text:  Some contend that in doing so the bill absolutely alters the law as it stood heretofore and ought therefore to be viewed as enactory; whilst others maintain that is simply a declaratory bill not altering the law at all but merely expressing in fuller or in clearer terms what had always been law though silently departed from by the usage which from the time of Queen Anne had allowed a determinate preponderance to the rights of property in the person of the patron