710 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [pARrT IV 
The cases are interesting and somewhat complicated, and 
the recent decisions of the Privy Council have rendered 
invalid a good many of the older cases. 
In the case of Madden v. Nelson and Port Sheppard Railway 
Company! it was determined by the Privy Council that it 
was not within the competence of the Legislature of British 
Columbia under an Act of 1891, as amended in 1896, to 
compel a railway which fell within the jurisdiction of the 
Dominion to erect fencing to prevent the straying of cattle. 
The Court were clearly of opinion that not only was it 
ultra vires for the Legislature to do so by direct enactment, 
but that it was also ultra vires to do so indirectly, and there- 
fore it must be deemed to have been considered that when 
within the legislative control of the Dominion no interference 
with purely railway matters such as this was competent to 
a Provincial Legislature. In that case the Court had also 
to consider the somewhat awkward fact that they had 
shortly before decided in the case of the Canadian Pacific 
Raslway Company v. Corporation of the Parish of Notre Dame 
de Bonsecours,® that though the Legislature of Quebec was 
not in a position to make any law affecting the construction 
of a railway within the jurisdiction of the Dominion, never- 
theless the railway company was liable if it permitted a ditch 
to be choked up and become a nuisance. It is, of course, 
possible to draw a logical distinction between the cases and 
to see that the difference of decision is justifiable, but it is 
unquestionable that the latter case is on the boundary line. 
Other instances of the same difficulties are seen in the 
question which was discussed at length in the Supreme 
Court of Canada,® and again in the Privy Council, as to the 
right of the Dominion Parliament to pass an Act which 
forbade railway companies contracting themselves out of 
1 [1899] A. C. 626. Followed (as regards power of Quebec Legislature to 
direct building of crossings over a railway) in Grand Trunk Railway Co. v. 
Therrien, (1900) 30 S. C. R. 485, and (as regards provision against fires caused 
by engine sparks) in Canadian Pacific Railway Co. v. The King, (1907) 39 
S. C. R. 476. Cf. also Monkhouse v. Grand Trunk Railway, 8 O. A. R. 
837; 3 Cart. 289 ; Lefroy, op. cit., pp. 445 seq. 
2 [1899] A. C. 467. 2 36S. CR. 136.