Viscount Haldane:-

In this case the Attorney-General for the Dominion of Canada has been made a co-appellant, as the appeal raises questions in which the Dominion Government has a direct interest.

In 1917, the respondent corporation brought the action out of which the appeal arises, in the Superior Court of the Province of Quebec, against a pilot named Paquet, who was one of the members of the corporation, to recover a sum of about $532, being the amount earned by him for services as a pilot of the Harbour of Quebec. In the Court of first instance, Dorion, J., decided for the defendant, but on appeal to the Court of King's Bench for the Province this decision was reversed by a majority of the learned Judges of that Court. Cross, J., dissenting. Paquet died subsequently and his personal representative is the first appellant.

The plaintiff corporation consists of the licensed pilots of the Harbour of Quebec and below. In 1860 they had been incorporated by a statute of the then Province of Canada (23 Viet. c. 123). Under that statute the pilots had to hand over their earnings to the corporation, and out of the fund so constituted the former were paid by the latter, who were to distribute the surplus among the pilots.

After the quasi-federal distribution of legislative powers which was effected by the British North America Act in 1867 (30 and 31 Viet. c. 3), it is clear that the power to pass laws regulating the pilotage system of the harbour was given exclusively to the Dominion Parliament. Navigation and shipping form the tenth class of the subjects enumerated as exclusively belonging to the Dominion in section 91 of the Act, and the second clause in the section, the regulation of trade and commerce, is concerned with some aspects at least of the same subject. Whether the words "trade and commerce," if these alone had been enumerated subjects, would have been sufficient to exclude the Provincial Legislature from dealing with pilotage, it is not necessary to consider, because, in their Lordship's' opinion, the introduction into section 91 of the words "Navigation and Shipping'' puts the matter beyond question. It is, of course, true that the class of subjects designated as "Property and Civil Rights" in section 92 and there given exclusively to the Province would be trenched on if that section were to be interpreted by itself. But the language of section 92 has to be read along with that of section 91, and the generality of the wording of section 92 has to be interpreted as restricted by the specific language of section 91, in accordance with the well-established principle that subjects which in one aspect may come under section 92 may in another aspect that is made dominant be brought within section 91. That this principle applies in the case before their Lordships they entertain no doubt, and it was, therefore, in their opinion, for the Dominion and not for the Provincial Legislature to deal exclusively with the subject of pilotage after confederation, notwithstanding that the civil rights and the property of the corporation of Pilots of Quebec Harbour might incidentally, if unavoidably, be seriously affected.

The Dominion Parliament, after confederation, passed what is now chapter 113 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, the Canada Shipping Act, 1906. Part 6 of that Act dealt with pilotage. By section 411 the pilotage district of Quebec is defined, and by section 413 the Dominion Minister of Marine and Fisheries is to be the pilotage authority in whom all the powers of the Harbour Commissioners of Quebec are vested. By subsequent sections the Minister was given powers to regulate the qualifications of pilots, the management and maintenance of their boats and the distribution of their earnings, the performance of their duties, and, subject to the limitation referred to in the case of the Quebec District, the mode and amount of remunerating the pilots, and the establishment of superannuation funds; but the alteration of the rates for p