Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/242

226 which time and trial have suggested, and be rendered permanent by a power superior to that of the ordinary Legislature. The General Assembly therefore of this State recommended it to the good people thereof, to choose delegates to meet in general convention, with powers to form a constitution of government for them, and to declare those fundamentals to which all our laws, present and future, shall be subordinate: and, in compliance with this recommendation, they have thought proper to make choice of us, and to vest us with powers for this purpose.

We therefore, the delegates, chosen by the said good people of this State, for the purpose aforesaid, and now assembled in general convention, do, in execution of the authority with which we are invested, establish the following Constitution and Fundamentals of Government for the said State of Virginia.

The said State shall forever hereafter be governed as a Commonwealth.

The powers of government shall be divided into three distinct departments, each of them to be confided to a separate body of magistracy; to wit, those which are legislative to one, those which are judiciary to another, and those which are executive to another. No person, or collection of persons, being of one of these departments, shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others, except in the instances hereinafter expressly permitted.

The Legislature shall consist of two branches, the one to be called the House of Delegates, the other the Senate, and both together the General Assembly. The concurrence of both of these, expressed on three several readings, shall be necessary to the passage of a law.

Delegates for the General Assembly shall be chosen on the last Monday of November in every year. But if an election cannot be concluded on that day, it may be adjourned from day to day till it can be concluded.

The number of delegates which each county may send shall be in proportion to the number of its qualified electors; and the whole number of delegates for the State shall be so proportioned to the