271Act Giving Canal Company Shares to General Washington, [4–5 January] 1785 (Madison Papers)
JM was ordered to prepare a bill that would give Washington shares in the budding Potomac and James river navigation companies which the legislature was then creating as entrepreneurial ventures subject to state control. When the General Assembly, after much backing and filling, decided on a way to implement plans for the two major canals, it was thought appropriate that the most influential...
272Bill Extending the Alien Veterans’ Land Rights, 30 November 1784 (Madison Papers)
For extending the benefit of lands granted by the laws of this Commonwealth to Officers and Soldiers who have served during the late war to their representatives or devisees who may be aliens. Be it enacted that if any such alien representative or devisee shall on or before the day of or in case he or she be under the age of twenty one years within after having attained such age become a...
273Bill to Aid Thomas Paine, 28 June 1784 (Madison Papers)
Despite the concern expressed to JM by Jefferson and Washington over the penury afflicting Thomas Paine, all legislative attempts in Virginia to aid the author of Common Sense failed. On 28 June there was appointed a special committee, of which Patrick Henry was chairman and JM a member, to prepare a bill “vesting a certain tract of public land, in Thomas Payne and his heirs” ( JHDV Journal of...
274Resolutions Providing for a Bust of Lafayette, 1 December 1784 (Madison Papers)
Whereas it was unanimously Resolved on the 17th. day of December 1781, that a Bust of the Marquis De la Fayette, be directed to be made in Paris of the best Marble employed for such purposes with the following inscription. “This Bust was voted on the 17th. day of December 1781 by the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, to the Honorable the Marquis De la Fayette (Major General in the...
275Resolution on Pensions for Wounded Veterans, 3 December 1784 (Madison Papers)
Resolved, that it is the opinion of this committee , That the Executive ought to be authorised to put on the pension list all officers and soldiers, who have been wounded in the service of their country, and whom they may think entitled to the same, upon application being made to them therefor. Printed copy ( JHDV Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and...
276Resolutions on Kentucky Statehood, 12 December 1785 (Madison Papers)
… Fifth ,—That the use and navigation of the river Ohio, so far as the territory of the proposed State, or the territory which shall remain within the limits of this Commonwealth, lies thereon, shall be free and common to the citizens of the United States, the respective jurisdictions of this Commonwealth, and of the proposed State over the river as aforesaid; shall be concurrent only with the...
277The General Assembly Session of May 1784 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
The sword had been sheathed, so the problems faced by the Commonwealth of Virginia and her sister states in 1784 were no longer a life-and-death matter. As James Madison rode down to Richmond in May his thoughts must have been on the still-unsolved dilemma that had confronted Congress from almost the outset: finance. The cost of running the small bureaucracy that kept the Confederation...