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Courts to deal with every kind of offence which falls within
the international law definition of piracy.
"
I think that it was agreed that the first step was
to submit a Case to the Law Officers of the Crown, and I
propose therefore to suggest to the Treasury that it is expedient that the Law Officers should be asked to advise (intu alia)
first, whether the Hong Kong Court was right in its view of the
definition of piracy under English municipal law, and secondly.
whether on the proper construction of the section to which I
referred in my earlier letter the Court would have had
jurisdiction over a foreigner who committed the act which was
alleged to have been committed in that case on the open sea.
If they answer both questions in the affirmative, I suggest that
no occasion for submitting a special reference to the Privy
Council will really arise. Even if they should answer the first
question in the negative it still seems to me that provided
they answer the second question in the affirmative there will
be no real difficulty; I can hardly think that it would be
necessary to refer to the Privy Council a question whether a
particular Act does or does not extend to the prevention of a
particular crime.
If, however, they answer both questions in the
negative, it seems to me that we shall have to consider the
P.T.0.