[LAW] [VIRGINIA] THE STATUTES AT LARGE: BEING A COLLECTION OF ALL THE LAWS OF VIRGINIA FROM THE FIRST SESSION OF THE LEGISLATURE IN THE YEAR 1619 (Volumes I-XIII; 13)

Richmond; Philadelphia: Printed for the Editor, by R. & W. & G. Barton~, 1823. Full Leather. Very Good binding. Thirteen quarto volumes, in period sheep with matching burgundy title labels and bottle green number labels; an attractive complete set of Henings; and all with the name label of Cyrus Gary on the pastedowns, (and volume 1 with an additional penned name of Samuel Price).~~The official catalogue of the laws of Virginia. For over a century and a half, in the colony of Virginia and then in the Commonwealth, no official effort was made to preserve a formal record of the laws passed by the General Assembly. To remedy the obvious problems which resulted--lawyers and courts were far from uniform in their application of the law--the General Assembly, in 1795, authorized the publication of laws passed from the earliest days of the Colony, and then the Commonwealth. It was not until 1808 that the project was actually undertaken, and William Waller Hening was placed in charge. Hening relied heavily on Thomas Jefferson's collection of the laws, and Jefferson penned the Preface to Volume 1. Jefferson provided Hening with a promotional letters to help him increase subscriptions to the work in which he states, "The compilation appears to be correctly & judiciously made, and gives us exactly what I had so long considered as a desideratum for our country."~~An attractive copy of an important and increasingly uncommon set. There is some modest wear to a few of the extremities of the spines.~~. Very Good binding.