Rigby J:

dealt with the facts and continued: At the commencement of this appeal Mr. Marshall submitted that the record was irregular in a material particular and drew my attention to the fact that after the notice of appeal had been lodged the learned President, having signed his grounds of decision and having caused a copy of it to be served upon the appellant's Counsel in compliance with s. 302(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, apparently thought fit to amplify those grounds by adding a further 27 lines of typewritten material to it. The additional page was sent to the appellant's Counsel with a request to substitute it for the original page. The appellant's Counsel very properly declined to do so. The original typewritten record as transmitted to this Court included, therefore, not the original grounds of decision but the grounds of decision as comprising and including the page subsequently substituted. It is right that I should say at once, however, that the learned President himself subsequently brought this matter to my attention and the original page (or a signed carbon copy thereof) is now before me.

Section 272 of the Criminal Procedure Code enacts that:

No Court, other than the High Court when it has recorded its judgment, shall alter or review the same.

The conduct of the learned President was, in my view, both irregular and improper. But it was not, in my view, such conduct as can be said to have occasioned a miscarriage of justice or such as could be said to warrant or require, or even justify, this Court in saying that the trial and ultimate decision should be regarded as a nullity and the conviction quashed. The only effect of it is, in my view, that the Court must consider the original judgment as it stands and exclude any consideration of the part added. But even if one were to consider the part added, it is clear that it amounts, in effect, to no more than a recapitulation of part of the evidence already dealt with by him and a reaffirmation by him of his belief in the truth of that evidence. I refer to the earlier part of his judgment at p. 14, in which, in dealing with an apparent discrepancy between the evidence of Shih Fee and Yoke Voon, the learned President went on to say that the discrepancy, when analysed, tended to show that these witnesses were "trying their best to tell the truth and that they are, in fact, telling the truth". Even if, therefore, it was proper for this Court to consider the part the learned President purported to add to his judgment and I do not think it is proper that additional part really carried the findings of the learned President no further.

I turn now to the vital question as to whether, on the facts disclosed upon the record, and accepted and believed by the learned President, this Court can, and should, alter the verdict and substitute a conviction under s. 383 of the Penal Code.

The powers of an appellate Court are contained in s. 310 of the Criminal Procedure Code which provides, inter alia, that if there is no sufficient ground for interfering the Court may - and it is to be noted that the power is discretionary - dismiss the appeal or may "alter the finding, maintaining the sentence, or, with or without, altering the finding, reduce or enhance the sentence.

The power of an appellate Court to alter a finding by substituting a conviction under a different provision of the law for the conviction found by the Magistrate is a power to be exercised with great caution. (see the observations of Cussen J in Ng Ee v. PP [1941] MLJ 180 I apprehend that it is fundamental that the power of an appellate Court is measured by the power of the original Court, and its jurisdiction, on appeal, is necessarily limited in each case to the same extent as the jurisdiction of the original Court from which that case comes. Before I can alter this conviction of corruption under the Prevention of Corruption ordinance to one of extortion under s. 383 of the Penal Code I am of the