comes to this Committee laboring under a great preliminary difficulty — a difficulty not always overcome by the mere suggestion of hardship in the circumstances of the case. When the suggestions, if true, raise ques tions of great and general importance and* likely to occur often, and also where, if true, they show the due and orderly administra tion of the law interrupted and diverted into a new course which might create a prece dent for the future, and also where there is no other means of preventing these conse quences, then it will be proper for this Com mittee to entertain an appeal if referred to it for its decision." Now let us illustrate the application of this principle on both sides. A solicitor of the Supreme Court of British Honduras was convicted of perjury upon a most improper and unfair charge by the Chief-Justice of the colony, and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, which he underwent.1 He was thereafter struck off the rolls of the Court in respect of the said conviction. The solicitor obtained special leave to ap peal to the extent of showing that the con viction was so improperly obtained that it ought not to be conclusive for the purpose of striking his name off the rolls {re A. M. Dillet, 1887, 12 App. Cas. 459). Again, in the Falkland Islands Co. v. Reg. the deci sion of the colonial court — a summary con viction for penalties for killing animals fcne naturce — involved the right of the Falk land Islands Co. to hunt and take wild cat tle upon grazing stations and the land ' The Judicial Committee have no jurisdiction to enter tain an appeal from orders by a court of record in the colonies inflicting fines for contempt (Rainy v. The Jus tices of Sierra Leone, 8 Mod. P. C. 4), if it appears, upon the face of the order, that the party has committed a con tempt, that he has been duly summoned, and that the punishment awarded was of an appropriate kind. The law bearing upon this point is rather obscure, but this note appears accurately to express the ratio decidendi of the following cases : Smith v. Justices of Sierra Leone, 3 Mod. P. C. 361; re Stewart, L. R. 2 P. C. 88; re Wallace, L. R. I P. C. 283; re Macdermott ib. 260; re Pollard L. R. 2 P. C. 106, and see Australian case, Reg. 1: Morrison, 3 V. R. L. 3.
attached thereto. The ordinance under which the conviction was made granted no appeal. The Judicial Committee advised Her Majesty to grant an appeal in analogy to proceedings by certiorari in England, on the understanding that the question of title and right would appear on the face of the record which was ordered to be brought up. On the other hand, in the following cases the Privy Council refused to entertain, or dismissed, an appeal. In Levien v. Reg. (1867 L. R. 1 P. C. 536; special leave to appeal from a conviction for libel by a colo nial court having been given, the prisoner subsequently obtained a free pardon. The Judicial Committee thereupon declined to enter upon the merits of the case, or to pro nounce an opinion upon the legal objections to the conviction, the prisoner having already obtained all the substantial, if not the tech nical, benefit which could be conferred by a successful appeal. Riel's case (1885 L. R. 10 App- Cas. 675) is also in point. Louis Riel was tried before a Canadian magistrate and a jury of six for high treason, and sen tenced to death. The sentence was con firmed by the Court of Queen's Bench in Manitoba. The prisoner then applied for special leave to appeal to the Privy Council, on the grounds that the stipendiary magis trate had no jurisdiction, and that even if he had there were irregularities in the proceed ings which vitiated the trial; e.g. no previous inquest, no indictment preferred by a grand jury, and that no notes of the evidence had been taken as required by the statute. These points had been fully considered by the Court of Queen's Bench, and a defense of insanity set up for the prisoner at the trial had been rejected by the jury. The peti tion was dismissed. Deeming's case (App. Cas. 1892, p. 422) is the last one that we will refer to in this connection. Deeming was convicted and sentenced to death at Melbourne on May 2, 1892, for the murder of Emily Mather at Windsor. An application was made on his
