the offender,
and dismissed
the summons, on the ground of the work having been commenced prior to the 16th of April 1856, the date of the Ordinance, which they do not read retrospectively: That is to say, the Section Eleven of the Ordinance in the plain and obvious sense of the words (and according to the interpretation of the Supreme Court in the like cases of The Queen v. Mitchell and The Queen v. May) but in the non-natural sense of the adjudications arrived at by the defendants in those two cases, and which drew down the severe censure of the Chief Justice, when they brought under his notice by myself in the late proceedings by Mandamus.
That Section which justices do not read retrospectively is as follows:-
Every work whatsoever hereafter to be commenced, resumed, prosecuted, or finished in contravention