CO885-(13-15) — Page 209

5808.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

ཞག། ། །།

لبالستينا

C.O.

Reference :-

885

13 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

MY LORD,

No. 205. (Leeward. ISLANDS.)

LAW OFFICERS to COLONIAL OFFICE.

Royal Courts of Justice, March 19, 1891.

We were honoured with your Lordship's commands, signified in Mr. E. Wingfield's letter of the 5th of February 1891, stating that he was directed by your Lordship to transmit for our consideration a copy of a despatch from the Governor of the Leeward Islands, in which he said that he was advised that the General Legislative Council of the Colony had no power to regulate the shipping engaged in trade between the different islands forming the Colony.

That in our Report to the Colonial Office of the 28th October 1886* we stated that, in our opinion, unless and until the Island Legislature of a Presidency of the Colony should declare the regulation of the coasting trade of that island to be within the competency of the General Legislature, the coasting trade was a subject over which the General Legislature had no authority, but which remained under the control of the Island Legislature of that particular Presidency.

But that the Island Legislatures, though they were empowered by the Merchant Shipping (Colonial) Act, 1869, to regulate the coasting trade of their own islands, had no power to regulate the inter-insular trade, and that it appeared to your Lordship that as the Leeward Islands were, under the Leeward Islands Act, 1871, "places under one Legislature," and were, therefore, to be deemed to be "one British possession for the purposes of the Merchant Shipping (Colonial) Act, 1869, the General Legislature of the Colony was empowered by that Act to regulate the coasting trade of that British possession, which would seem to include the trade between the ports of one of the Presidencies which constituted the Colony and the ports of another of those Presidencies.

That Mr. Wingfield was to ask us to be good enough to furnish your Lordship with our opinion on the question.

We have taken the matter into our consideration, and, in obedience to your Lordship's commands, have the honour to

Report

!

that, in our opinion, the shipping trade between the different islands forming the Colony of the Leeward Islands is not "coasting trade" within the meaning of the Merchant Shipping (Colonial) Act, 1869.

We have, &c.

(Signed)

The Right Hon. Lord Knutsford,

&c.

&c.

&c.

No. 76.

E 65455.-8.

25,-8,91.

RICHARD E. WEBSTER. EDWARD CLARKE.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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