300 Timehri. 
the Supreme Court of Canada—and particularly in constitutional cases 
(because I am going to withdraw what I said about the Constitution a 
minute or two ago)—an appeal is taken to the Judicial Committee of the 
Privy Council in Downing Street, Westminster. We have a kind of 
constitution (although we do not call it that) by the British North 
America Act. The subjects of legislation are divided between the 
provinces and the Dominion, and sometimes we have disputes as to whether 
the Dominion has the right to pass legislation upon a particular subject, 
or whether the province has a right to pass legislation upon that particu- 
lar subject; we do not, however, generally talk about ‘“ constitutional ” 
and “unconstitutional,” but we use the terminology ‘ ultra vires” and 
“intra vires.” Occasionally, and, as I have said, particularly where 
a question of ultra vires is concerned, an appeal is taken to the Privy 
Council. Ihave given an account of the Privy Council in an address to 
the Missouri Bar Association, printed in 44 “ American Law Review,” page 
161. In the Privy Council in 1908 are reported six appeals from the 
Court of Appeal, of which five were allowed and one dismissed; there 
was also an appeal from the Supreme Court in an Ontario case which was 
allowed. From issue of the writ of summons to the final disposition by 
the Privy Council there is no need for two years to elapse. So much 
for civil practice. 
On the criminal side the story is somewhat historical. When Canada 
was conquered in 1759 the French law was universal ; it was, of course, 
based upon the Roman law, the Civil law. As soon as the British con- 
quered Canada, the English criminal law was introduced and the English 
criminal law has continued from that time to the present. The criminal 
law is under the jurisdiction not of the provinces, but of the Dominion 
Parliament composed of members from all the provinces. It is true that 
provincial Legislatures have power to make certain quasi-criminal 
oftences—for example, the watering of milk and that sort of thing which 
are quasi-civil and quasi-criminal—those are within the jurisdiction of 
the province, although the Dominion may make anything a crime. The 
other day I said to a lawyer who was arguing to me about a certain case 
being ultra vires, “ If the Dominion Parliament saw fit they could make 
it a crime punishable by capital punishment for a man to chew tobacco.” 
The Dominion has power to make anything a crime ; it has absolute juris- 
diction over criminal law and criminal procedure ; but not over the consti- 
tution of Courts of criminal jurisdiction. The Courts of eriminal jurisdie- 
tion are constituted by the provinces; so that (speaking generally) the 
same Court which tries civil cases is the Court which tries criminal cases. 
Before 1892 we had the English criminal law as modified by the 
statutes of the provinces before Confederation and by the Parliament 
of Canada after Confederation ; but in 1892 Sir John Thompson, the 
then Prime Minister, having been a Judge himself in Nova Scotia, 
saw the propriety of codifying the criminal law and accordingly, with 
the assistance of able lawyers in the Houses of Parliament on both sides 
of politics, he in 1892 drew up a code of the criminal law. The Judica- 
