The rules of the Sequestration Commissioners.
Editors Dispatch In your paper of the 16th instant you have published the rules adopted by the
Sequestration Commissioners for the government of cases that may be presented before them by claimants under the sequestration act; and it really seems to me that these commissioners have taxed their ingenuity to prescribe rules to prevent the ends of justice.
The commissioners require that every claim shall be in roll form, the sheets to be connected at the margin, one inch wide, on the left hand, &c. How obscure persons in the country can comply with this rule, I cannot tell.
They then require that the petition shall be divided into paragraphs, numbered consecutively; each paragraph to contain a separate and distinct allegation.
These commissioners are acting as chancellors, and all that they should require of claimants is a full, plain, and substantial statement of their demands, verified by affidavits I cannot see the necessity of, nor does the sequestration act contemplate that claimants should be required to give twenty
entire in the General the
Confederate States that same evidence in support of their if after the claimant has takes affidavits before the proper officer, the
Attorney General be not satisfied with the proof, let him give notice and take testimony if he desires to controvert the evidence offered by the claimant.
The seventh rule inquires a degree of particularity as to the birth, residence, &c., &c., of the witness or witnesses, which is totally unnecessary, and which only tends to increase the expense and delay the ends of justice.--The 11th rule is of a most arbitrary, and, is my opinion, illegal character.
It prescribes that no lawyer shall be permitted to practice before this board of commissioners unless he has been admitted to practice before the highest court in the
State.
Whatever therefore, a lawyer's ability may be, he cannot practice before this tribunal unless (as in
Virginia, for example,) he has been admitted to practice before the Court of Appeals--This is an insult to a large class of the most respectable lawyers in the
Confederate States; but, in addition to this, he must be sworn to support the
Provisional Government of the
Confederate States.
Now, I should like to know by what authority these commissioner require lawyers who may appear before them to take an oath to support the
Government of the
Confederate States?
Does the law require it?
I think not.
My object in noticing these rules of the
Sequestration Commissioners is to point but their objectionable features, and to ask the Congress of the Confederate States to see that those citizens whose property has been burned, &c., and otherwise destroyed by the principled army of the
North, should not be subjected to arbitrary and unnecessary rules in the prosecution of their just claims against the barbarous Lincoln Government.
If the rules prescribed by these commissioners shall be strictly, or indeed substantially observed, they will have the effect of defeating one-half of the claimants in the
State of Virginia. Justice.
Prince William co., Va., Jan. 29, 1862.
