[Petition of] the citizens of the County of Richmond, [Georgia] to the president and members of the convention of the State of Georgia, 1795 May 1 / by order of the Mechanical Society of Augusta, [Georgia]

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[ Note: This document contains both printed and written text. ]
[printed text: To the Honorable the PRESIDENT and the Honorable the MEMBERS of the CONVENTION of the STATE of GEORGIA. ]

[printed text: THE underwritten Citizens of the County of ] [written text: Richmond ] [printed text: in the State of Georgia, view, with the deepest concern, the violation of their common rights, and the essential injury of their common interests, by an Act, entitled, "An Act Supplementary to an Act, entitled, An Act for appropriating a Part of the Unlocated Territory of this State for the Payment of the late State Troops, and for other Purposes therein mentioned, declaring the Right of this State to the Unappropriated Territory thereof, for the Protection and Support of the Frontiers of this State, and for other Purposes." ]
[printed text: 1st. Because that, in and by the said Act, the retained sovereignty and jurisdiction of the soil of the said state are attempted to be transferred and aliened -- a right which, when yielded up, as is intended by the Act in question, affords room for the establishment of a military government, and all the arbitrary concomitants thereof; titled of Nobility, enormous and unequal possessions, and an abolition of all Republican forms of government; and will ultimately defeat the extended prospects of population, which a settlement of our western territory, upon proper principles, would ensure, and which is the only measure that can place the southern states upon an equal scale in the political balance with their northern neighbors. ]
[printed text: 2dly. Because the Act in question saying, that the several grantees, and their associates, shall not be entitled to dispose of the said "territory, in part or in whole, in any way or manner, to any foreign King, Prince, Potentate, or Power, whatever," affords no security against such sale or sales, in as much as that it could only be considered as a breach of contract on the part of the applicants and their associates, whom alone the Act precludes from making of such sale or sales, and not their heirs or assigns, or others who may purchase from them, and therefore would not even admit of a plea, upon national principles, for any declaration of infractions by any foreign King, Prince, Potentate, or Power that might become the purchase or purchasers thereof. ]
[printed text: 3dly. Because that, in and by the Constitution of this State, the Legislature are bound to lay off the territory into counties previously to any disposition thereof; and because that, in laying off such counties, regard ought to have been had to forming them into such districts as that each of them in time might have been guaranteed in all the rights, privileges, and immunities, which are enjoyed by the citizens of other states; to have secured which, and to have acted on constitutional grounds, the Legislature could only have disposed of the preemption right, and must have saved the extinguishment of Indian claims. ]
[printed text: 4thly. Because that there were no emergencies of the state that required any immediate or productive funds, and therefore there could not have existed any necessity for a sale; for, when we recur to past transactions, the extinguishment of Indian claims to the land lying between the Oconee and Oakmulgee rivers, &c. [et cetera] can only be viewed as a subterfuge to serve individual purposes, as the extinguishment of Indian claims to large tracts of country have by several cessions been obtained, when the strength and opulence of this state could bear no comparison with the present period, and the resources for those purposes were brought into activity independent of any pretended sale of Yazoo territory. And because that, if the true interest of the state had been regarded, a notice of at least twelve months would have been given of a sale, and the conditions thereof, in order to have obtained the most advantageous terms to the state for the aforesaid territory; and only a small portion of each county to have been so laid off ought to have been disposed of and granted to Companies, reserving at least three fourths for actual settlers, to whom, on political principles, future Legislatures would have given the highest encouragement, and on the notice and conditions aforesaid a much larger sum would have been obtained, and population, a first consideration with states, considerable promoted. ]
[printed text: 5thly. Because that four fifths of the consideration money rests on a mortgage on the aforesaid territory, with a summary foreclosure not warranted by the Constitution of this states, which declares, "that all causes regarding real estate shall be tried in the county where such real estate is" and it would be difficult to find a precedent, or even to point out a mode, whereby it can operate on a territory of which the sovereignty and jurisdiction is without doubt intended to be surrendered. ]
[printed text: 6thly. Because the Legislature did reject the sum of three hundred thousand dollars, over and above the sum to be received by the said Act, which were offered by persons of as much respectability and responsibility as those to whom the territory by the aforesaid Act is disposed of; the annual interest of which sum, ] [printed text: if properly applied, ] [printed text: would have contributed largely to relieve the citizens of the state from taxes in future. ]
[printed text: 7thly. And because that, from the whole tenor of the proceedings, as well as from other testimony, it evidently appears that the said Act was obtained by fraud, collusion, and corruption; and therefore the aforesaid Act, and every grant or grants obtained in pursuance of, or by virtue thereof, must be, in law and equity, null and void. ]
[printed text: We the People (from whom all power originates) do therefore, for the aforesaid reasons, remonstrate against the validity of the aforesaid Act, and every act and thing done in and by virtue thereof; and do hereby instruct and charge our several Members of the Convention aforesaid to take such measures as will render and make the aforesaid Act, and every grant or grants obtained under or by virtue thereof, utterly null and void, and of none effect; and, farther, that the limits and jurisdiction of the state be clearly and fully defined in the Constitution, as well as the mode and manner of disposing of any part or parcel of the territory within the same. ]
[printed text: We have the fullest reliance that, in a measure so momentous to the common rights and interests of the People, (even abstracted from every other consideration) you must feel bound to a faithful observance of these our instructions. ]
Done at Augusta this
first Day of May 1795 by Order of the Mechanical Society
[Signed] [written text: M Catlett ] [written text: Pret. [President] ]
[written text: Attest ]

[Signed] [written text: Thos. [Thomas] Bray ] [written text: Secy. [Secretary] ]





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No. 25
Richmond
the unanimous consent of the Mecanical [Mechanical] Society of Augusta