JUDGMENT

Salleh Abas LP

This is an appeal from the decision of Vohrah J striking out the writ and the statement of claim of the appellants.

The facts of the case are largely not in dispute and these are as follows:

On 19 January 1886 corresponding to 6th day of Jamadil Awal 1305 the Sultan of Pahang, Sultan Ahmad Muadzam Shah by a document bearing the same date made a gift inter vivos of a large tract of land described as "all that river district being the basin of Sungei Tembeling and all the tributaries from their sources to their mouths and situate in the State of Pahang" to his daughters Tengku Long and Tengku Dalam. The first appellant is the son of Tengku Long, whilst the second appellant is her grandson, being the son of the first appellant. Both appellants claim that they are lawfully entitled to the land described in the said royal document, which they maintained to be a valid document of title and still subsisting.

They filed a suit which is the subject matter of this appeal in the High Court asking for a declaration to that effect. The respondent denied the gift and any knowledge of it and in their application to strike out the suit they have four reasons why the Court should do so; two of which are - (1) their statement of claim does not disclose any reasonable cause of action and (2) the suit is statute-barred. Their application was heard by Vohrah J who held that there was a reasonable cause of action, but the suit is caught by the Statute of Limitation.

We think however that the question of the reasonableness of the appellants' cause of action which the learned Judge seemed to have passed over and accepted as being established without much discussion is of primary importance and should first be examined by us before any consideration of the applicability or otherwise of the Statute of Limitation. For unless and until the appellants can show that they have a reasonable cause of action, any discussion on the applicability of the statute to their claim would be premature and irrelevant.

We therefore propose to examine the legal effect of the royal document of 19 January 1886 purporting to give the said land to Tengku Long and Tengku Dalam.

For this purpose it is necessary to look back into the state of affairs prevailing in Pahang at the time when the gift was made.

Historical perspective

It is a matter of history that Pahang was an independent state before she came under the British protection in 1889. Sultan Ahmad Muadzam Shah, otherwise known as Wan Ahmad became the undisputed ruler of Pahang after defeating his brother Tun Mutahir following the death of their father, Bendahara Tun Ali in 1857. Sultan Ahmad Muadzam Shah was a single-minded ruler and opposed to British influence in his state. The British on the other hand were keen to have some measure of control over the government of Pahang with a view of safe-guarding their commercial interests, which they feared were in jeopardy by indiscriminate concessions, often ill-defined and overlapping, given by the Sultan to various people. Their interests in gaining political control of the State was further heightened by rumours of Pahang's great mineral wealth. Unwilling as the Sultan was, in 1887 through the urging of Hugh Clifford and persuasion of the Sultan of Johor, who two years earlier had signed a similar treaty, Sultan Ahmad Muadzam Shah finally relented and agreed to sign an Anglo-Pahang Treaty. Under this treaty Hugh Clifford became a British agent in Pahang with consular status. This was the beginning of the British intervention in the state. In the following year (1888) the murder of a Chinese named Jo Hui (Go Cui) who was allegedly a British subject provided a first class opportunity for Clementi Smith, the Governor of the Straits Settlements to seize upon the incident to extract a sort of recapitulation letter from the Sultan. In this letter dated 24 August 1888 the Sultan acknowledging responsibility for the murder requested the British Government to send a B