A notorious instance, taken from our constitutional history, illustrates this proposition. The statute 18 Geo. III. c. 12 declares in substance that Parliament will not impose any tax on any colony in North America or in the West Indies. The history of the statute is told by its date--1778. Now no constitutional lawyer will contend that the Parliament of the United Kingdom is legally bound by this Act. If Parliament were to impose an income tax on Jamaica to-morrow the impost would be legal, and could, no doubt, be enforced. But the Declaratory Act of 1778 makes it morally impossible for Parliament to tax any colony. That the impossibility does not arise from a law is clear, because it applies with as much strength to colonies which do not fall as to colonies which do fall within the terms of 18 Geo. III. c. 12. Victoria is not a colony in North America or in the West Indies, but Victoria is at least as well protected from Imperial taxation as is Barbadoes. The so-called Act establishes not a rule of law, but a precept of constitutional morality. It does not theoretically limit, but it practically impedes and interferes with the legislative sovereignty of Parliament. Our Judge with these propositions fully before his mind would scan the terms of the Gladstonian Constitution, or in other words of the Irish Government Act. He would certainly come to the conclusion that the point for his decision was one of great nicety. Against the validity of any Act passed by the British Parliament in contravention of the provisions of the Constitution could be adduced the precise and formal enactment, passed, be it noted, by the undoubtedly sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom, that the Constitution should be alterable in one way, and in one way only;[69] and if it were said that the body which passed this enactment could also repeal it, then the Judge might consider that that body, namely the Parliament of the United Kingdom, had in effect ceased to exist, and that the successor to its sovereign powers, if any, was not the British Parliament, but the Imperial Parliament, the body which, under any view, had legal authority to alter the Constitution. No doubt there would be a great deal to be urged on the other side. The attention of the Judge would be called to the singular and ambiguous use throughout the Constitution of the term Imperial Parliament, which it might be argued was meant to show that what I have called the British Parliament was to be identified with the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Reference would also be made to the ambiguous saving of powers contained in the 37th section of the Irish Government Act. The high and all-important enquiry as to the authority of the British Parliament sitting at Westminster would come to turn upon the studied ambiguities of one ill-drawn section of an Act of Parliament. There the legal question of the sovereignty of the British Parliament under the Gladstonian Constitution may well be left.