Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/248

232 becoming vacant by death or otherwise, shall have authority to exercise all his functions, till a new appointment be made, as he shall also in any interval during which the Governor shall declare himself unable to attend to the duties of his office.

The Judiciary powers shall be exercised by county courts and such other inferior courts as the Legislature shall think proper to continue or to erect, by three Superior Courts, to wit, a Court of Admiralty, a General Court of Common Law, and a High Court of Chancery; and by one Supreme Court to be called the Court of Appeals.

The judges of the High Court of Chancery, General Court, and Court of Admiralty, shall be four in number each, to be appointed by joint ballot of both houses of Assembly, and to hold their offices during good behavior. While they continue judges, they shall hold no other office or emolument under this State, or any other State or power whatsoever, except that they may be delegated to Congress, receiving no additional allowance.

These judges, assembled together, shall constitute the Court of Appeals, whose business shall be to receive and determine appeals from the three Superior Courts, but to receive no original causes, except in the cases expressly permitted herein.

A majority of the members of either of these courts, and not fewer, shall be a quorum. But in the Court of Appeals nine members shall be necessary to do business. Any smaller numbers, however, may be authorized by the Legislature to adjourn their respective courts.

They shall be allowed for the present ———— each by the year, payable quarterly out of any money which shall be in the public treasury. Their salaries, however, may be increased or abated, from time to time, at the discretion of the Legislature, provided such increase or abatement shall not, by any ways or means, be made to affect, either then, or at any future time, any one of those then actually in office. At the end of each quarter their salary shall be divided into equal portions by the number of days on which, during that quarter, their respective courts sat, or should have sat, and one of these portions shall be withheld from each member for every of the said days, which, without cause allowed good by his court, he failed to attend, or departed before adjournment without