THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA.
I.
By S. S. P. Patteson, of the Richmond, Va., Bar.
Representative government, with out which modern civilization could not endure, sprang into existence—"broke out," as a Writer on colonial history[1] expresses it—at Jamestown, July 30, 1619, and at the beginning of the Revolution of 1776 it was practically a bicameral government all over America. But, strictly speaking, there was then no court of last resort in the colonies.
The famous " Parsons Cause," brought in Hanover County Court, April 1, 1762, in which the Rev. James Maury was the nominal plaintiff, and the Rev. John Camm, "Commissary" of William and Mary College, and as such agent of the Bishop of London and the Established Church of England, was the real plaintiff, was tried before a Virginia jury; and after the rout of the clergy by Patrick Henry, a final appeal could only be taken to the king and his privy council in England. All of the Virginia courts and people sustained Patrick Henry. A case in which Camm himself was plaintiff was appealed from the General Court of Virginia; but the king allowed it to be dismissed in 1767 on a technicality, for it was then very evident that public sentiment on this side of the ocean would not sustain the crown. The voices of the Tories who wished to uphold George III. in his encroachments on the rights of the people were soon silenced by the guns of liberty. It was really a matter which was beyond the jurisdiction of the court, as much beyond such jurisdiction as was the ineffective attempt nearly a century later of the Supreme Court of the United States, in Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. p. 393, to stem the tide of the " irrepressible conflict " by a decision, perhaps technically right, of a question bargained for in the Constitution, which had grown to be an outrage upon the conscience of mankind.
The principal court in Virginia before the Revolution, known as the General Court, consisted of the governor and council for the time being, any five constituting a court. It had jurisdiction "to hear and determine all causes, matters, and things whatsoever relating to or concerning any person or persons, ecclesiastical or civil, or to any person or thing of what nature soever the same should be, whether brought before them by original process, appeal from any inferior court, or by any other way or means whatsoever." Its jurisdiction, both original and appellate, was limited to controversies of the value of £10 sterling, or 2000 pounds of tobacco and upwards, as appears by Acts of the General Assembly of 1753, ch. 1, §§ 2, 5, and 25. It had exclusive criminal jurisdiction as a court of oyer and terminer. It retained its criminal jurisdiction as an appellate tribunal exclusive of all others until the adoption of the Constitution of 1851, by which it was abolished. For a short time after the Revolution it was consolidated, as to its appellate jurisdiction, with the Admiralty Court and the High Court of Chancery, which formed the first Court of Appeals of Virginia under her first Constitution, which was adopted on the 29th day of June, 1776. After the Supreme Court of Appeals proper was formed, on Dec. 24, 1788, the General Court had no appellate jurisdiction, except in criminal cases, cases connected with the revenue, taking probate of wills and granting administration upon intestates' estates, in which its jurisdiction was concurrent with the District, and afterwards the Circuit, County, and Corporation courts throughout the State. It received
- ↑ Seeley's "The Expansion of England " p. 67.
