Lord Atkinson :-

This is an appeal from the judgment of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia, dated 15th September, 1920, allowing an appeal from the judgment, dated 28th November, 1919 of the trial judge, Macdonald, J., by which latter judgment the respondent's action was dismissed and the appellants given judgment on their counterclaim.

The action out of which the appeal has arisen was brought by the Bishop of Vancouver Island, who by the Statute of British Columbia, 1892, Clause 56, is created a corporation sole, against the Corporation of the City of Victoria, claiming, in the first place, a declaration that no rates or taxes had been lawfully imposed upon certain lands, belonging to him by virtue of his office, upon which lands there had been at all material times erected a building known as St. Andrew's Cathedral dedicated and set apart and in constant use for the public worship of God; and in the second place, an injunction restraining the defendants and their collector of taxes from offering for sale for taxes the aforesaid lands upon which the said cathedral had been erected or any part thereof on 26th May, 1919, or any other date; and thirdly general relief. To this sta