cap. 11] THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 881
result, but merely to enable the taking of appeals to the High
Court instead of taking them to the Privy Council. Moreover,
 in addition to placing the High Court in a somewhat
undignified position, it has taken away much of the work of
the Supreme Courts, and has also deprived the High Court
of the advantage of the reasoned considerations of the
Supreme Courts on which to found its judgements. Nor
san it be doubted that the Judicial Committee will be less
reluctant to upset a judgement which has nothing more solid
behind it than very possibly the much diverging views of a
single judge of a Supreme Court and the Justices of the High
Court.
In the course of the judgement in that case the High
Court had occasion, as part of the grounds of decision, to
hold that the term in (ii) ¢ from which at the establishment
 of the Commonwealth an appeal lies to the Queen in
Council ? does not mean that an appeal must have lain of
right. This conclusion was indeed inevitable, because there
existed a final Court of Appeal in South Australia created
by a local Act of 1837 (7 Will. IV. No. 5), and strengthened
in 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. No. 5), which is still the ultimate
Court of Appeal in the state, though it is no longer used,
its continuance having been due to the fact that the then
Chief Justice Boothby * was excessively unpopular from his
declaring a large number of Colonial laws invalid. But the
result is very inconvenient, for thus every Court can claim,
as the Judiciary Act now stands, that appeals can go direct
to the High Court from it, since it is absolutely certain that
an appeal lay by special leave from any Court in the
dominions to the Crown in Council. In the Kamarooka Gold-Mining
 Co. v. Kerr 2 there was an attempt made to go direct
to the High Court from the Court of Mines in Victoria, but
the High Court refused, saying that in the case in question
1 Cf. Parl. Pap., August 1862. See the Acts 7 Will. IV. No. 5; No. 31
of 1855-6, s. 14; and 24 & 25 Vict. No. 5.
2 (1908) 6 C. L. R. 255. Contrast Quick and Garran, op. cit., p. 739.
For a similar court (the Governor in Council with the Chief Justice) as
the only appeal court on divorce in Western Australia, see 27 Vict.
No. 19; Thompson v. Thompson and Hutchins, 11 W. A, L. R, 137.
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