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VOLUME VIII.

By WILLIAM WALLER HENING.

"The Laws of a country are necessarily connected with every thing be-
longing to the people of it; so that a thorough knowledge of them, and
of their progress would inform us of every thing that was most use-
ful to be known about them; and one of the greatest imperfections
of historians in general, is owing to their ignorance of law.'

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PRIESTLEY'S LECT. ON HIST. VOL. I. pa. 149.

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WE ROBERT G. SCOTT, and WILLIAM SELDEN, members of the Executive Council of Virginia, do hereby certify that the Laws contained in the Eighth Volume of Hening's Statutes at Large, have been by us examined and compared with the originals from which they were taken, and have been found truly and accurately printed, except as to a list of Errata to the number of thirty six, at the end of the volume. Given under your hands this 6th day of November, 1821.

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PREFACE

TO THE

Eighth Volume of the Statutes at Large.

THIS Volume terminates the laws under the colonial governIn ment, and brings them down to the year of our Lord, 1773. 1774 no assembly was held. The failure to call assemblies "for a long space of time" is one of the instances of misrule in the kingly office, recited in the preamble to our state constitution. That spirit of disaffection produced by the stamp-act, and which is manifested by a law of 1766, extending the act of limitations, in consequence of the courts, refusing to receive the probat of deeds subject to a stamp duty, (a) never entirely subsided. To this succeeded such innovations and restrictions in the mode of acquiring titles to waste and unappropriated lands, as amounted to a total prohibition. These, with many other acts of royal oppression, enumerated by the framers of our constitution, led to the REVOluTION, which finally separated the colonies from the mother country. With the Ordinances of Convention of 1775, passed during the interregnum, the next volume will commence; then will follow, in regular succession, the Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, under her republican form of government; by far the most interesting period of our laws.

(a) See pa, 199.

WILLIAM WALLER HENING.

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