In an essay on the Constitution published in Sunday's NYT, Garry Wills
explains James Madison's thinking about factions and the common good by
suggesting that Madison's ideas reflected "a common practice" that Will
describes as follows:

"When a landowner in Virginia wished to sell property, neither he nor his
potential buyer was allowed to set the price. That would be acting as
judges in their own case. Instead, each chose a reputable arbiter, one
likely to be respected by each of them and by others; those representatives
chose a third person, who would, with them, set a price that all could
accept as 'disinterested.'"

Sounds like a form of arbitration, but I'm not familiar with it in 18th-c
Virginia land transactions.
I'm especially skeptical about Wills's assertion that parties to a private
land sale would not have been "allowed to set the price."


-- 
Jon Kukla                            www.jonkukla.com
________________

______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

This list is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).