Viscount Haldane:—

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in a petition of right which gave rise to questions of constitutional importance as to the position of joint-stock companies, incorporated within the provinces, but seeking to carry on their business beyond the provincial boundaries.

The appellants were incorporated in Ontario by letters patent, dated 23rd December, 1904, and issued under the authority of the Ontario Companies Act (Rev. Stat. Ont., 1897, c. 191), and by virtue of any other authority or power then existing, in the name of the Sovereign and under the Great Seal of the province, by its Lieutenant-Governor. The letters patent recite that this Act authorises the Lieutenant-Governor in Council by letters patent under the Great Seal to create and constitute bodies corporate and politic for any of the purposes or objects to which the legislative authority of the province extends. They go on to incorporate the company to carry on the businesses of mining and exploration in all their branches, and to acquire real and personal property, including mining claims, with incidental powers. There are no words which limit the area of operation, or prohibit the company from carrying out its objects beyond the provincial boundaries.

In the years 1899 and 1900 the Crown, through the Minister of the Interior of the Dominion, had granted to predecessors-in-title of the appellants leases, of certain tracts of land, in what is now the Yukon district, for the purposes of hydraulic mining. Two of these leases contained exclusions of so much of the tracts as had been taken up and entered for placer mining claims. In the year 1900 the Crown entered into agreements with these predecessors-in-title to the effect that, if any of the placer mining claims within the tracts should be forfeited or surrendered, the Crown would include them in the tracts by supplementary leases. The original leases having subsequently been assigned to the appellants, and certain of the placer mining claims having reverted, the Crown purported in 1907 to demise to the appellants these claims, and to agree to demise to them such other of the claims as might thereafter revert, for the same terms of years as those for which the original leases were granted. In 1906 the Minister of the Interior of the Dominion had purported to issue to the appellants a free miner's certificate. This certificate was issued in conformity with certain regulations under an Order in Council made under the provisions of the Dominion Lands Act (Rev. Stat. Can. 1886, of 54) which gives the right to a free miner's certificate to persons of over eighteen and to joint-stock companies, the latter being defined to include any company incorporated "for mining purposes under a Canadian charter or licensed by the Government of Canada."

When the Yukon district was, by the statute passed by the Dominion Parliament in 1898 (61 Vict. c. 6), made a separate territory, power to make ordinances was conferred on the Commissioner of the territory. Under this power the Foreign Companies Ordinance was passed (Consolidated Ordinances of the Yukon Territory, 1902, c. 59), under which any company, incorporated, otherwise than by or under the authority of an ordinance of the territory or an Act of the Parliament of Canada, was required to obtain a licence under the ordinance to carry on its business in the Yukon territory. Such a licence when issued was made sufficient evidence in the Courts of the territory of the due licensing of the company. In September 1905, the appellants obtained such a licence.

In 1908 the appellants presented a petition of right in the Exchequer Court of Canada, alleging that, in breach of the agreement entered into by the Crown placer mining claims which had reverted to the Crown and should have been leased to the appellants had been wrongfully withheld from the appellants, and that by reason of this and of other breaches of the agreement the appellants had suff