Thomson J (delivering oral JUDGMENT):

In deciding this case I do not wish to go an inch beyond what is necessary for that purpose.In particular, I do not wish anything I may say to be taken as in any way criticising or approving the action of the State Executive Council in concerning itself with the matter.

To my mind, the question mainly turns on the construction to be placed on s. 475 Of the Merchant Shipping Ordinance which it is to be observed comes from s. 441 of the prewar Straits Settlements Ordinance and not from anything in the prewar Federated Malay States Ordinance.The relevant portion of the section reads:

Any person desirous of having a boat licence for the conveyance of passengers or cargo or for fishing shall apply to the Port Officer of the nearest port, who shall examine the boat, and, if he thinks it seaworthy and proper for the conveyance of passengers or cargo or fishing, may cause the boat to be licensed as & passenger or cargo or fishing boat, and grant a licence for the same.

There is no need for any show of authority to support the proposition that that section places a duty on the shoulders of the Port Officer towards members of the public desirous of having boat licences and, in the present case, the Port Officer in question is the Harbour Master for Perak.To my mind, the section then does two things.One of these is to give the Port Officer a discretion in the carrying out of his duty, and the second is to place certain limits upon exercise of that discretion.

Reading the section in its ordinary grammatical sense it seems to me that that discretion is contained in the word "may" and that a limitation is imposed upon its exercise by the words "if he thinks it seaworthy and proper for the conveyance of passengers" or as the case may be.

On any ordinary canon of construction I do not think it enables the Port Officer to go beyond that limitation in the exercise of the discretion conferred upon him or to consider any matters other than seaworthiness and suitability, and it seems to me to follow that once having exercised his discretion in accordance with that limitation he comes under a duty to the particular member of the public in question to issue such licence as may be proper.

I do not propose to buttress that opinion by lengthy quotations from authority. I will only say I have considered the Straits Settlements case of the Straits Steamship Co. Ltd. v. Owen [1932] MLJ 167, the local case of Krishnasamy & Ors. v. Butler Madden [1947] MLJ 182 and the English case of Rex v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner, ex parte, Holloway [1911] 2 KB 1131 both in itself and is to be distinguished from the case of Rex v. Weymouth Corp. ex parte Teletax Ltd. [1947] 63 TLR 291.

I have not overlooked Mr. Talog Davies' argument to the contrary based on the wording of s. 482 which, considered in isolation, would appear to give the Port Officer an unbounded discretion to cancel any boat licence once issued, and so, it is argued, to support the contention that his discretion to issue is equally unbound.But the two sections (i.e. 475 and 482) are not to be read one in isolation from the other.They are to be read together.And reading them together, there are only two possible constructions to be placed upon s. 482.One is that it is a natural corollary in the public interest to s. 475 and that the discretion contained in it is not unbounded but is to be exercised on the same principles as the discretion conferred by s. 475.The second is that s. 482 is capable of being completely nugatory to s. 475.And it seems to me that I cannot hesitate for one moment between these two constructions.Every canon of construction I know compels me to adopt the former.

The Port Officer then must not be influenced in the exercise of his discretion by any consideration other than the: seaworthiness or otherwise of the vessel in question, and its propriety or otherwise for the purpose for which a licence is sought, that is to say, for the con