tory than any of the Stuarts, or Hanoverians, or even the great Tudor herself, to whom the Dominion was dedicated the little boy George Washington.

In a fair, large, plain, and legible hand does Lewellin Eppes begin his record, and carry it forward for two thirds of the fourteen years, without help or intervention of other pens. At February Court, 1745 [1746]—when old England was scarcely recovering from the convulsion of the young Stuart's invasionthe most exciting event in these records is that Temple Eppes, whose compact and elegant manuscript had appeared little earlier in the book, "Produced a Commission from Thomas Nelson, Esquire, Deputy Secretary of this colony, to be Deputy Clerk of this Court," and, "Having first taken the oaths appointed by act of Parliament to be taken instead of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and subscribed the Test, was sworn Deputy Clerk accordingly." And thenceforth Temple Eppes kept the record in the place of Lewellin.

One does not go far in the proceedings of this court-which was both broad and high in its powers, having not only civil but criminal jurisdiction, in law and in equity, either unlimited as to amounts or subject to a very high limit only, and being also the administrative body of the county-without falling upon something startling to modern notions. "Joseph Makepeace [happy name for a party plaintiff!] against Morris Evans, for forty shillings current money, three hundred pounds of Tobacco and a hog, due by bill here in Court produced, the Defendant being run away or so absconded that process could not be served on him,"-the record proceeds to recite the issue of an attachment and a seizure of certain chattels thereunder by the Sheriff, a hearing by the Court as to the ownership of the goods, a finding that they "are not the proper goods of the sd. Morris Evans, and thereupon it is ordered that the sd. attachment be dismist, and that William Irby the plaintiff's attorney do pay costs and one attorney's fee, al. Exo." [aliter Executio.] Of course there is an earlier New York precedent for such an adjudication, where, in Knickerbocker's history, the constable was ordered to pay the costs; but it need hardly be argued that the general adoption of such a course in modern practice would, while greatly intensifying the interest of a professional career, add nothing either to its pleasure or its profit.

Very soon, too, in the book do we get a notion of the composition of this Court, and of its extra-judicial duties. Five or six gentlemen in the commission of the peace, issued by "ye Honble the Lieut Governor," with their Clerk and Sheriff under like appointment, constitute the entire tribunal.

From the historic names recurring constantly among them it would be plain, if we did not know it otherwise, that no democratic notion of universal equality guided in the appointment of the justices. "Do you know the laws of your country, Mr. Warrington?" said Colonel Wolfe, a few months before he took Quebec, to that young Virginian in England; "being a great proprietor, you will doubtless one day be a magistrate at home." Yet it is remarkable how commonly these "great proprietors," in this colony so loyal and so faithful to the Anglican Church, availed themselves, as we have just seen Mr. Temple Eppes to do, of the privilege of evading the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. For all that, their tendencies can hardly have been Romish; for that church was already losing its control even of the neighboring province of Maryland, and had never extended itself into Virginia. But on the other hand, dissent seems to have had but little sway among them; for it is not often, whether or not they decline these oaths, that they are found failing to "subscribe ye Test."

Upon the very earliest recital of the membership of the Court we come upon some names that are as household words: "Charles City County sst. June Court, 1737: Present: Henry Soane, Francis Hardyman, Benj". Harrison, Samu1. Harwood, Jun., James Eppes, Gent., Justices." To a distant reader, unfamiliar with Virginia families, it seemed at first that this must be the same Benjamin Harrison who, twenty-nine years later, set his name upon an official document destined to have much wider renown than the court records of Charles City Countythe Declaration of the Independence of the United States of America. But upon consulting that respectable authority, the "Lives of the Signers," this assumption, instead of being either established or overthrown, is converted into utter uncertainty. It appears that at least six successive generations of eldest sons have borne this youngest son's name. When the little troop of Separatists had been but some twenty years settled at Ply

mouth, one Harrison, whose first name is lost, but who is surmised to have been related to that Puritan general who came in due time to an honorable death on the scaffold, is found living in the opposite county of Surrey, across the James. It was his heir who established the family seat of Berkeley, in Charles City County, where from that time onward, unless indeed recent convulsions have broken up that comely succession, there has never been wanting a Benjamin to maintain the family dig. nity and the traditional hospitalities. But the biography consulted can only tell us: that this first founder of Berkeley, born in 1645, died in 1713; that the signer of the Declaration was in the third generation from him, and died in 1791; but when he was born or when his father or his grandfather was born or died, the author puts among unascertainable facts, mentioning only that the grandfather died at the age of 37; that the father, who had married the daughter of the king's surveyor-general, Carter, whereby he was able to increase his estate by judicious selections of lands, was killed by lightning, with two of his daughters, at the mansion house of Berkeley; and that of his eight surviving children, one daughter married Peyton Randolph, the first president of Congress, and the other William Randolph his brother.

The biographer having thus given certain imperfect data, it has been a pleasaut process to fill out their defects and complete them from our authentic record, which would indeed be inadequate of itself for the identification of persons. Thus we find that Benjamin Harrison, Gent., at June Court, 1737, took the "oaths appointed by act of parliamt to be taken and subscribed the Test, etc., in order to qualify him to act as Colo. of the Malitia of this County." Henceforth he is distinguished in the record by the military title thus acquired; as when, in October, 1740, he "brings his Servant man Samuel Martin into Court," to answer to what civil or criminal charge will never be known; for Lewellin Eppes, Clerk, left there a blank quarter of a page to be filled up at his greater convenience upon a to-morrow which, in these hundred and thirty-five years, has not yet come. Thus from month to month does he appear in the list of Justices holding court, even into July Term, 1745. But under August Term, 1745, five other names head the record, but not his; and

the first entry of that term records that "The last Will and Testament of Colo. Benjamin Harrison dec'ed was presented in Court by William Randolph, Gent., and Miss Betty Harrison;" whereupon "certificate is granted them for obtaining letters of Administration with the said will annexed in due forme Durante minori ætate of Benjamin Harrison, son and heir of the Decedt." Nearly four years later, at June Court, 1749, the young "Benjamin Harrison, an infant, by his guardian" (who appears elsewhere to have been Beverley Randolph) takes a rule by default against one John Scot for judgment if he "appear not at the next court." On the sixth of December following, however, appears "Benjamin Harrison, Gent., who made Oath according to Law as an Executor of the Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Harrison dec'ed;" and at the January Court, 1749 [1750], "a New Commission of the Peace for this County was read, and the oaths administered to the five Justices holding the court and to Benjamin Harrison. At April Court, 1750, the youthful and newly qualified Justice takes his seat upon the bench, from which he continues to administer the laws with his associates during all the rest of his record. And this youthful magistrate, plainly enough, was the athletic member of the Continental Congress thirty years later, who, when the outlaw John Hancock was chosen its President in place of his brother-in-law Randolph, and seemed to shrink with a diffidence not altogether constitutional, from the dangerous honor, lifted the little man in his powerful arms into the chair, with a laughing defiance of Britain and a generous good word for Massachusetts. Plainly enough it was his father who was struck down by lightning between the July Term at which he assisted, and the August Term at which his will was proved. His own birth, the date of which his biographer declares to be unknown, is closely fixed by the expiration of his infancy as not long before December, 1728. And remembering who his mother was, we may be sure that it is his brother of whom this record is made, in June, 1750, Benjamin Harrison being upon the bench: "Carter Harrison, Infant Orphan of Benjamin Harrison, deceased, with the approbation of the Court Made Choice of Benjamin Harrison for his Guardian."

What tenants the fortune of war and of social revolution

may have left now in that noble old mansion of Berkeley, we know not. Fifty years ago, the sixth successive first-born Benjamin maintained it, that seat commemorating by its name. the stout old royalist Governor, Sir William, who wrote home to the Privy Council, "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sect, into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government: God keep us from both!" But the younger brother of that first-born who succeeded to the ancestral estate, named William Henry, being cast upon the world to help himself, became President of the Republic his ancestor had helped to found; and to those who believe in the transmission of faculties, it is pleasant to read, these few days past, that it is proposed to make still another Benjamin Harrison, grandson of the President, Governor of Indiana. Nor is it much less gratifying, to one whose political recollections reach back nearly forty years, to observe that the name of Tyler appears but once in all this volume, in the county which in the fulness of time was to give birth to a President of that name; and then only in the humble capacity of a clerk to Benjamin Harrison the elder, making oath to a small debt of his master's, of ten pounds nineteen shillings and eight-pence, current money.

The judicial and administrative business of this tribunal go on almost conjointly, and are entered of record without discrimination. In each successive year we find an appointment of "Gentlemen to take the lists of Tithables" in the several precincts of the county; and in every year, but not with entire regularity, the Court lays the "County Levy." In all these levies the singular nature of Virginia money appears,-as remarkable a currency, perhaps, as any civilized community ever legalized. When, in 1691, the Scotsman Blair, Commissary in this province of the Bishop of London, was persuading the King and Queen into the liberal largesses which established the College bearing their name, and Mr. Attorney-General Seymour protested against the exorbitance of his demands, the Commissary suggested to him a view of the case which he had overlooked: "Consider, sir, that the people of Virginia have souls to save." "Damn your souls! Make tobacco!" was the