836 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [rarT IV 
prepared to carry the doctrine of the immunity of instrumen- 
talities beyond reasonable limits. This was clearly shown 
in the case of The King v. Sutton,! which arose out of the 
forcible removal, under orders of the New South Wales 
Government, of a quantity of wire netting from the control 
of the Customs without payment of duty, on the ground that 
the Commonwealth could not tax the Crown in New South 
Wales. The doctrine of the immunity of instrumentalities 
was not indeed pressed in that case upon the Court, for there 
could be no doubt that the importation of wire netting to 
be sold to farmers could only by a stretch of language be 
deemed the operation of a state instrumentality. But the 
Court was invited to accept the doctrine that the Crown 
could not be bound except by express words, and no such 
words appeared in the Act. The Court unanimously rejected 
this plea, and, while admitting the sovereign powers of the 
states in their own spheres of activity, insisted on the fact that 
the Crown in the Commonwealth was distinct from the Crown 
in the states, and that the rule that a statute does not bind 
the Crown save by express words or necessary implication 
applied only to those representatives of the Crown who had 
executive authority in the place where the statute applied, 
and as to matters to which that executive authority extended. 
The Customs Act, 1901, bound the states, but not the 
Commonwealth, and the removal of the wire netting was 
a wrongful act. 
In a second case of the same date, Atiorney-General of New 
South Wales v. Collector of Customs for New South Wales? the 
question of instrumentalities came definitely before the Court. 
In that case the goods in question which the State of New 
South Wales claimed to be entitled to import free were steel 
rails, for use in connexion with the Government railways of the 
state, and the position of the state appeared naturally to be 
greatly strengthened by the decision in the Federated Amalga- 
mated Government Railway and Tramway Service Association 
v. New South Wales Railway Traffic Employés Association ® 
* (1908) 5 C. L. R. 789. ¢ (1908) 5 C. L. R. 818. 
(1906) 4 C. L., R. 488.