306 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [PART IV 
In the case of D’Emden v. Pedder?! it was held that the 
receipt given by a federal officer for his salary, such receipt 
being required by the law and practice of the department in 
which he was serving, was not the property of the Common- 
wealth, so that a stamp duty levied in respect of it by the 
Parliament of Tasmania was therefore invalid under this 
section. On the other hand, it was held that the prohibition 
on the Commonwealth to tax the property of the state did 
not apply to either wire netting imported by the state or 
even to railway material so imported, the netting being 
required for sale over again to farmers and the railway 
material for use in the state railways? In the latter case 
also the question of the immunity of instrumentalities was 
raised. But the decision in both cases declined to apply the 
section to the cases at issue. The majority of the Court 
were of opinion that the tax levied in either case was a tax 
on the importation of goods, not a tax on property, and 
[saacs J., who found himself unable to concur with this 
dictum, which is clearly untenable in view of the current, 
unbroken and convincing, of decisions in England in the 
contrary sense, was able to satisfy himself that the section 
did not intend to deal with import duties, and he instanced 
the practice in Canada under the similar clause in the British 
North America Act. It was indeed clear that if the principle 
contended for had been accepted, the result would have been 
that any state could by importing everything in its name pre- 
vent the Commonwealth from obtaining any customs revenue 
at all, and though that may be considered an extreme case, 
still, as a matter of fact, the actual proposal of the state 
Government to allow its farmers the benefits of wire netting 
was one which struck at the root of the stability of the 
finance of the Commonwealth. It was different with the 
case of the railway material, and one would think that a 
decision in the opposite sense might have been arrived at, 
'1C. L. R. 91. 
* The King v. Sutton, (1908) 5 C. L. R. 789; Attorney-General of New 
South Wales v. Collector of Customs for New South Wales, (1908) 5 C. L. R. 
818. This overrules (1903) 3 S. R. (N. S. W.) 115.