[1308] Grigsby, i, 297.
[1309] Virginia judges were, at this period, appointed by the General Assembly. (Constitution, 1776.)
[1310] "There are upwards of 4,000 suits now entered on the docket in the General Court; and the number is continually increasing. Where this will end the Lord only knows—should an Act pass to extend the term of the Courts sitting—it is thought that the number of Executors [executions] that would issue ... would be too heavy for our government to bear and that such a rapid transfer of Property would altogether stop the movement of our Machine." (Logan and Story, to Stephen Collins, Petersburg, Nov. 2, 1787; Collins MSS., Lib. Cong.)
[1311] This form of argument by asking questions to which the answers must needs be favorable to his contention was peculiarly characteristic of Marshall.
[1312] The reporter makes Mason assert the reverse.
[1313] It is hard to see how Marshall arrived at this conclusion. But for the fact that Marshall prepared this speech, one would think the reporter erred.
[1314] See Marshall's argument in Hite vs. Fairfax, chap, V, supra; and see vol. III of this work.
Randolph made the clearest statement of the whole debate on the Fairfax question:—
"Lord Fairfax ... died during the war. In the year 1782, an act passed sequestering all quitrents, then due, in the hands of the persons holding the lands, until the right of descent should be known, and the General Assembly should make final provision therein. This act directed all quitrents, thereafter becoming due, to be paid into the public treasury; so that, with respect to his descendants, this act confiscated the quitrents. In the year 1783, an act passed restoring to the legal representative of the proprietor the quitrents due to him at the time of his death. But in the year 1785 another act passed, by which the inhabitants of the Northern Neck are exonerated and discharged from paying composition and quitrents to the commonwealth." But Randolph then asserted that: "This last act has completely confiscated this property. It is repugnant to no part of the treaty, with respect to the quitrents confiscated by the act of 1782." So, continued he, "I ask the Convention of the free people of Virginia if there can be honesty in rejecting the government because justice is to be done by it? I beg the honourable gentleman to lay the objection to his heart." (Elliott, iii, 574-75.)
[1315] Elliott, iii, 551-62.