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in consideration of a money payment, or that the Crown by providing the guards in consideration of a money pay- ment has violated some constitutional principle of which the Court can take cognizance, I think that the Plaintiff Company must fail on this appeal. In my judgment the powers of the Crown are wide enough to include a power to lend troops to a private individual for reward, and the Crown has not violated any constitutional principle in providing the guards in consideration of a money payment. The manner in which the Crown exercises its powers is not a matter which can be enquired into by a Court of Law. As Lord Kenyon said in Macdonald v. Steele: (Peake's Nisi Prius Cases, page 234) "His Majesty's pleasure supersedes all enquiry as he has the absolute direction of the Army. It is true Parliament has provided a sum of money, but that is to be distributed as the King chooses". The con- tention that the Crown, by imposing as a condition of pro- viding the guards the payment of a sum of money to cover their pay whilst they are employed on that service, has attempted to levy a tax on the subject without grant of Parliament contrary to the Bill of Rights is in my opinion not well founded. The Plaintiff Company was at liberty to carry on its trade without any licence or interference from the Crown. The Crown was under no duty to provide the guards; the Plaintiff Company was free to accept or reject the offer made by the Crown. The facts of the pre- sent case are quite different from the facts in the cases upon which the Plaintiff Company has relied, and the princi- ple referred to by Lord Buckmaster in the Wilts United Dairies case has no application to this case.
3
Sir Leslie Scott put his case on this point in the form of a dilemma. He contended that either the Crown in its discretion decided that it was necessary to provide the guards for the protection of the Plaintiff Company, in which case the Crown was performing a duty which it owed to the Plaintiff Company, or else the Crown was at the request of the Plaintiff Company making use of the Army in a manner it was not authorised to do, in which case the contract was void as being contrary to public policy. This is the dilemma, which, according to the speech of Lord Cave in Glasbrook Bros. Limited v. Glamorgan County Council, 1925 Appeal Cases at page 278
was put by the Lord Justice Atkin in that case in the Court of Appeal. The answer given by Lord Cave to the dilemma so put applies to the present case. It by no means follows that because it was not the duty of the Crown to pro – vide guards for the Plaintiff Company's ships, that therefore the Crown had no power to provide the guards and to demand the payment of a sum of money in consideration for making such provision. I know of no authority which prevents the Crown, if so minded, from employing any available soliders in time of peace as well as in time of war in rendering services to private individuals, or from demanding and re- ceiving remuneration for any services so rendered. It might form the subject of just criticism in the douse of Commons if the Crown were to employ soldiers gratuitously for such purposes, but I see no valid reason for holding that such employment, with or without remuneration, is unconstitutional or against public policy.
The only cases to be found in the reports where the armed Forces of the Crown have in time of peace rendered ser- vices to private individuals for reward are the salvage cases. These cases are not closely analogous to the present, although in some of them the Admiralty has made a claim for the use of His Majesty's ships and in others the Admiralty has deducted the pay of the officers and crew employed on the salvage oper- ations from the amount recovered by them but some of the
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