the chicanery of the lawyers, and remove from among the people numberless liabilities to litigation. Against the labored phraseology of modern statutes, he has entered an amusing protest. Their verbosity,' says he, 'their endless tautologies, their involutions of case within case, and parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts at certainty, by saids and aforesaids, by ors and by ands, to make them more plain, have rendered them more perplexed and incomprehensible, not only to common readers, but to the lawyers themselves.'

12*

CHAPTER VI.

ON the 18th of June, 1779, the committee of revisors communicated their report to the general assembly, accompanied by a letter to the speaker, signed by Mr Jefferson and Mr Wythe, and authorized by Mr Pendleton.

The revised code was not enacted in a mass, as was contemplated. The minds of the legislature were not prepared for so extensive a transition at once, and the violence of the times afforded little leisure for metaphysical discussion. Some bills were taken out occasionally, from time to time, and passed; but the main body of the work was not entered upon until after the general peace, in 1785; 'when,' says Mr Jefferson, by the unwearied exertions of Mr Madison, in opposition to the endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversions, vexations, and delays of lawyers and demi-lawyers, most of the bills were passed by the legislature, with little alteration.' The distinguished cotemporary, who is represented as having had so important an agency in carrying this code into operation, has added verbal testimony of the uncommon estimate which he put upon its merits. It has,' says he, been a mine of legislative wealth, and a model of statutory composition, containing not a single superfluous word, and preferring always words and phrases of a meaning fixed as much as possible by oracular treatises, or solemn adjudications."

* Letter to S. H. Smith, 1827.

In preparing this work, Mr Jefferson improved the opportunity to push his favorite system of reform into every branch of administration. The principal innovations which he made upon the established order of things, were the following:

1. The Repeal of the Law of Entails, which, though separately enacted at the first republican session, he incorporated into the Revised Code.

2. The Abrogation of the right of Primogeniture, and the equal division of inheritances among all the children, or other representatives in equal degree.

3. The Assertion of the right of Expatriation, or a republican definition of the rules whereby aliens may become citizens, and citizens make themselves aliens.

4. The Establishment of Religious Freedom upon the broadest foundation.

5. The Emancipation of all Slaves born after the sage of the act, and deportation at a proper agecarried into effect.

pas

not

6. The Abolition of Capital Punishment in all cases, except those of treason and murder; and the graduation of punishments to crimes throughout, upon the principles of reason and humanity— enacted with amend

ments.

7. The Establishment of a systematical plan of General Education, reaching all classes of citizens and adapted to every grade of capacity—not carried into effect.

The first of these prominent features of the revisal, has already been considered at sufficient length.

The second in the catalogue, holds an eminent rank among the ancient and venerable foundations of republicanism. It overturned one of the most arbitrary and unrighteous, among the multiplied institutions, which have been permitted to evict the laws of God and the order of nature from the social systems of mankind. The aristocracy of Virginia opposed the innovation with the usual pertinacity which marked their adherence to

the ancient privileges of the order; but the bill was finally carried, in 1785, and forms the present law of descents in that commonwealth.

The law on the subject of expatriation, established the republican doctrine on the much controverted principle of revolution. The opinions of the author in reference to this question, with the singular discrepancy between them and those of his leading compatriots, have been illustrated in a preceding chapter, by an appeal to the written testimony of that period. Heterodox and presumptuous as his rights of colonization were deemed by the politicians of the first stages of the revolution, the public mind had now approached so nearly to the same point, as to authorize the attempt to establish them upon a legal basis. The bill for this purpose was taken up separately, and carried, on the 26th of June, "79, principally through the exertions of George Mason, into whose hands the author had committed it, on his retiring from the legislature. After stating the conditions of naturalization, and declaring who shall be deemed citizens and who aliens, on terms extremely liberal and democratic, the act goes on to prescribe: And in order to preserve to the citizens of this commonwealth that natural right, which all men have, of relinquishing the country in which birth or other accident may have thrown them, and seeking subsistence and happiness wheresoever they may be able, or may hope to find them; and to declare, unequivocally, what circumstances shall be deemed evidence of an intention in any citizen to exercise that right: It is enacted and declared,' &c. ́ Having defined the necessary circumstances of evidence and the mode of proceeding thereon, the act concludes by giving to all free white inhabitants of other States, except paupers and fugitives from justice, the same rights, privileges and immunities, as belong to the free citizens of the Commonwealth, and the liberty of free ingress and egress to and from the same; reserving, however,

the right and authority of retaining persons guilty, or charged with the commission of any high crime or misdemeanor in another State, and of delivering them over to the authorities of the State from which they fled, upon demand of the governor or executive power of such State. Speaking of this act, in the continuation of Burk's History of Virginia, it is observed:

Its operation has been superseded by subsequent institutions; but that philanthropy which opened, in Virginia, an asylum to individuals of any nation not at open war with America, upon their removing to the State to reside, and taking an oath of fidelity; and that respect for the natural and social rights of men, which lays no restraints whatever on expatriation, and claims the allegiance of citizens so long only as they are willing to retain that character, cannot be forgotten. The legislators of Virginia well knew, that the strongest hold of a government on its citizens, is that affection which rational liberty, mild laws, and protecting institutions never fail to produce; especially, when physical advantages march in front with political blessings, and industry and worth are perennial sources of comfort and respectability.'

The act for the establishment of Religious Freedom is perhaps the most interesting feature in the revised code. With the exception of the Declaration of Independence, it is the most celebrated of the author's productions, and the one to which he recurred with the highest pride and satisfaction. The preamble which ushers in the act, designates, with peculiar emphasis, the premises upon which the proposition was founded. The following is the preamble, with the accompanying act.

'Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion,