Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/164

148 and reported; but probably will not be taken up till a restoration of peace shall leave to the Legislature leisure to go through such a work.

The plan of the revisal was this: The common law of England, by which is meant that part of the English law which was anterior to the date of the oldest statutes extant, is made the basis of the work. It was thought dangerous to attempt to reduce it to a text; it was therefore left to be collected from the usual monuments of it. Necessary alterations in that, and so much of the whole body of the British statutes, and of acts of assembly, as were thought proper to be retained, were digested into 126 new acts, in which simplicity of style was aimed at, as far as was safe. The following are the most remarkable alterations proposed:

To change the rules of descent, so as that the lands of any person dying intestate shall be divisible equally among all his children, or other representatives, in equal degree:

To make slaves distributable among the next of kin, as other moveables:

To have all public expenses, whether of the general treasury, or of a parish or county, (as for the maintenance of the poor, building bridges, court houses, &c.,) supplied by assessments on the citizens, in proportion to their property:

To hire undertakers for keeping the public roads in repair, and indemnify individuals through whose lands new roads shall be opened:

To define with precision the rules whereby aliens should become citizens, and citizens make themselves aliens:

To establish religious freedom on the broadest bottom:

To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisers does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the Legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expense, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the, males