Sorry I'm late to the first question; I didn't look where I was clicking and responded to an individual rather than the list. One would expect that at some point this practice would have become the focus of a court case; however, while I admit that I have not read every colonial court case, I have spent a great deal of time reviewing numerous cases and have never encountered any reference to such a practice. Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FUGA, FVGS PO Box 1273 Orange, VA 22960 540-832-3473 [log in to unmask] CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board-certified genealogists after periodic evaluation; the board name is registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. On 7/5/2017 11:19 AM, Jon Kukla wrote: > 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." > > ______________________________________ 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).