those States of the benefits of their enterprise. The business of insurance, particularly, can only be carried on with entire safety by scattering the risks over large areas of territory, so as to secure the benefits of the most extended average, and the needs of the country require that corporations at least those of a commercial or financial charactershould be able to transact business in different States.

In Bartemeyer v. State of Iowa (18 Wall. 129), Held:

That as a measure of police regulation a State law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors is not repugnant to any clause of the Constitution.

This decision was followed in Beer Company v. State of Massachusetts (97 U. S., S. C., 25).

§ 10. Local Works and Undertakings other than such as are of the following Classes :

a. Lines of Steam or other Ships, Railways, Canals, Telegraphs, and other Works and Undertakings connecting the Province with any other or others of the Provinces, or extending beyond the Limits of the Province :

b. Lines of Steam Ships between the Province and any British or Foreign Country:

c. Such Works as, although wholly situate within the Province, are before or after their Execution declared by the Parliament of CANADA to be for the general Advantage of Canada or for the Advantage of Two or more of the Provinces.

On the 4th December, 1874 (Sess. Papers, 1877, No. 89, p. 87), the Minister of Justice concurred in a report of his Deputy advising the Governor General to disallow an Act of the Nova Scotia Legislature incorporating certain persons under the name of The Anglo-French Steamship Company, for the purpose of running a steamer or steamers to and from ports in Nova Scotia, the Island of St. Pierre Miquelon and Newfoundland, on the ground that it was shown on the face of the Act that it incorporated a line of steamships extending beyond the limits of the Province and between the Province and a British port, as also a foreign country, and that it obviously came within one of the classes mentioned in the B. N. A. Act, sec. 92, ss. 10, classes a and b.

On the 25th March, 1875 (Sess. Papers, 1877, No. 89, p. 84), the Minister of Justice concurred in a report of his Deputy advising the disallowance of another Act of the same Legislature (N.S.), c. 82 of 1874, entitled “An Act to incorporate the Eastern Steamship Company," which stated that the

Company would be entitled to run steamers on the coast of the Province and elsewhere, disallowance being suggested for the same reason as above.

In Bourgoin v. La Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de M. O. & 0. (3 L. N. 189), Held by the Privy Council:

That a Railway Company, incorporated by the Dominion Parliament, cannot be validly authorized to dissolve, by an Act of a Provincial Legislature.

The Montreal, Ottawa and Western Railway Company having been declared, by 36 Vic. c. 82 (Canada), to be a work for the general advantage of Canada, made a transaction with the Quebec Government, on the 16th Nov., 1875, by deed, in which, after reciting the nature of the enterprise and the commencement of the work; and that the Company was unable to proceed further with the construction of the Railway; and that the Government of Quebec was willing to assume and complete the construction of the said Railway, and for that purpose to acquire from the Company all its rights and assets, and to take upon itself the legitimate liabilities of the Company; and that in consideration thereof the Company had agreed to transfer and convey such rights and assets to the Government, the deed then proceeds to state the covenants and agreements into which the parties had entered into before the notary. By this deed the Company granted, sold and conveyed to the Government all its rights, &c., &c., stating its intention to be, to divest itself of all the property of the said Corporation, transferring to the Government all its interest in the balance of the subscription of bonus to the said Company by the Corporation of Montreal, and by various other corporations, the Government agreeing to pay to certain trustees, upon the confirmation of the deed by the Legislature of Quebec, $57,149.95, being the amount of the then paid up stock of the Company.

The Legislature of Quebec, on the 24th December, 1875, by Act 39 V. c. 2, confirmed that transaction, and the Government took possession of the Railway and property of the Company.

The appellants having obtained a judgment against the Company, seized under execution the roadway and rolling stock of the Company, then in the possession of the Government.

The Attorney-General for the Province of Quebec opposed the seizure, claiming ownership of all the property seized, alleging the transaction of the 16th November, 1875, and the confirmatory Act 39 V. c. 2, as their title to part of the property seized. This opposition was contested on the ground that the Company being a creature of the

Dominion Parliament, and the transaction not having been authorized by that Parliament, the transaction as well as the Provincial Act 39 V. c. 2 were inoperative and invalid. The Superior Court dismissed the contestation and maintained the opposition of the Attorney General, holding that the nullity of the transaction and of the Act 39 V. c. 2 not having been demanded, the Court could not pronounce these operations null and void.

In the Queen's Bench this judgment was confirmed. But, on Appeal to the Privy Council, the ju gment of the Courts below was reformed.

Their Lordships on the 26th February, 1880, after reciting the facts, and especially that part of the Dominion Statute which had made that railway a Dominion enterprise, and disposing of an intervention made by the Attorney General on the same grounds, and of the opposition, said :

"These provisions, taken in connection with, and read by the light of those of the Imperial Statute, 'the British North America Act, 1867,' which are contained in section 91, and sub-section 10 c of section 92, establish to their Lordships' satisfaction, that the transaction between the Company and the Government of Quebec could not be validated to all intents and purposes by an Act of Provincial Legislature, but that an Act of the Parliament of Canada was essential in order to give it full force and effect. This proposition was finally hardly disputed by the learned Counsel for the respondent, but they relied upon the 8th clause of the deed, and the 46th section of the Quebec Act, as showing that recourse to the Parliament of Canada for its sanction was within the contemplation of the parties, and contended that, before that sanction was obtained, the transaction was valid for some purposes, and gave certain inchoate rights which were capable of being asserted. In support of their argument they cited the Great Western Railway Company v. The Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway, 2 Phill. 597, and what was said by Lord Cottenham in that case. It is to be observed, however, that Lord Cottenham, when ruling that the contract, which could not be fully carried out without Parliamentary sanction, was not, in the absence of such sanction, to be treated as a nullity, and that some of its provisions might nevertheless be binding, was dealing with the rights of the parties to the contract inter se. Here the public, and the creditors of the Company, in which category the appellants fell since the questions raised by these two appeals must be considered as if the award were valid, were no parties to the transaction, and could not be affected by it until it was fully

validated by an Act of the Parliament of Canada, to obtain which no attempt seems ever to have been made.

In their Lordships' opinion, therefore, the transaction, considered as a whole, was of no force or validity as against the rights of the appellants when the decisions of the Canadian Courts upon the intervention and the opposition were passed."

In The Wason Manufacturing Co. v. Le Chemin de Fer de Lévis, etc. (5 Q. L. R. 103), (C. S.) Casault, J. :—

Il n'est jamais venu à l'esprit de qui que ce soit qu'une Compagnie incorporée de Chemin de Fer puisse vendre son chemin de gré à gré, sans une autorisation expresse de la Législature.

In Credit Valley Railway Co. v. Great Western Railway Co. (25 Grant's Chanc. 509), Held:

That when it is necessary for a Provincial Railway to cross a Dominion Railway, the Company must first get the approval of the Railway Committee of the Privy Council.

H. E. Taschereau, J., in the Citizens Insurance Co. & Parsons (3 Can. S. C. 121), remarking upon the business of telegraphing, said:

Sending a message by telegraph is not a transaction of commerce, yet, telegraph companies, and the right to regulate them, are held in the United States to be under the Federal Power as a part of commerce and this, though a very large proportion of the telegraphic messages have nothing to do with commerce at all. (Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Atlantic and Pacific States Telegraph Co., 5 Nev. 102; Pensacola Telegraph Co. v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 96 U. S., S. C.) With us, on the same principle, telegraph business would also be exclusively under Federal control, if the British North America Act did not expressly vest in the Local Legislatures the control over local and provincial lines, as long as the Federal Parliament does not declare them to be for the general advantage of Canada.

§ 11. The Incorporation of Companies with Provincial Objects.

An Act passed by the Legislature of Nova Scotia, in 1874, intituled: An Act to incorporate the Halifax Company "limited," giving rights to cross rivers without reference to the rights of Navigation, was disallowed by the Governor General as not being for purely local works or undertakings, nor an Act for the incorporation of a Company with Provincial objects merely, or objects of a merely local or private nature in the Province, but for objects beyond the power and control of a Local Legislature. (Dom. Sess. Papers, 1877, No. 89, p. 86.)

§ 12. The Solemnization of Marriage in the Province.

Upon a report made 29th November, 1869, by Sir John A. Macdonald to the Governor General, the following questions were submitted through the Colonial Minister to the Law Officers of the Crown:

1. Whether the authority to issue Marriage Licenses vested in the Governor General under Her Majesty's Commission or in the Lieutenant Governors of the several Provinces.

2. Whether the power of legislation respecting the publication of banns, or the issue of licenses, rests with the General or Local Legislatures.

In answer to the above, an opinion was given in the following words by the Law Officers of the Crown, transmitted by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the 15th January, 1870:

It appears to them that the power of legislating upon this subject is conferred on the Provincial Legislatures, by 30 Vic. chap. 3, sec. 92, under the words "the solemnization of marriage in the Province." The phrase "the laws respecting the solemnization of marriages in England” occurs in the preamble of the Marriage Act (4th Geo. IV. C. 76), an Act which is very largely concerned with matters relating to banns and licenses, and this is, therefore, a strong authority to show that the same words used in the British North America Act, 1867, were intended to have the same meaning. "Marriage and Divorce," which, by the 91st section of the same Act, are reserved to the Parliament of the Dominion, signify, in their opinion, all matters relating to the status of marriage, between what persons and under what circumstances it shall be created and (if at all) destroyed.

There are many reasons of convenience and sense why one law as to the status of marriage should exist throughout the Dominion, which have no application as regards the uniformity of the procedure whereby that status is created or evidenced.

Convenience, indeed, and reason would seem alike in favor of a difference of procedure being allowable in Provinces differing so widely in external and internal circumstances as those of which the Dominion is composed, and of permitting the Provinces to settle their own procedure for themselves, and they are of opinion that this permission has been granted to the Provinces by the Imperial Parliament, and that the New Brunswick Legislature was competent to pass the bill in question. (Dom. Sess. Papers, 1877, No. 89, p. 340.)