And here I must say a word as to such alteration of the law, if made, being what one of the resolutions passed at St. James’s Hall termed it, _ex post facto_ legislation. A good deal has been said upon this topic, and we are told that if you call such legislation _ex post facto_, then all legislation is such, when it forbids for the future what has been permitted in the past; and we are reminded that the true sense of _ex __post facto_ legislation is when a penalty is placed, by a new law, upon acts done before the law was altered. Now first let me remark that, even without coming exactly up to the definition, you yet draw very near to the substance of _ex post facto_ legislation if you make a one-sided change to catch only one side or one party whom you make offenders under the new law, and when it is a law framed expressly and on purpose to catch the men on one side and let the others go free. Whether this be technically _ex post facto_ or not, it comes exactly to that which, in a passage already quoted from the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol’s Charge, is described by him as likely to cause “rankling bitterness, from the thus greatly increased conviction that the law is really in favour of those to be restrained; and being so, is overridden by an _unjust Act of Parliament_.” But, secondly, there is another way in which such an enactment would come very near indeed to _ex post facto_ legislation—I mean where it disturbs a great settlement of many years’ standing, which has induced men to enter into numerous and weighty engagements, from which you cannot free them if you would, when you change their _status_ in relation to their obligations. To take an illustration. The country has entered into such a kind of contract with the fundholder. Millions are embarked in the Funds upon the faith of a great settlement the principles of which shall never be departed from; and to depart from which would be _ex post facto_ legislation, practically putting a penalty upon those who had come under voluntary obligations upon the strength of those principles and that settlement. But it may be said, nevertheless, the country does sometimes vary the contracts and alter the rate of interest towards its creditors. Yes! but what would be thought of the minister who proposed to do this, without offering, as the alternative, to pay the lender off in full; to replace him in the position in which he stood originally? And if, without offering this, he proposed to alter his _status_, who would not feel there was an unjust _ex post facto_ alteration of the law? Now, upon such a great, just, and deliberate settlement, have men entered into relations with the established Church of this country. And here the State _cannot_ set them free, or replace them in the position in which they stood before they accepted the cure of souls within her pale. The Legislature _cannot_ give them the alternative offer: and therefore, again, such a change as alters the