Page:Address as the ABA president.pdf/47

 VIRGINIA.

The last adjourned session of the General Assembly of Virginia contained no nothworthynoteworthy [sic] change in the statute law of that state, but referred chiefly to local legislation.

WEST VIRGINIA.

Of the enactments passed by the Legislature of West Virginia at its last regular session, only two may be deemed worthy of note.

One submitting to the popular vote an amendment to the constitution, providing that all elections for the state and county offices shall thereafter be held on Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, instead of October as heretofore, which was passed also by a legislative enactment.

The other, is an act authorizing any person or corporation to construct and condemn land for the construction of lateral railroads and regulating the same.

WISCONSIN.

Several important acts marked the legislation of Wisconsin at the last session of its legislature.

What is commonly known as the "contract system" of maintaining paupers, insane, and idiots in poor-houses and asylums, is forbidden, and no person is allowed to contract with any town, village, city, or county to carry on a poor-house or asylum and furnish the inmates board at a given rate for each inmate.

Another provides, that a wife's inchoate dower interest, or homestead interest, can be released when she is insane upon a proper petition to the Circuit Court by the husband, setting out such facts, and showing that it would be for his interest to convey, mortgage or otherwise dispose of the real estate affected by such inchoate dower or homestead interest.