Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/163

Rh purpose; its breadth was to bear a certain proportion to its length; the grant was to be executed by the Governor; and the lands were to be improved in a certain manner within a given time. From these regulations there resulted to the State a sole and exclusive power of taking conveyances of the Indian right of soil; since, according to them, an Indian conveyance alone could give no right to an individual, which the laws would acknowledge. The State, or the Crown thereafter, made general purchases of the Indians from time to time, and the Governor parcelled them out by special grants, conformed to the rules before described, which it was not in his power, or in that of the Crown, to dispense with. Grants, unaccompanied by their proper legal circumstances, were set aside regularly by scire facias, or by bill in chancery. Since the establishment of our new government, this order of things is but little changed. An individual, wishing to appropriate to himself lands still unappropriated by any other, pays to the public treasurer a sum of money proportioned to the quantity he wants. He carries the treasurer's receipt to the auditors of public accounts, who, thereupon, debit the treasurer with the sum, and order the register of the land office to give the party a warrant for his land. With this warrant from the register, he goes to the surveyor of the county where the land lies on which he has cast his eye. The surveyor lays it off for him, gives him its exact description, in the form of a certificate, which certificate he returns to the land office, where a grant is made out, and is signed by the Governor. This vests in him a perfect dominion in his lands, transmissible to whom he pleases by deed or will, or by descent to his heirs if he die intestate.

Many of the laws which were in force during the monarchy being relative merely to that form of government, or inculcating principles inconsistent with Republicanism, the first assembly which met after the establishment of the Commonwealth, appointed a committee to revise the whole Code, to reduce it into proper form and volume, and report it to the assembly. This work has been executed by three gentlemen,