[F] If the motives that prompted many of the tories to adhere to the British crown during the Revolution were measured by the more modern political standards of selfishness or self-interest, there be many now who could not make mouths at their memories. [G] Grandfather of the writer. [H] See chapter iii. CHAPTER V. _EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION._ The first legislative act passed in what is now the state of Tennessee was an “Ordinance of the Governor and Judges of the Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio, for circumscribing the counties of Greene and Hawkins, and laying out two new counties, Jefferson and Knox.” This act was passed June 11, 1792, and describes with minute particularity that part of the boundaries of the old counties affected by it, as well as those of the new counties created. The act appoints Charles McClung and James Maberry to run and mark certain parts of the lines, and Alexander Outlaw and Joseph Hamilton to run and mark the other parts. It also directs that the Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for Knox county be held at Knoxville, for the ensuing year, on the third Mondays of January, April, July and October, and for Jefferson county at the house of Jeremiah Matthews, on the fourth Mondays of the same months, “for the administration of justice.” The second ordinance passed by the same authority is one the example of which it were well we had followed, but, alas! we have not. This ordinance, in a preamble, recites that, “whereas, doubts have arisen whether the several Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in this Territory have by the laws of North Carolina authority to levy taxes for building or repairing court houses, prisons and stocks in the said counties respectively, pay jurors and defray contingent expenses; and whereas, it is necessary that these doubts shall no longer exist”; and then proceeds to authorize and empower the courts to levy and collect a tax for the purposes named--not to issue bonds, and entail their payment, with interest, upon future generations. The ordinance provides that the tax so levied and collected by the several counties shall not exceed, in any one year, more than fifty cents on each poll, nor more than seventeen cents on each hundred acres of land.