MINORITY REPORT

OFFERED BY MR. H. H. LEE.

COUNTY COURTS.

1. There shall be in each county of the Commonwealth a County Court, which shall be held monthly, by not less than three nor more than five Justices, except when the law shall require the presence of a greater number.

2. The jurisdiction of the said Courts shall be the same as that of the existing County Courts, except so far as it is modified by this Constitution, or may be changed by law.

3. Each county shall be laid off into districts, as nearly equal as may be in territory and population. Such districts as now laid off by law shall continue, subject to such changes as may hereafter be made by the General Assembly. In each district there shall be elected, by the voters thereof, four Justices of the Peace, who shall be commissioned by the Governor, reside in their respective districts, and hold their offices for the term of four years. The Justices so elected shall choose one of their own body, who shall be the Presiding Justice of the County Court, and whose duty it shall be to attend each term of said Court. The other Justices shall be classified by law for the performance of their duties in court.

4. The Justices shall receive for their services in Court a per diem compensation, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the county treasury, and such fees and emoluments for other services as may be allowed them by law.

5. The power and jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace, within their respective counties, shall be prescribed by law.

COUNTY OFFICERS.

6. The voters of each county shall elect a Clerk of the County Court, a Surveyor, an Attorney for the Commonwealth, a Sheriff, and so many Commissioners of the Revenue, as may be authorized by law, who shall hold their respective offices as follows: the Clerk, the Commissioner of the Revenue, and the Surveyor, for the term of six years; the Attorney, for the term of four years, and the Sheriff, for the term of two years; Constables and Overseers of the Poor shall be elected by the voters as may be prescribed by law.

7. The officers mentioned in the preceding section, except the Attorneys, shall reside in the counties or districts for which they were respectively elected. No person elected for two successive terms to the office of Sheriff shall be reeligible to the same office for the next succeeding term, nor shall he, during his term of service, or within one year thereafter, be eligible to any political office.

8. The Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, Attorneys for the Commonwealth, Clerks of the Circuit and County Courts, and all other county officers, shall be subject to indictment for malfeasance, misfeasance or neglect of official duty, and upon conviction thereof, their offices shall become vacant.

CORPORATION COURTS AND OFFICERS.

9. The General Assembly may vest such jurisdiction as shall be deemed necessary in Corporation Courts, and in the Magistrates who may belong to the corporate body.

10. All officers appertaining to the cities, and other municipal corporations, shall be elected by the qualified voters or appointed by the constituted authorities of such cities or corporations, as may be prescribed by law.

MINORITY REPORT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ELECTIVE FRANCHISE

AND

QUALIFICATIONS FOR OFFICE.

The undersigned, dissenting from the conclusions reached by a majority of the Committee, beg leave to submit the following report of their reasons for such disagreement:

This can be done more succinctly by stating the substantive features of the article proposed by the majority, and presenting our objections to each feature consecutively.

The proposed article, if made part of the Constitution of Virginia, will create the following results :

1st. It will confer the right of suffrage on all the adult male negroes now in the State, or who, migrating here from other States, shall reside six months; excepting only idiots, lunatics, felons, soldiers, seamen, and not excepting paupers,

2d. It will disfranchise all the existing white citizens of Virginia, who are excluded from voting under the acts of Congress, commonly styled "The Reconstruction Acts."

3d. All of the aforesaid negroes will be competent to act as jurors, while none of the white citizens above named will be allowed to perform that service.

4th. All of the negroes aforesaid will be eligible to any office within the gift of the combined whites and negroes, so allowed to vote; but none of said white citizens, so disfranchised from voting, can hold any such office; this enfranchisement for office being subject only to certain special restrictions attached to each particular office, applicable alike to negroes and whites.

5th. All voting will be by ballot.

6th. An oath is prescribed to all office-holders, which requires them "to accept and recognize the civil and political equality of all men before the law."

It would seem superfluous to all minds cognizant of the relative mental, moral and social status of the white and of the negro populations in Virginia, to set forth in grave detail the reasons for objecting to so flagrant a political revolution as this, which confronts and does despite to all the wisdom acquired by mankind in their endeavors to maintain Republican Government during the last thirty centuries. But inasmuch as a few white people in Virginia, moved and

sustained by a powerful political party now controlling the Federal Government, not only propose to effectuate this revolution by the aid of the negroes, but to challenge for it the approval of the civilized world, we are constrained to put on record the fact that, as members of this Committee, we have protested against the measure, and a very brief summary of our reasons therefor.

Before examining the intrinsic character of the scheme, the mode in which it is to be made operative demands notieg.

This Convention is assembled, and whatever power it possesses is derived from the acts of Congress before cited. These acts find no warrant in the Federal Constitution. They work a palpable and gross infraction of an indubitable and invaluable right reserved in that Constitution to the people of every State, to construct and regulate their State Constitutions and polity according to their will and judgment, (provided, only, they be Republican in the sense recognized and settled for the ninety years during which the Federal Government has existed.) and these acts are in absolute derogation of the national faith, solemnly pledged in the most imposing forms, by all the Departments of the Federal Government during the entire period of the late civil war, to wit: that the war was waged solely for the purpose of restoring the authority of the Federal Constitution over the people of the seceding States, and that so soon as that anthority was restored, the seceding States should be recognized as integħal members of the Federal Union, and continue as such, with all their institutions and rights unimpaired.

The people of Virginia, with entire unanimity, confiding in this national faith. so soon as the contest of arms ceased, resumed their allegiance to the Federal Constitution and the Union thereunder, and have kept that allegiance in perfect sincerity, and to the utmost of its obligations, up to the present hour. At the end of the war, a State Constitution and Government, which had theretofore been recognized as legitimate and rightful by all Departments of the Federal Government, was, by its sanction and aid, extended over all the people and territory of Virginia, was acknowledged and obeyed by all her people, was appealed to by the Federal Government to perform grave political fimetions, such as consenting to amendments of the Federal Constitution, and in such recognized discharge of all the powers and attributes pertaining to the Government of a State, continued in full force for the two years succeeding the close of the

war.

There was no more of fact, or reason, or just pretext, deducible from the status of political affairs in Virginia, to warrant the assumption of power by Congress to abrogate this State Government, than existed for the usurpation of similar power in the States of Maine or Ohio. Yet Congress, and this Convention, its confessed instrument, are alike engaged in destroying the rightful State Government of Virginia, and prescribing the form of Government which shall be created in its stead: this, too, in opposition to the almost united voice of the citizens of Virginia, who alone can legitimately originate, and determine upon, such organic change.

Furthermore: this revolution, which will invest the negro population with actual control of the political power of the State, is to be consummated by summoning the negroes to put it in force, despite the known remonstrances of the white population. Such is the mode, and such are the auspices, under which the revolution will be inaugurated. It might well challenge inquiry, whether a