Brown J:

The facts sufficiently appear from Judgment of the Court given by:

This appeal was reserved under the provision of s. 306(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code for our consideration of the legality or propriety of the order for forfeiture.The appellant was convicted by the learned District Judge upon four charges.The maximum sentence (apart from the forfeiture) which it would have been competent for him to impose on the first charge was six months' imprisonment or a fine of $1,000 or both (GN No S 81 of the Gazette Supplement dated 26 July 1946). Upon the remaining three charges the maximum sentence was in each case a fine of $1,000.He imposed a fine of $500 on the first charge, and taking the view that all four charges were related he imposed a nominal fine of $10 on each of the remaining three.But in the case of the first charge, which was under s. 3 of the Prohibition of Exports Order, 1946, he availed himself of the amendment to reg. 81 of the Singapore Essential Regulations, which was made by GN No S 276 of the Gazette Supplement date 12 August 1947 and, in addition to the fine of $500, he ordered the goods to be forfeited.It is not disputed that the value of the sulphate of ammonia, which was thus ordered to be forfeited, was $70,000.

Mr Walters first contested the legality of the order for forfeiture upon the ground that the amendment made by GN No S 276 of 1947 was ultra vires. He said that it was contrary to the provision of Magna Carta.The answer to that can only be that emergency legislation sometimes is. In order to meet the emergency, extraordinary powers of legislation are conferred upon certain authorities, and we can only ask ourselves if the authority which made the amendment contained in GN No S 276 of 1947 was acting within the legislative powers conferred upon him by the Singapore Essential Regulations Proclamation (GN No. 281 of the BMA Gazette dated 29 March 1949). We have no doubt that the amendment is within the powers conferred by s. 3(1)(k) of the

Proclamation.The authority is thereby empowered to prescribe "penalties" for any offences against the regulations.The word "penalties" is used alone, and we see no reason to limit its meaning by excluding the penalty of forfeiture.

But by reg. 81 of the Essential Regulations as amended by GN No S 81 of the Supplement dated 26 July 1946 the appellant could have been brought to trial before the High Court, which is provided with power to impose a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment or a fine of $20,000 or both.We agree that the learned District Judge was right in taking a serious view of this case, and that it called for a severe financial penalty - which it would have been within the power of the High Court to inflict.But we cannot agree that he properly exercised the discretion which the amendment gives him when he made an order for the forfeiture of goods amounting in value to seventy times the maximum fine which he could impose.The amendment gives him no power to order a partial forfeiture.Then in this case he should have made no order for forfeiture, because such an order was tantamount to evading the limit which is clearly intended to be placed upon his penal powers.In a case where the value of the goods so greatly exceeds the maximum fine which a District Court is empowered to impose, if it is considered that forfeiture of the goods should be part of the penalty, then in our opinion the case should be brought before the High Court which is vested with more extensive powers.

Nor do we agree with the learned District Judge when he says that the four charges were so related that he ought not to impose more than a nominal penalty for the second, third and fourth charges.As he properly says in para. 4 of his Grounds of Decision: "This was not merely a case of attempting to export goods without a licence but of attempting to export them by pretending that sulphate of ammonia was sago flour." By making the two false declarations in Ex C an