7. The children of slaves born within the limits of this State after the fourth day of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, shall be free; and all slaves within the said State who shall, at the time aforesaid, be under the age of ten years, shall be free when they arrive at the age of twenty-one years; and all slaves over ten and under twenty-one years, shall be free when they arrive at the age of twenty-five years; and no slave shall be permitted to come into the State for permanent residence therein.

8. Such parts of the common law and of the laws of the State of Virginia as are in force within the boundaries of the State of West Virginia, when this Constitution goes into operation, and are not repugnant thereto, shall be and continue the law of this State until altered or repealed by the Legislature. All offences against the laws of Virginia heretofore committed within the boundaries of this State shall be cognizable in the Courts of this State, in the same manner they would be if hereafter committed within this State. All civil and criminal suits and proceeding pending in the County or Circuit Courts of the State of Virginia, held within the said boundaries, shall be docketed and thereafter proceeded in before the Circuit Court of the proper county; and all such suits and proceedings pending in the Supreme and District Courts of Appeals of the State of Virginia, if the defendant in the court below resides within the said boundaries, or the subject of the suit is land or other property situated or being therein, and the plaintiff is entitled to prosecute in this State, shall be docketed, and thereafter proceeded in before the Supreme Court of Appeals thereof.

9. The records, books, papers, seals and other property and appurtenances of the former Circuit and County Courts, within the State of West Virginia, shall be transferred to, and remain in, the care and custody of the Circuit Courts of the respective counties; to which all process outstanding at the time this Constitution goes into operation shall be returned, and by which new process in suits then pending, or previously determined, in the said former Courts, may be issued in proper cases. Copies and transcripts of the records and proceedings of the said former Courts shall be made and certified by the Courts having the care and custody of such records and proceedings, or the proper officers thereof, and shall have the same force and effect as if they had been heretofore properly made and certified by the said tormer Courts.

ARTICLE XII.

AMENDMENTS.

1. No convention shall be called, having authority to alter the constitution of the State, unless it be in pursuance of a law passed by the affirmative vote of a majority of the members elected to each branch of the legislature, and providing that polls shall be held throughout the State, on some day therein specified, which shall be not less than three months after the passage of such law, for the purpose of taking the sense of the voters on the question of calling a convention. And such convention shall not be held unless a majority of the votes cast at such polls be in favor of calling the same; nor shall members be elected to such convention, until at least one month after the result of the polls shall be duly ascertained, declared and published. And all acts and ordinances of said convention shall be submitted to the voters of the State for ratification, or rejection, and shall have no validity whatever, until they are ratified, and in no event shall they, by any shift or device, be made to have any retrospective operation or effect.

2. Any amendment to the constitution of the State may be proposed in either branch of the legislature; and if the same, being read on three several days in each branch, be agreed to on its third reading, by a majority of the members elected thereto, the proposed amendment, with the yeas and nays thereon, shall be entered on the journals, and referred to the legislature at the first session to be held after the next general election, and shall be published, at least three months before such election, in some newspaper in every county in which a newspaper is printed. And if the proposed amendment be agreed to during such session, by a majority of the members elected to each branch, it shall be the duty of the legislature to provide by law for submitting the same to the voters of the State, for ratification or rejection. And if a majority of the qualified voters, voting upon the question at the polls held pursuant to such law, ratify the proposed amendment, it shall be in force from the time of such ratification, as part of the constitution of the State. If two or more amendments be submitted at the same time, the vote on the ratification or rejection, shall be taken on each separately.

CORPORATIONS.

HAMPSHIRE AND BALTIMORE COAL COMPANY.

I, J. Edgar Boyers, secretary of the state of West Virginia, hereby certify that a copy of three resolutions, passed by the stockholders of the Hampshire Mining Company, a corporation chartered by an act of the general assembly of Virginia, passed March fifteenth, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, and now existing in the state of West Virginia, and engaged in the mining of coal near Piedmont, in said State; in a general meeting of said stockholders duly called and held at their chief office in the city of New York, on the twenty-eighth day of November, eighteen hundred and sixty-three; which resolutions were duly certified by the president of said company, under his signature and the common seal thereof, and delivered to me this day. Said resolutions are in the following words:

Resolved, "That the stockholders of said Hampshire Mining Company deem it advisable, and desire to increase the amount of the capital stock of said company, and to change the par value of the shares of said stock. That it is proposed to increase the amount of its said capital stock to five hundred thousand dollars, and to diminish the par value of the shares thereof to ten dollars per share, so that the capital stock of stock of said company shall consist of fifty thousand shares of ten dollars each."

Resolved, "That the stockholders of the Hampshire Mining Company incorporated by an act of the general assembly of the state of Virginia, passed March fifteenth, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, and now doing business in Hampshire county, West Virginia, deem it advisable, and desire to change the name of said company."

Resolved, "That said stockholders desire and intend that said corporation shall hereafter, as soon as the same may be legally done, be known by the name of "Hampshire and Baltimore Coal Company," and said last mentioned name is hereby adopted as the future corporate name of said corporation, from and after such date as the same may be legally used and employed."

Wherefore, I, J. Edgar Boyers, secretary of the state of West Virginia, do hereby declare the amount of the capital stock of said company to be increased to five hundred thousand dollars; and the par value of the shares thereof, diminished to ten dollars per share, so that, the capital stock of said company shall consist of fifty thousand shares, of ten dollars each.

And, I do hereby, as aforesaid, further declare, the name of said company changed, and to be known from this date as the Hampshire and Baltimore Coal Company.

Given under my hand and the great seal of the state of West Virginia, at the city of Wheeling, this, the sixteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the State the first. J. EDGAR BOYERS, Secretary of the State.

SEAL.

RESIDENCE.

October 26, 1663.

November 4, 1863.