s 
Milling and Lumber Company v. The Queen)? Upon that 
event the Crown of England became possessed of all legislative 
and executive powers within the country so ceded to it, and, 
save so far as it has since parted with these powers by legis- 
lation, Royal Proclamation, or voluntary grant, it is still 
possessed of them. One of the rights possessed by the 
supreme power in every State is the right to refuse to permit 
an alien to enter that State, to annex what conditions it 
pleases to the permission to enter it, and to expel or deport 
from the State, at pleasure, even a friendly alien, especially 
if it considers his presence in the State opposed to its peace, 
order, and good government, or to its social or material 
interests : Vattel, Law of Nations, Book 1. sec. 231; Book IT. 
sec. 125. The Imperial Government might delegate? those 
powers to the Governor or the Government of one of the 
Colonies, either by Royal Proclamation which has the force 
of a statute (Campbell v. Hall)* or by a statute of the 
1 [18911 A. C. 455, at p. 459. 3 14 App. Cas. 46, at p. 53. 
* This doctrine of delegation is curious and infelicitous ; it is contrary to 
the general trend of decisions of the Privy Council (see § 1), and is probably 
merely an unhappy use of language. See Harrison Moore, Commonwealth 
of Australia,’ pp. 251-5; Keith. Journ. Soc, Comp. Leg.. xi. 237. 
t 1 Cowner. 204.