THE WALTER CLARK, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA. PREFATORY NOTES. The editor finds great satisfaction in being able to publish in this volume with the Acts of 1789 and 1790, many of the earlier Acts which, not accessible when Volumes XXIII and XXIV were being printed, have since been found, by careful search, in the British Archives. These lost Acts are printed as a supplement to this volume "Omitted Acts 1669-1783." They are memorials of a period long since passed, and we are fortunate to be able to perpetuate them for the benefit of the profession or the use of the historian. Governinent was first established in Albemarle in 1664, by the appointment of William Drummond as Governor, and an Assembly was then held, the proceedings being under "the Concessions." The records of that day were not preserved, and the enactments are lost. Almost immediately, however, Shaftesbury began with his Secretary, the celebrated John Locke, to frame a more perfect system of government for Carolina; and the instrument was substantially finished by the first of March, 1669. Being transmitted to Albemarle, the Grand Assembly acting under it, in October, 1669, re-enacted many of the laws previously passed, and they were sent to England for confirmation. The style of enactment was: "Be it therefore enacted by the Palatine and the Lords Proprietors, by and with the advice and consent of the present Grand Assembly." Several of these earliest laws of Albemarle are worthy of passing notice. Our practice of recording titles, registering deeds, at that period entirely unknown in England, is due to a clause in the Fundamental Constitutions. It was one of the customs of Holland, whence it was transferred to America. Another early enactment was that legalizing civil marriages, and putting them on the same footing as if performed by a minister in England; there being no ministers in the colony. Still another, was one taken from the Virginia Statutes, to encourage settlers by exempting them from suits for a period of five years. In this the Virginians who came over the line only re-enacted what had earlier been the Virginia enactment. Beginning with 1669 the Fundamental Constitutions were more or less observed, being carried into effect "as near as may be." There was one rule, however, that probably was not strictly enforced: "No person above 17 above 17 years of age shall have any benefit or protection. of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honor, who is not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some, and but one religious record at once." With this strict requirement it was necessary to facilitate the observance of the regulation; and so it was provided that "any seven persons, agreeing in religious opinion, may form a church or profession of their own, to which they shall give some name to distinguish it from others." No record has been preserved indicating that any religious organization ever existed in Albemarle before 1700, except that of the Friends or Quakers; and that would seem to have been established only after the visits of Fox and Edmundson, as the former found only one Quaker in the colony in 1672. Another provision of the Fundamental Constitutions allowed any church "to prescribe its own manner of witnessing the truth, such as holding up the hands, or in any other sensible way." Indeed, earlier, even in the Concessions, provision was made for "affirmation," instead of an oath, administered in common form. This practice, which obtained among the Quakers, was never questioned until about 1705. The denial of this right of "affirmation," which had been so long enjoyed in Albemarle, was one of the causes of the turmoils which in after years made that period known among the inhabitants as "the troublesome time." Chief, however, among the notable features of the Fundamentals were the provisions for electing the parliament. Shaftesbury was an ardent lover of liberty. He had witnessed the tyranny of Charles and the still greater exercise of arbitrary power by Cromwell. He had seen both govern without a parliament; and a parliament perpetuate its own existence through many years, long after it had lost every semblance of a representative character. To prevent such a possibility it was provided in the Constitutions: "That in order to the duc election of members for the biennial parliament, it shall be lawful for the freeholders of the respective precincts to meet the first Tuesday in September, every two years, in the same town or place that they last met in, to choose parliament men, and there choose those members who are to sit the next November following." "And a new parliament shall assemble the first Monday of the month of November every second year, and shall meet and sit in the same town they last sat in, without any summons." |