CHAP. 248.—JOINT RESOLUTION authorizing and directing the
Attorney-General to test before the Supreme Court of the United
States so much of the act of incorporation of the Atlantic, Mississippi
and Ohio railroad as relates to debts due the State of Virginia by
the divisional lines of said railway.

Approved March 9, 1880.

Whereas by act of the general assembly, approved January

fourteen, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, the attorney-gen-

eral was instructed to take proper proceedings to contest the
constitutionality of the act to authorize the formation of the
Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio railroad company in so far as it
disposed of certain claims of the state for loans to the Norfolk
and Petersburg, Southside, and Virginia and Tennessee rail-
road companies, and to assert the right of the state to collect
said loans; and whereas the attorney-general, by exceptions to
the master commissioner’s. report in the case of Skiddy and
others versus The Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio railroad com-
pany and others, in the circuit court of the United States
for the eastern district of Virginia, raised said. constitutional
questions, which questions were decided by the said circuit
court of the United States adversely to the claim of this state ;
therefore, be it

1. Resolved by the general assembly, That the attorney-
general be instructed to take such steps as may be necessary
to have the said judgment of the said circuit court reversed,
upon appeal to the supreme court of the Uuited States, and
that the auditor of public accounts pay out of any money in
the treasury, not otherwise appropriated, the necessary legal
costs attending said appeal.

2. This joint resolution shall be in force from its passage.