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Residences and for Our personal maintenance; but we do hereby make a firm and manifest Law and Regulation, that verily, with regard to the Sovereigns of Johore that come After Us, they may not any of them in any manner whatsoever take and appropriate for their own use one single doit more than the sum which shall be fixed from time to time by the Council of State." The first Sultan simply drew from the Johore Treasury $240,000 a year, though the revenue of the State amounted only to $3 million.
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Page 21, line 30. By 1914 Johore was a fully organized State with & written constitution, a constitutional sovereign and the complete machinery of administra- tion. Whatever excuses there might have been in the Federated Malay States for an assumption of authority by British Officers beyond what was proper, there were and are none in Johore.' This passage is a strange commentary on the 1914 report of the Commissioners who inquired into the administration of the Johore prison, the report that led to the 1914 Treaty between Johore and Great Britain. Not only did that Commission find prisoners at work on the Sultan's racecourse and rubber estate, but it found eleven prisoners under sentence of death, in handcuffs which were never removed even when they went to the latrine, and prisoners under life sentences chains, an iron ring being fastened round each ankle with a heavy chain attached to it, the end of which was either held by the prisoner or tied round his waist: the rings with these chains attached to them are never removed day or night; they are to wear them till they die." "Sentries and warders appear to have been allowed to take punishment completely into their own hands by using canes at their own discretion; in some cases they even went further and inflicted severe wounds on their prisoners." From 22nd June, 1911, the Sultan himself finding the prison filthy had put it in charge of the Johore Military Forces and undertaken the responsibility for its general administration.
Page 22, line 23. "There have, unfortunately, been occasions during the past few years when it has almost seemed that the true juristic position of even Johore and her Sultan has not been fully appreciated." If this is true at all, it is true in the opposite sense to what Mr. Braddell supposes. The Treaty of 1885 which he proceeds to quote was in fact abrogated by that of 1914 which deprived Johore of political (though not of legal) independence.
Page 22 (3 lines from the bottom of the page). Mr. Braddell is quite mistaken in thinking that Johore alone among the Malay States has a constitution, though it is the only State with a constitution drafted by "infidel "European lawyers. It is true that the older Malay constitutions were broken from time to time by strong Rulers, but it is also notorious that Johore's paper constitution has never been observed by the present Ruler except when it has suited him.
Paye 23.
Mr. Braddell is probably correct in saying that Great Britain has recognized the Johore constitution which in itself is harmless. Paragraph 17 of Sir Arthur Young's Straits Settlements Confidential despatch of 14th October, 1913, quotes from it and it is not abrogated by the 1914 Treaty.
Pages 24-25. Though Mr. Campbell praised the development of Johore in his 1910 Report he implored the Sultan to remedy the prison organization in vain and had to ask the Governor to appoint the Commission of Inquiry,
Page 25, line 11. The important conditions" in the 1914 Agreement do hardly more than summarize existing practice in the other Malay States. They repre- sent nothing that would have been refused to Federated Malay States Rulers at the same date or to-day.
Ib. line 27. Mr. Braddell has made a slip. The Sultan cannot ask for the dis- missal of European officers seconded to Johore, but only for their transfer from his State.
*
Ib. line 34. No one but Mr. Braddell appears to know the date of the 1923 Statutes, which in fact are undated.
Page 26, line 3. The then General Adviser (Mr., afterwards Sir, Hayes Marriott) read and corrected the Statutes in proof though they appear not to have reached the High Commissioner.
Ib. line 9, Part V, (2) quoted by Mr. Braddell merely refers to the legal (as opposed to the political) independence of Johore, an independence shared, as the Secretary of State has admitted and the Privy Council has held, by other Malay States as well.
103
** Statutes "
Not even in Johore are these
quoted as part of the constitution and they are being reprinted separately. Anyhow Part V (2) appears only to state in euphemistic terms the status of all the Protected Malay States and (3) seeks to gloze over the real loss of juristic status consequent on the 1914 Treaty.
Ib. line 31. It is very clear that the status of the Sultan of Johore is entirely different from and júristically much higher than that of any other Malay Sultans.'
His status is certainly different from that of all other Malay Sultans except the Ruler of Pahang, because the Johore family is not of royal birth and a Sultanate was in fact conferred on it only by Queen Victoria's recognition. But the words "
juris- tically higher mean no more than that Johore alone has a domestic constitution drafted by British lawyers and limiting the Ruler's powers as the powers of no other Malay Ruler are limited. Even Great Britain however does not possess a written constitution! And Johore's juristic status vis-à-vis Great Britain is defined by the 1914 Treaty and is in all essential respects identical with that of the other Malay States.
R. O. WINSTEDT,
Enclosure 5 in No. 40.
NOTE BY THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL.
General Adviser, Johore.
IN considering whether any particular State is or is not
sovereign
two aspects have to be looked at:-
(a) whether it has an international personality;
(b) whether sovereignty lies within the State itself.
independent and
2. Both as regards (a) and (b) each attribute is made up of a number of features,
and in such a case as that of Johore it is a question whether the process of whittling away those features has gone so far that in the result it can fairly be said that the attributes of international personality and uncontrolled internal sovereignty have dis- appeared and ceased to exist to a sufficiently substantial degree.
3. As to what constitutes international personality-it is complete control over its foreign relations, including diplomatic representation, treaty, making, and war and peace (Wheaton's International Law, 6th Edition, page 79). On this test it seems to me that, having regard to the terms of its Treaties with the British Crown, Johore has lost any international personality it may ever have had. It could hardly be sug- gested, for example, that Johore would be admitted to the League of Nations.
4. As to whether sovereignty lies within the State itself-a Sovereign Govern- ment is a Government, however constituted, which exercises the power of making and enforcing law within a community, and is not itself subject to any superior Government. In view of the terms of the 1914 Treaty (by which the Sultan agrees to receive a British officer "whose advice must be asked and acted upon on all matters affecting the general administration of the country and on all questions other than those touching Malay religion and custom ") it would appear that the Government of Johore quite definitely became "subject to a superior Government," and it is diffi- cult to see how the Sultan can properly be regarded as an independent sovereign." In his pamphlet on The Legal Status of the Malay States Mr. Roland Braddell "It is very clear that the status of the Sultan of Johore is entirely different from and juristically much higher than that of any Indian Prince or any other Malay Sultan," but personally I am unable to appreciate in what material respect the position of the Sultan differs from that of an Indian Prince.
says:
K
It may not be irrelevant to notice in this connexion that the Johore Courts Enact- ment, 1920, purports to confer a right of appeal from the Local Court of Appeal to His Britannic Majesty in Council.
The Mighell case does not really affect the question. It cannot be regarded as
a judicial decision on the point now being considered because the Courts are bound
to accept the certificate of the Secretary of State.
9th October, 1931. .
W. C. HUGGARD,
Attorney-General,
Straits Settlements.