But if an offence punishable by the laws of England, had it been committed in England, be committed by any person subject to the Naval Discipline Act on shore, in a country where there is no established law, or in a country where there is, but under such circumstances as to render the offender amenable to a court-martial, he may be charged with such offence before a court-martial, and, if found guilty, subjected to the same punishment as might have been awarded by any competent criminal tribunal, had he been tried and convicted before such a tribunal in England.1 The limits of jurisdiction as to time are fixed by the following enactment :— : "No person, unless he be an offender who has avoided apprehension, or fled from justice, shall be tried or punished in pursuance of this Act for any offence committed by him unless such trial shall take place within three years from the commission of such offence, or within one year after the return of such offender to the United Kingdom, where he has been absent from the United Kingdom during such period of three years." It will thus be seen that three years from the commission of the offence is the ordinary time of limitation within which a trial under the Naval Discipline Act must take place; the one year after the return of the offender is a superadded period to the three years mentioned in the former part of the clause, in order to provide for cases where there shall have been no opportunity of holding a courtmartial during the interval of the delinquent's 1 Naval Dis. Act, s. 38. 2 Ibid. s. 47. Penalty for punishable at ordinary law, when offences committed out of England. Limitation of time as to trials. Applicability of martial law. absence from the United Kingdom. A criminal who has avoided apprehension, or fled from justice, may be tried whenever captured, without reference to any limitation of time. It would appear that no change in the personal condition of the offender after the commission of the offence, would affect his liability he must stand or fall in reference to the character that he held when the alleged offence was committed. An officer might go on half-pay, or leave the service; a sailor be discharged, and enter into a merchant ship: in either case they would be amenable to a trial by court-martial, provided the offence charged was committed within the prescribed period of limitation, and at a time when the offender belonged to the navy, or was within some one of the provisions which render a person subject to the Naval Discipline Act.1 Such are the limits of jurisdiction as to person, place, and time under the Naval Discipline Act; such the boundaries of positive law, as applicable to the navy; yet there may be times in which a naval commander-in-chief cannot rely on the laws for the ordinary government of the navy alone: he may be called upon to act in a crisis when they will not apply, and to enforce discipline amongst persons who are not subject to military law: he must then have recourse to martial, as distinguished from military law, and himself, of his own authority, declare the rules, regulations, and limits, within which the measures that he may think necessary for the public safety are to be carried out. Such 1 SS. 77, 78, 79, 80, 6, 13. occasions are very rare, and the possible localities in which such powers can be exercised, very circumscribed. Proclama This question was carefully considered by the law officers of the Crown in 1855, when it was judged necessary to extend martial law to the harbour and roadstead of Balaclava, then being part of an enemy's territory in the hostile occupation of martial Her Majesty's forces. The following was their Balaclava. opinion : "It is competent to Her Majesty's commanders to declare that martial law shall prevail in the territory of which they are thus in the armed occupation, and, under the sanction of military authority, to lay down rules which they deem essential to be observed for the preservation of Her Majesty's forces and military stores. "To these rules all persons resorting to this territory (not being in the military or naval service of an independent sovereign) would be bound to yield obedience. "During the time that an invading army is in hostile possession of any portion of an enemy's country, all native laws and tribunals are suspended, and there can be no law, nor any executive for the administration of law, but that which is appointed and declared for the time being by the supreme military authority." Admir. Rec. 27, No. 15, tion of law at Controlling powers of the courts of law. Intervention of the courts of law. CHAPTER VIII. OF THE COURTS OF LAW IN RELATION TO NAVAL THE jurisdiction of naval courts-martial and the judicial powers of commanding officers are confined within certain limits by positive enactment; if they pass these limits, they are subject to the controlling authority of the courts of Westminster Hall; an authority, which is exercised over all inferior courts, where they take cognizance of any matter not within their jurisdiction, or where in handling matters clearly within their cognizance they transgress the bounds prescribed to them by the laws of England.' In examining the cases where the intervention of the superior courts has been sought on questions affecting the exercise of naval or military authority, it will be convenient to divide them into the following classes: 1st. Where the superior courts interfere with the proceedings of a court-martial by writ of prohibition. 1 3 Bl. C. 111; per Lord Loughborough, in Grant v. Gould, 2 H. Bl. 100. 2ndly. Where the sentence of a court-martial is reviewed on the return to a writ of habeas corpus. 3rdly. Where actions lie against individual members of a court-martial. 4thly. Where actions lie against officers for excess or abuse of authority in the course of their official duties. hibition. 1. The superior courts can only interfere by Writ of proissuing a writ of prohibition, to prohibit any particular proceeding of a court-martial in those instances in which something is done contrary to the general law of the land, or manifestly out of the jurisdiction of the court; for mere irregularities in the proceedings where the court has jurisdiction over the charge before it afford no ground for a prohibition. In Grant v. Gould, 2 H. Bl. 69, it was decided that courts-martial in this country have jurisdiction over all persons receiving pay as soldiers, but are liable to the controlling authority which the courts of Westminster shall from time to time exercise for the purpose of preventing them from exceeding their jurisdiction; but the Court of Common Pleas will not grant a prohibition to prevent the execution of the sentence of a court-martial passed on a person, who has received pay as a soldier (but assumed the military character merely for the purpose of recruiting in the usual course of that service), though the proceedings of the courtmartial appeared to be in some instances erroneous. fused. In the matter of Poe, 5 B. & Ad. 681, an appli- When recation was made for a writ of prohibition to prohibit the execution of the sentence of a court |