cHAP. 11] THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 883 
which evidently held that though the jurisdiction conferred 
was federal, and the authority federal, the fact could make 
no difference to the terms of the Orders in Council granting 
the right to appeal on certain conditions. The view of the 
High Court was somewhat later voiced again by Mr. Deakin 
in 1910 in a dispatch to the Secretary of State! in which he 
suggested that the Orders in Council regulating appeals to 
the High Courts of the states should only deal with non- 
federal jurisdiction. The Colonial Office in a letter to the 
Privy Council Office pointed out that this would be contrary 
to the decision of the Privy Council in Webb v. Outlrim, and 
Orders in Council have already been issued for all the States 
which make no difference in the character of the jurisdiction 
to which the Orders apply. 
In another form the same question crops up in connexion 
with the problem of the provision in the Constitution which 
prevents the High Court being deprived by the Parlia- 
ment of its power to hear any case from which an appeal 
lay from a Supreme Court to the Queen in Council at the 
time of the passing of the Act of 1900. It was suggested in 
the judgement of the High Court in Hannah v. Dalgarno? 
that if the federal jurisdiction conferred by the Federal 
Parliament were a new jurisdiction, then an appeal would 
not have lain at the establishment of the Commonwealth, 
and therefore Parliament could limit the right of a hearing 
in such cases. The argument is apparently wrong, and in 
any case it is academic, for Parliament is not likely to diminish 
the appellate power of the High Court. 
The High Court has decided to follow the doctrine laid 
down by the Privy Council in certain cases and to refuse 
to exercise its power of hearing appeals in cases of election 
petitions, where the matter is clearly one in which the State 
Court intervenes as a substitute for the older method of 
allowing the House to try its own petitions, and where the 
asua) principles of appellate jurisdiction are out of place? 
t See Parl. Pap., Cd. 5273, pp. 39, 40. Of. Quick and Garran, op. cit., 
p. 755. $1C. LR. 1 at pp. 9, 10. 
2 Holmes v. Angwin, (1906) 4 C. L. R. 297; see Théberge v. Landry, 
(1871) 2 App. Cas. 102 ; Valin v. Langlois, (1879) 5 App. Cas. 115; Kennedy 
vo