812 



VIRGINIA. 



scription of $50,000 added for the building fund in 

 Richmond, was the basis of Richmond's offer, but 

 gentlemen who live away from our city, and who 

 were interested in the best growth of the seminary 

 Mr. George W. Watts, of Durham, N. C., and Mr. 

 William Wallace Spence, of Baltimore subscribed, 

 the former $50,000 and the latter $25,000, on con- 

 dition that the seminary be located at Richmond 

 and on the Ginter site. With this addition to their 

 already strong inducements, the Richmond claim- 

 ants won the victory from all others before the 

 Board of Trustees and before the Synods of Vir- 

 ginia and North Carolina, which control the insti- 

 tution." 



Political. The Legislature convened Dec. 2, 

 1895, and adjourned March 5, 1806. Among the 

 more important bills passed at this session were the 

 following : 



To take the sense of the people upon the call of 

 a convention to revise and amend the Constitution. 



To appropriate $5,000 in addition to appropri- 

 ation already made to Lee Camp Soldiers' Home. 



Relating to prohibition of marriage within cer- 

 tain degrees. "No man shall marry his mother, 

 grandmother, stepmother, sister, daughter, grand- 

 daughter, half-sister, aunt, son's widow, wife's 

 daughter, or her granddaughter or stepdaughter, 

 brother's daughter, or sister's daughter. But this 

 section shall not be construed as prohibiting a man 

 from marrying an aunt of his former wife. If any 

 man have heretofore married his brother's widow, 

 or the widow of his brother's or sister's son, or his 

 uncle's widow, such marriage is hereby declared to 

 be legal and valid, and exempt from the penalties 

 prescribed by existing laws." 



To reinstate and amend the charter of the Atlan- 

 tic, Staunton and West Virginia Railroad Company. 

 To incorporate, severally, the Alberene Railroad 

 Company; the Virginia Mineral Railway Company; 

 the Wythe County Railroad Company; the Ches- 

 terfield Railroad Company; the American Central 

 Trunk Line Railroad Company; the Danville and 

 Riverside Railway Company; the Lexington and 

 Goshen Railroad Company; the Interstate Railroad 

 Company; the Virginia and Northwestern Railroad 

 Company; the Falls Church and Potomac Railway 

 Company ; the Blacksburg Railway Company ; the 

 Potomac River Railroad Company ; the Eastern 

 Midland Railway Company ; the Falls Church, 

 Fairfax and Manassas Railway Company ; the 

 Southeastern and Atlantic Railroad Company ; and 

 the Blue Ridge Railroad Company. 



To impose a tax on collateral inheritances. 



To incorporate the city of Newport News. 



To incorporate the Society of Colonial Wars in 

 the State of Virginia. 



To incorporate the Society of the Sons of the 

 Revolution in the- State of Virginia. 



To recharter the city of Lynchburg. 



To protect fish in Roanoke river. 



To protect certain fish in Potomac river. 



To incorporate the Virginia Union University, in 

 Richmond. 



To authorize the president and faculty of Luray 

 College to confer certificates of distinction and to 

 award diplomas. 



To amend and re-enact section 3693, code of 

 Virginia, as to prize fighters, how punished, and 

 to prohibit prize fighting and pugilism and fights 

 between men and animals. 



To prevent gambling and selling or making 

 books, pools, or mutuals. 



To protect all payments made to the holder of 

 any policy in any accident company, sick-benefit 

 company, or any company of like kind, from levy 

 or distress for any debt due by the insured. 



To incorporate the Stonewall Jackson Institute. 



To prohibit winter racing. 



To punish as for a misdemeanor a person using 

 abusive language to another. 



The State Republican Convention for sending 

 delegates to the national convention met in Staun- 

 ton on April 23. The platform adopted contained 

 no allusion to the money question. It reaffirmed 

 the allegiance of the Repiiblican party of Virginia 

 to the principles of the national party, and ex- 

 pressed pride in being " part of an organization 

 which faithfully adhered to their great principles 

 of protection, under which no furnace fires have 

 ever been put out, no factories have been closed, 

 and no army of workers has been put upon the 

 streets and highways in enforced idleness." It 

 denounced the Democratic administration as " the 

 author of unexampled and infinite distress, as 

 responsible for unprecedented corporation and 

 individual insolvency and ruin, and for losses and 

 sorrow beyond all compute, and as unworthy of the 

 confidence and good will of any people." ' It de- 

 nounced "the proposition coming from the Demo- 

 cratic party of the State, through the last Legisla- 

 ture, to call a convention to revise the Constitution, 

 as being 'the first movement of the enemies of our 

 free public schools,' " and continued as follows con- 

 cerning the State Democratic party's call for such 

 State convention : 



" Its manifest purpose is to stem the swelling tide 

 of Republican progress in our State by an effort to 

 disfranchise our illiterate voters, both white and 

 colored ; to set up a fraudulent and pretended edu- 

 cational qualification, and so to amend the present 

 free-school provision as to place it in the power of 

 future Legislatures practically to destroy the benefi- 

 cent system of education ingrafted in the present 

 Constitution of the State by the Republican party. 

 The call for such a convention means that its mem- 

 bers are to he elected under our present obnoxious 

 and detestable laws, and that to them is to be given 

 the power also to amend or destroy the homestead 

 clause of the Constitution, the clause to exempt our 

 religious noncombatants from compulsory military 

 service, and other and acceptable provisions of that 

 instrument, and, judging from recent legislation, to 

 put also beyond the power of legislative repeal a law 

 for a higher rate of interest upon money." 



In conclusion, the Republican delegates were in- 

 structed to vote for McKinley. 



The Democratic State Convention for sending 

 delegates to the national convention met in Staun- 

 ton on June 4. The first plank of the platform 

 adopted pledged adherence " to the principles of 

 Democracy as announced by Jefferson, Madison, 

 Monroe, and Mason, and the patriots of their day. 

 that this is a Government of and for the people," 

 and deprecated "the growing influence of trusts 

 and great combinations of capital as dangerous to 

 the welfare of our people and fraught with disaster 

 to our institutions." The second plank expressed 

 opposition to " McKinleyism," which "proposed to 

 tax the poor man for the benefit of trusts and capi- 

 talists," and favored "a tariff tax for revenue lim- 

 ited to the necessities of an economically adminis- 

 tered Government and adjusted so as to throw its 

 burden most lightly upon the great producing classes 

 of our country." The third plank charged that the 

 Republican party, " while professing to protect la- 

 boring men and mechanics." was in practice filling 

 Virginia mines and factories with European pauper 

 labor, and that that party was " the author of all 

 the acts of financial legislation which stimulated 

 the panic and brought on hard times to the coun- 

 try, and that it has utterly failed to suggest any 

 scheme of relief." The foiirth plank opposed the 

 eligibility of a President of the United States to a 

 third term of office. The fifth plank denounced as 



