cHap. 111] REPUGNANCY OF COLONIAL LAWS 411
by the Colonial Parliaments of Imperial statutes was once
and for all laid down.
There has been, however. some confusion as to the right of
a Colonial Parliament to repeal clauses in an Imperial Act,
which applied to the Colony not by reason of the Acts being
put in force there by the Imperial Parliament by legislation
for that place, but because in introducing English law there
the statutes of general application were included. An obvious
case is the Act 9 Geo. IV c. 83, which introduced English law
into New South Wales as far as it was applicable : it has been
contested that no local legislation could alter the law intro-
duced, but the position is clearly absurd if for no other reason
than that the Imperial statute of 1828 expressly contem-
plates changes being made by the local Legislature :. it
would have indeed been too terrible to suppose that the
standard of 1828 was to be the permanent boundary of the
legislation of the Colony. But the principle applies more widely
still : where the statutes of general application! have been
introduced into a Colony by local enactment or by Imperial
enactment which contains power of amendment, the fact
that the principle is embodied in an Imperial statute makes
it no less possible to amend than if it were a part of the
common law :? in the case of an Imperial Act applying
directly to the Colony the case is quite different: the
Imperial Acts could be modified which were introduced by
the Act of 1828 whatever their terms; that Act could only
be modified by express authority given by it and other
Imperial Acts. The distinction seems obvious, yet in a
Commonwealth Act, No. 11 of 1909, regarding marine in-
surance, the somewhat comic device was adopted to avoid
repealing two Imperial Acts (19 Geo. II. c. 37; 28 Geo. III.
c. 56) introduced bv the Act of 1828. of declaring bv s. 5
* These are statutes not locally suited only to English conditions. There
are several decisions by the Commonwealth as to what statutes were
introduced into New South Wales in 1828. See also Attorney-General for
New South Wales v. Love, [1898] A. C. 679.
* Cf. Vincent v. Ah Yeng, TW. A. L. R. 145; in re Reg. v. Marais, ex
parte Marais, [1902] A. C. 51.
