આ

PUBLIC

COLLECTION

OF

ALL SUCH

ACTS

OF THE

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

OF

VIRGINIA,

OF A PUBLIC AND PERMANENT NATURE, AS

ARE NOW IN FORCE;

WITH A

NEW AND COMPLETE INDEX.

TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED THE DECLARATION Of rights,
AND CONSTITUTION, OR FORM OF GOVERNMENT.

PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO AN ACT OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY,

PASSED ON THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY OF JANUARY, ONE

THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWO.

PRINTED BY SAMUEL PLEASANTS, JUN. AND HENRY PACE.

M,DCCC,III.

PREF

P RE F Я СЕ.

BY an act of the General Assembly of Virginia, dated December 28th, 1792,

it was ordained, that a collection should be made of all fuch acts of the Affembly, of a public and permanent nature, as were then in force. For this purpofe, feveral lawyers were folicited to fuperintend the compilation. Mr, Davis, then printer to the Commonwealth, did not get the work completed 'till the close of the year 1794. It, therefore, embraced all fuch laws, of a public and permanent nature, as were paffed during the feffion, which commenced November 14th, 1794.

It was unavoidably to happen that this collection would almost immediately become defective; and that its defects were to increase annually, and without intermiffion. The new laws of the more important clafs were, for the most part, occupied in altering, or in repealing fome of their predeceffors. Hence,

it was evident, that if a man of business was not regularly supplied with the addiţional laws, the Revised Code would be quite as likely to lead him into mistakes, as to give him proper information. The confequence was, that every practitioner of the law found it neceffary to purchase, annually, the large folio pamphlet, containing the laws of each fucceeding affembly. In the course of a man's life, these publications would have fwelled into a library; and, what was extremely inconvenient, by far the greater part of them were laws of a local and private nature, which were totally useless, and a mere incumbrance to the practitioner in a court.

This Revised Code, with all its augmenting imperfections, had become extremely fcarce. The original price was eight dollars, But it was almost impoffible to obtain the book at any price whatever. The conftant demand for the Revised Code induced the proprietors of the prefent work to publish proposals for a fecond, and improved edition, which was to bring down the collection fo late as to the end of the feffion of December, 1801. In the [former