Duff, J. :-

This is an appeal from the judgment of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia of 3rd February, 1921, affirming the judgment of the Trial Judge, Gregory, J., in favour of the respondent company, in which their Lordships have to consider the effect of the Vancouver Island Settlers' Rights Act of 1904, and the amending Act of 1917, that was subsequently disallowed, as well as the effect of that disallowance upon the rights of the grantees under Crown grants issued by authority of those enactments.

Two actions were brought by the respondent company to establish its title to certain lands comprised in a grant to the appellants professedly made under the authority of the statutes mentioned.

A history of the legislation and other public and private proceedings and transactions affecting more or less directly the land whose title is in controversy would be a rather voluminous one, but it is unnecessary now to enter into that history in detail. Admittedly, these lands are situated in a considerable district in Vancouver Island known as the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Belt; a tract of land granted by a Provincial Statute to the Dominion Government in execution of the terms of an