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II. Be it therefore enacted, by the Lieutenant Gover- Repeal of the nor, Council, and Burgesses, of this present General recited acts. Assembly, and it is hereby enacted. by the authority of the

An Act for establishing a town in Augusta county, and allowing Fairs to be kept therein. Representa. tion against These acts are agreeable to others passed in former the repeal of Assemblies, and their preambles shew their utility and certain laws design. The small number of inhabitants, and the want of persons properly qualified to constitute a corporation, is the reason that your majesty's lieutenant governor hath not granted these towns a charter.

To assess a toll on the commodities bronght to these fairs would frustrate the intents of the acts. Neither do the people desire a court of piepowder; their monthly county courts, and the authority allowed your majesty's justices of the peace being sufficient to determine their differences. Nor would your General Assembly of this colony have presumed to enact these laws without inserting a proviso that nothing therein contained should derogate from, alter, or infringe your royal power of granting to any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, the privilege of holding fairs in such manner as your majesty, your heirs and successors, should think fit; well knowing how unbecoming it would be in them to presume to act contrary to your majesty's royal prerogative, which has ever been esteemed equally dear, sacred, and inviolable with their own rights and liberties

An Act to prevent the building of Wooden Chimnies in the town of Walkerton, and also to prevent the inhabitants thereof from raising and keeping Hugs. Acts of this nature have been passed every session of Assembly of late years, to some of which your majesty hath been graciously pleased to assent. But what chiefly induced your Assembly to pass this act, was the preservation of the public warehouses for the reception of tobacco in this town from the danger of Fire.

An Act for the betler support of the College of William and Mary.

By this act the acts of the fourth of queen Anne, intituled, An act for laying an imposition upon skins and furrs, for the better support of the college of William and Mary, in Virginia; and the Act for the better

same, That the said two recited acts and every clause and article thereof, shall be, and are hereby repealed and made void, to all intents and purposes, as if the same

support and encouragement of the college of William Representation against and Mary, in Virginia, made in the eighth year of the repeal of your majesty's reign, (to which last act your majesty certain laws. was pleased to give your royal assent,) were reduced

into one act, and re-enacted in substance, with no other alteration than the increasing the duty upon every raw hide, from three pence to six pence, and repealing the act made in the eighteenth year of your majesty's reign, for amending the first of these two acts, which Jaid an additional duty of two shillings and six pence on every raw hide, and five shillings on every tanned hide exported.

The inducement your assembly had for this alteration was to collect separate laws relating to the same subject into one act, and for the benefit and support of the college, the only public seminary of learning in this colony, always favoured by your majesty and your royal predecessors, and encouraged by your Assemblies here. Raw hides are exported from hence in greater abundance than tanned. The duties imposed by the act of the eighteenth year of your majesty's reign were so high as in effect to amount to a prohibition, for which reason it was repealed, and these duties substituted. Six pence on a raw hide increases the college revenue, is easily born by the commodity, and not complained of by the trader or exporter.

An Act to prevent the tending of Seconds.

Experience convinced the Legislature that turning out and tending seconds of tobacco depreciated that staple commodity and threatened the ruin of the trade. Whereupon several acts of Assembly were made to provide against that evil, particularly an act of the fourth year of the late queen Anne, for improving the staple of tobacco, and for regulating the size and tare of tobacco hogsheads, which has the sanction of her royal assent. Another made in the seventh year of the reign of his late majesty king George the first, of blessed memory, for the more effectual preventing the tending of seconds. Another of the third and fourth years of your majesty's reign, for repealing the act for the better and more effectual improving the staple of to

had never been made: And that for the future, all Slaves declaslaves whatsoever shall be held, deemed, and taken, to red to be be chattels personal.

chattels per

sonal.

bacco, and for the better execution of the laws now in Representaforce against tending seconds, and for the further pre- tion against vention thereof. And another of the tenth of your certain laws. the repeal of majesty's reign, to prevent cutting up tobacco suckers. Upon the revisal of their laws, your Assembly reduced such clauses of these acts, (except the first) into one act, with an amendment, that if any plants should be destroyed by tempest or otherwise, when growing, and thrown away without being cured or housed, any person might raise and tend seconds or slips upon the same stalks without incurring a penalty. Which they humbly conceived to be conformable to the spirit of the former laws, and founded on reason and justice. For tho' the policy of theselaws is toprevent the utter loss of the tobacco trade by overstocking the markets with bad tobacco, it does not intend to ruin the planter, whose whole support depends on his crop frequently exposed to tempests, and there is no danger of making two crops from the same plant, where what they call firsts have been destroyed. If this act was repealed upon an opinion that the preventing the tending and making tobacco from slips or suckers will so much lessen the quality of tobacco imported into Great-Britain as to diminish your majesty's revenue arising from that commodity, we beg leave to observe that from a law of the like nature which hath been in force more than forty years, no such effect has been produced; but during that time, we have always made as much tobacco as Great Britain and all its various branches of foreign trade could find markets for. And to encourage the making greater quanities than can be sold will immediately ruin the planter; and in consequence the trade

too.

An Act for establishing the General Court, and for regulating and settling the proceedings therein.

This act contained little more than a collection of former acts relating to this court, and the rules of practice. It altered the returns of some of the process for the ease of the court, the benefit of the suitors, and the convenience of the attornies; limited appeals from the inferior courts to ten pounds, instead

But this act III. Provided always, and be it enacted, by the shall notalter authority aforesaid, That nothing herein contained, shall be construed, deemed, or taken, to alter or de

any former

right.

Representa of five pounds; which limitations is also in the act for the repeal of establishing the county courts; and also limited original certain laws. process to twenty pounds current money or four thou

sand pounds of tobacco, instead of ten pounds sterling
or two thousand pounds of tobacco, with a view to
keep up the dignity of the court, to prevent in some
measure the too great increase of business, and to hin-
der litigious persons from harrassing their debtors in
this court for small debts, where the delays occasion-
ed by the multiplicity of causes, the costs and atten-
dance of the parties, are more burthensome than in
the inferior courts, which have competent jurisdiction
of such suits. The good effects of this law began to
appear during its short continuance.
An Act declaring slaves to be Personal Estate, and for
other purposes therein mentioned.

Slaves are in their nature personal estate, and not
real, and so continued in this colony 'till the fourth of
queen Anne, when the Legislature declared them real
estate; but with so many provisos and exceptions that
they remained personal estate in many instances. They
might be sold, sued for, and taken in execution as chat-
tels, and were not to escheat; they remained as per-
sonal assets in the hands of the administrator; and yet
descended to the heir at law as real estate.
He was
answerable for a proportionable part of their apprais-
ed value to his younger brothers and sisters; except
of those who were allotted to the widow for her dow-
er, which he took wholly to himself upon her death.
In the first year of your majesty's reign, another act
was made to explain and amend the former; and by
that wives' slaves were vested in their husbands; they
were only to be given or bequeathed as chattels, and
no remaider of them was to be limited otherwise than
as a chattel personal by, the rules of the common law.
An infant of the age of eighteen years might devise
them away, but they were not to be forfeited, except
in cases were lands and tenements are forfeited; and
the value of the slaves of mothers dying intestate, o-
ther than her dower slaves, was made distributable,
as in the case of a father. It also allowed and settled

feat the right, title, property, claim, or demand of a ny person or persons whatsoever, of, in, or to any slave or slaves which hath heretofore accrued to him, her,

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a method for annexing slaves to lands in tail, and de- Representaclared that such slaves and their increase should pass tion against and descend with the land as part of the freehold. But the repeal of certain laws. provided that such slaves might be taken in execution, and sold for the debts of the tenant in tail for the time being, and such sale should barr the intail. This last act being in the first part explanatory, was productive of many suits; it was thought to look back to the first law made twenty two years before, destroyed old titles, and created new, and was attended with such doubts, variety of opinions, and confusion, that new points are even yet started, and undetermined. To remedy which it was thought best to reduce them to their natural condition, so that they might not at the same time be real estate in some respects, personal in others, and both in others; and as the younger children were entituled to a proportionable part of the value of the slaves descended from a father or mother, they might also share with the elder brother when their collateral relations died intestate, which they could not do before. Nor did your Assembly think it beneficial or convenient to continue the method of intailing nogroes any longer. They saw that slaves could not be kept on the lands to which they were annexed without manifest prejudice to the tenant in tail. Because in time they overstocked the plantations, and often the tenant was the proprietor of fee simple land, much fitter for cultivation than his intailed lands, where he could work his slaves to a much greater advantage. But on the other hand the frequent removing and settling them on other lands in other counties and parts of the colony, far distant from the county court, where the deeds or wills which annexed them were recorded, and the intail lands lay; the confusion occasioned by their mixture with fee simple slaves of the same name and sex, and belonging to the same owner; the uncertainty of distinguishing one from another, after se veral generations, no register of their genealogy being kept, and none of them having surnames, were great michiefs to purchasers, strangers, and crediH 3 Vol. 5.

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