Part 8 (1/2)

[Sidenote: The county court was virtually a close corporation.]

In Virginia, as in England and in New England, the county was an area for the administration of justice. There were usually in each county eight justices of the peace, and their court was the counterpart of the Quarter Sessions in England. They were appointed by the governor, but it was customary for them to nominate candidates for the governor to appoint, so that practically the court filled its own vacancies and was a close corporation, like the parish vestry. Such an arrangement tended to keep the general supervision and control of things in the hands of a few families.

This county court usually met as often as once a month in some convenient spot answering to the s.h.i.+re town of England or New England.

More often than not the place originally consisted of the court-house and very little else, and was named accordingly from the name of the county, as Hanover Court House or Fairfax Court House; and the small s.h.i.+re towns that have grown up in such spots often retain these names to the present day. Such names occur commonly in Virginia, West Virginia, and South Carolina, very rarely in Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Ohio, and nowhere else in the United States.[9] Their number has diminished from the tendency to omit the phrase ”Court House,”

leaving the name of the county for that of the s.h.i.+re town, as for example in Culpeper, Va. In New England the process of naming has been just the reverse; as in Hartford County, Conn., or Worcester County, Ma.s.s., which have taken their names from the s.h.i.+re towns. In this, as in so many cases, whole chapters of history are wrapped up in geographical names.[10]

[Footnote 9: In Mitch.e.l.l's Atlas, 1883, the number of cases is in Va.

38, W. Va. 13, S. C. 16, N. C. 2, Ala. 1, Ky. 1, Ohio, 1.]

[Footnote 10: A few of the oldest Virginia counties, organized as such in 1634, had arisen from the spreading and thinning of single settlements originally intended to be cities and named accordingly.

Hence the curious names (at first sight unintelligible) of ”James City County,” and ”Charles City County.”]

[Sidenote: Powers of the court]

The county court in Virginia had jurisdiction in criminal actions not involving peril of life or limb, and in civil suits where the sum at stake exceeded twenty-five s.h.i.+llings. Smaller suits could be tried by a single justice. The court also had charge of the probate and administration of wills. The court appointed its own clerk, who kept the county records. It superintended the construction and repair of bridges and highways, and for this purpose divided the county into ”precincts,” and appointed annually for each precinct a highway surveyor. The court also seems to have appointed constables, one for each precinct. The justices could themselves act as coroners, but annually two or more coroners for each parish were appointed by the governor. As we have seen that the parish taxes--so much for salaries of minister and clerk, so much for care of church buildings, so much for relief of the poor, etc.--were computed and a.s.sessed by the vestry; so the county taxes, for care of court-house and jail, roads and bridges, coroner's fees, and allowances to the representatives sent to the colonial legislature, were computed and a.s.sessed by the county court. The general taxes for the colony were estimated by a committee of the legislature, as well as the county's share of the colony tax.

[Sidenote: The sheriff.]

The taxes for the county, and sometimes the taxes for the parish also, were collected by the sheriff. They were usually paid, not in money, but in tobacco; and the sheriff was the custodian of this tobacco, responsible for its proper disposal. The sheriff was thus not only the officer for executing the judgments of the court, but he was also county treasurer and collector, and thus exercised powers almost as great as those of the sheriff in England in the twelfth century. He also presided over elections for representatives to the legislature.

It is interesting to observe how this very important officer was chosen. ”Each year the court presented the names of three of its members to the governor, who appointed one, generally the senior justice, to be the sheriff of the county for the ensuing year.” [11]

Here again we see this close corporation, the county court, keeping the control of things within its own hands.

[Footnote 11: Edward Channing, _op. cit_. p. 478.]

[Sidenote: The county lieutenant]

One other important county officer needs to be mentioned. We have seen that in early New England each town had its train-band or company of militia, and that the companies in each county united to form the county regiment. In Virginia it was just the other way. Each county raised a certain number of troops, and because it was not convenient for the men to go many miles from home in a.s.sembling for purposes of drill, the county was subdivided into military districts, each with its company, according to rules laid down by the governor. The military command in each county was vested in the county lieutenant, an officer answering in many respects to the lord lieutenant of the English s.h.i.+re at that period. Usually he was a member of the governor's council, and as such exercised sundry judicial functions.

He bore the honorary t.i.tle of ”colonel,” and was to some extent regarded as the governor's deputy; but in later times his duties were confined entirely to military matters.[12]

[Footnote 12: For an excellent account of local government in Virginia before the Revolution, see Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of the U.S._, vol. i. pp. 388-407; also Edward Ingle in _Johns Hopkins Univ.

Studies_, III., ii.-iii.]

If now we sum up the contrasts between local government in Virginia and that in New England, we observe:--

1. That in New England the management of local affairs was mostly in the hands of town officers, the county being superadded for certain purposes, chiefly judicial; while in Virginia the management was chiefly in the hands of county officers, though certain functions, chiefly ecclesiastical, were reserved to the parish.

2. That in New England the local magistrates were almost always, with the exception of justices, chosen by the people; while in Virginia, though some of them were nominally appointed by the governor, yet in practice they generally contrived to appoint themselves--in other words the local boards practically filled their own vacancies and were self-perpetuating.

[Sidenote: Jefferson's opinion of towns.h.i.+p government.]

These differences are striking and profound. There can be no doubt that, as Thomas Jefferson clearly saw, in the long run the interests of political liberty are much safer under the New England system than under the Virginia system. Jefferson said, ”Those wards, called towns.h.i.+ps in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation[13]....As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words _Carthago delenda est_, so do I every opinion with the injunction: Divide the counties into wards!” [14]

[Footnote 13: Jefferson's _Works_, vii. 13.]

[Footnote 14: _Id_., vi. 544]

[Sidenote: ”Court Day.”]