cHAp. 11] THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 871 
so far as they purported to regulate purely internal coasting 
trade, and were to that extent invalid. Then the Court 
considered whether the valid provisions could be separated 
from the invalid provisions, and they laid down, as in the 
Railway Servants’ case! and the Bootmakers’ case? the 
principle that when in the attempted exercise of a power of 
limited extension an Act is passed which in its terms extends 
beyond the prescribed limits, the whole Act was invalid 
unless the invalid part was plainly severable from the valid. 
They held that in this case to interpret the law as referring 
only to inter-state trade would be to create a new law, and 
not to carry out the intended law. When the Legislature 
assumed jurisdiction over a whole class of ships, over some 
of which it had and over others it had not jurisdiction in 
point of law, and plainly asserted its intention to place them 
on the same footing, the Court would be making a new law 
if it gave effect to the statute as a law intended to apply to 
part only of the class. The Court therefore held that the 
whole Act was invalid, and reversed the decision of the 
Court below.? 
It is important to note that the decision evidently treats 
the powers to deal with navigation as referring only to 
navigation between the states, and therefore that the 
Parliament of the Commonwealth has no power to deal with 
merchant shipping except in so far as shipping between the 
various states is concerned. Unless and until, therefore, the 
federal constitution is in some way amended it will be im- 
possible for the Parliament of the Commonwealth to pass 
any really effective merchant-shipping legislation. 
It cannot be a matter for legitimate regret that the 
ambiguities latent in the power of State Parliaments under 
3. 51 (i) should disappear. In the United States the question 
has caused perpetual difficulty and inconvenience, and no 
one need desire to see perpetuated in Australia that conflict 
4 C. L. R. 488. 
* 11 C. L. R. 1. Cf. Harrison Moore, op, cit., pp. 388 seq. 
* They dismissed summarily the argument that the Court had admiralty 
iurisdiction.