HAP. 11] THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 843 
the sense usual in 1900, the Constitution gave the Parliament 
power to say what marks should be recognized as trade- 
marks and what not, and the meaning of the expression in 
1900 gave the centre, not the circumference, of the power. 
He countered the obvious argument that the power of defi- 
nition might be used to arrogate a power not conferred by the 
Constitution by quoting the case of Attorney-General for 
Quebec v. Queen Insurance Co. in which the Privy Council 
rejected the attempt of a provincial legislature in Canada 
bo enact a stamp tax (which under the British North America 
Act, 1867, it has no power to do) by imposing what was really 
such a tax in the form of a business licence. 
(¢) Control of Companies? 
The question of the power of the Commonwealth Parlia- 
ment with regard to the control of companies was exhaus- 
tively considered in the case of Huddart Parker and Company 
Proprietary Limited v. Moorehead? which was decided by 
the High Court in 1908, and in the decision of which they 
applied their usual principle of asserting that Commonwealth 
legislation must not interfere with the reserved power of the 
states to deal with internal trade and commerce. 
Theye were two points at issue in the case. The first was 
as to the validity of s. 15 B of the Australian Industries 
Preservation Act, 1906, as amended by Act No. 5 of 1908 ; the 
second was the question of the validity of ss. 5 and 8 of the 
former Act. 8.15 B gave to the Controller-General of Customs 
the power to ask certain questions if he believed that an 
offence had been committed against partii of the Act. It 
was held by the whole Court that the inquiry thus authorized 
was in no way inconsistent with the right to trial by jury con- 
ferred by s. 80 of the Constitution ; that such an inquiry was 
not an exercise of the judicial power of the Commonwealth, 
and that such an inquiry was not an incident of the execu- 
tion and maintenance of the provisions of the Constitution 
' 3 App. Cas. 1090. 
* Cf. Quick and Garran, Constitution of Commonwealth, pp. 578, 579 
as to banks), 604-8; Keith, Journ. Soc. Comp. Leg., xii. 108 seq. 
® 8 C. L. R. 330. See Harrison Moore, op. cit., pp. 469-73.